Thoughts?

As a fun project, I've managed to get 16 SCSI drives from eBay (all
working, tested myself) of 23 GB each. I am planning on making a file
server out of these drives. I've already got two SCSI controllers for the
drives (as well as a SCSI CDROM and two other SCSI drives for other uses in
the server), and I'm curious if anyone has done anything similar before.
The toughest part I've had so far is finding a way to power the drives,
thankfully they will draw a peak of 25.6A on the +12V and 16A on the +5V,
and I found a supply that will give 36A on the +12 and 29A on the +5. So
power is good. I'm working on an enclosure to house them, and I've got
long enough cabling and external hookups for all the drives to connect to
and stuff.

Basically, has anyone undergone something this massive (and pointless)
before, and if so, what pitfalls should I watch for?

--
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email: [email protected]_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
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http://www.hoffmanonline.com/

http://www.hoffmanonline.com/Product_Info/NewProducts_Data.htm

http://www.hoffmanonline.com/pdf/DataComPriceList.pdf


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damn thing will sound like a jet airliner taking off when those babies all
spin up. Better stand back or get sucked into the gravity well. ;-)



...

 

Thor:

Have you ever thought about setting up a for-pay support system? I have
some clients/friends/colleagues who might be willing to pay you for your
expertise, but they are not going to post in a newsgroup. (I would have
sent you this message privately, but you don't have a valid email
address. If you have a throw away Yahoo or Hotmail address, send it to
me privately and I'll tell you my thoughts.

Mike

 

It's not as outlandish as you might think. I've got a closet full of
old SciNet SCSI CD-ROM servers that each contain 7 SCSI drives.

BB

 

An overabundance of dead goats

JJ

 

I personally can not answer for Thor on this question, but one must realize
one thing about this newsgroup and it's participants:
Most (if not all of us) don't do this with the hope of being paid. We do
this because it is a talent we have for some reason that not everyone does,
and if we can take 30 minutes of our day to give out free advice and help,
we are giving back to the community. I can't say that Thor wouldn't take
your offer, but I can say I would be very surprised if he did.

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: [email protected]_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

 

I suspect that many of us already do support work for pay. I know that I
do-or did. (When they hired a new support tech they moved me to mostly
programming.) We (or at least I) participate here not only to 'give
back' as you mentioned but also to learn & expand my skills.

IMO the hardest part about support is 'remote' support. I'm lucky in
that most of my paid support duties are within this building-if I can't
understand the user's explanation of what's going on then I can get off
my lazy butt & go over to see for myself. In my side job (self-employed
support) that often isn't possible so I need to keep my communication
skills sharp-diagnosing problems from inadequate descriptions,
communicating solutions to people who have only the slightest idea what
I'm telling them to do, etc. Participating here-both what I offer & what
I see from others-helps me with that.

So personally, I participate here for two reasons-gratitude for the help
I've received, both here & elsewhere, in the past & self-benefit for
what I'm receiving now.

Thanks.

 

Thanks for the offer, but I must decline. I already have plenty on my
business plate to handle.

 

Never tried this before. I imagine that the noise will be pretty bad. But
do keep us updated on how it turns out.

 

Noise is negligible (if that's spelled right). I've connected 2 of the 16
drives at once and they are near silent (only 5400 RPMs too, so low heat
output). The two 23 gig drives I hooked up (they are Seagate ST4 series
drives) are quieter than a single IBM 18 GB drive (model number not handy).

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: [email protected]_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

 

Either way, good luck. Besides, even if it's a bit noisy, who cares . Do
you have any plans for it? Or will you just leave it running for fun.

--Adam

 

I plan on using the drives as a replacement for the single 80 GB maxtor
drive that currently is a network share for music and applications. Though
it is only at 65% full, I would just like to set up a massive 300GB+
storage dump. If not for having 4x the storage, then for the experience
and being able to say "Hey, I set up a 16 drive RAID array"

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: [email protected]_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

 

Sounds great. Are all of the drives the same type? Or just the same size?
I haven't touched RAID arrays yet, although my curent project involves
building a computer cluster in my university. We have no clue what we're
doing with it, but hey, half the fun is building it .

 

Not only are they all the same size, they are all the exact same model.
Here is a link to their spec sheet:
http://www.seagate.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/scsi/st423451.w

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: [email protected]_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

 

Now you're making me jealous...lol
I say go for it, I believe it's never a waste of time or money if you
enjoy doing it, it's your time and money
Think of it as a learning experience, which is never a waste as it's
an asset which no one can take away from you.
I have a room full of old computers and parts, 15 I got from a medical
center when they upgraded, some I do up and give away others I just
strip for parts to sell.
I have a 5 computers networked, MSDOS, RedHat, Win98, Win2000, and
XP....Why? because I can
Always something to learn or experiment with.

Good luck and enjoy.



RedBack

 

Get a bottle of Tylenol. The premise is ridiculous.

 

Two scsi controllers won't help much, what you need is a raid 5 controller, then
you can get a usable system.
I have a server here with 5 9Gb scsi drives in raid 5. (its a P 133 with 256Mb
or ram)

Derek

 

A RAID5 controller would be nice, however the OS being installed onto it
can do software RAID5, which for what I want to do would be fine, I don't
care about the speed hit, the machine just sits there doing this all day,
so it needing to use it's CPU cycles for calculating parity information and
handling the array is not a big deal at all. If it wasn't doing that, it
would just sit there idling.

The machine handling this will be one of:
A Duron 1.2 w/512 megs of RAM
A Duron 800 w/256 megs of RAM
A P2 350 w/256 megs of RAM

The load on the server shouldn't be very large, just 3 or 4 machines
hitting it for music and movies, some home built applications, roaming
profiles, etc. Nothing major.

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: [email protected]_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services