Adding hard drives & memory -- Need larger power supply?
jimbeetle
Status: Interested
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 18
Reply Quote
Hey folks,

Back in October I built a machine modeled after the specs in MatthewHSE's thread here:

techpatterns.com/forums/about128.html

Basic differences are that I opted for the XP 2800, a 128MB video card, and plopped in 1.5 gigs of memory.

I kind of had a chuckle after I got done with the machine, all that expandable space with probably no use. Well, I have a use for it now, just got a job to scan a few thousand 35mm and 2 1/4 inch slides. It's going to demand a lot of storage.

So, what I'm adding to the box are:

-- 4 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB drives
-- a Lite-on SHOW-1633S DVD Drive
-- another 512MB stick of memory (since I'm going to have the box open, why not?)

The Antec box came with a 350W power supply. Must I, or should I, pick up a larger psu?

Also, there are two fans in the box now. Anything else I should do with an eye to keeping the system cool?

Thanks in advance,

Jim
Back to top
jeffd
Status: Assistant
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 594
Reply Quote
Hi Jim Beetle, first of all, if you are adding 200 Gigabyte hard drives, you'll need to implement the 137 gig Windows 2k/xp sp 1 fix.

That's a registry edit, but it's very easy to do, and it works. Without that fix, your system will only show 137 gig available space on your new drives. With it it's fine.

Your power supply should be fine, I just did an upgrade on a server, it's got 6 hard drives in it [1 ide os drive, 2 mirrored raid 0 ide drives, 2 mirrored sata raid 0 drives, 320 gig total storage, 1 removable drive for doing backups] with a 350 watt power supply, one advantage of buying high end equipment is that's 350 real watts, unlike cheapo power supplies, which fake it, then burn out a few months later.

Glad to see you discovering why it pays to have extra capacity you think you'll never need for when you find out you'll need it.

For fans, I'd position at least one fan in front of your harddrive rack [blowing into case], and one exhaust by processor, I use a lot more, personally I'd add one more to the back of the case, for 3 case fans, 2 power supply fans total [power supply fans are in the unit].

For anyone reading this, I've just found another case that is even better than the one recommended in this thread, it uses 120 mm fans, quieter, and has 5 hard drive spaces, a very nice Antec unit, Solution Series SLK3700AMB, it has 5 hard drive bays. More space, and quieter, I'll probably be moving the server to that case in the future.

If you're planning on doing full backups you'll want to read this thread, it will save you many many days of frustration and returning stuff that doesn't do what it says it will. I'm finding that standard firewire backups seem to max out at around 120 gig for the full backup package, this is a known firewire issue that they for some reason don't see fit to tell you about.
Back to top
jimbeetle
Status: Interested
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 18
Reply Quote
Thanks Jeff.

Yeah, it kind of blew me away when I found that I really did need all of that space. Ya' never know.

I actually knew about the over 137 gig fix, read about it in passing somewhere last week. Would have probably gone on my merry way and then said "Duh?" Thanks for the reminder.

As for a third case fan, where would I mount it? It's a hassle for me to take look inside the box, but will pick up an extra fan so I have everything ready to go at the same time.

Thanks again,

Jim
Back to top
jeffd
Status: Assistant
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 594
Reply Quote
:: Quote ::
I actually knew about the over 137 gig fix

I wish I had had that reminder 3 weeks ago, let me tell you, luckily the cru datapro tech support kindly reminded me of that fact when I called to tell them their hard drive enclosure didn't work.
:: Quote ::
As for a third case fan, where would I mount it?

Depends on the case you have, it's the antec in that other thread, the tower one, there are two snapin holders for 80 mm fans in the back of the case.

You can tell easily, there will be a metal grill, with 4 screw holes if it's not the snapin style antec fan holder and there's an extra fan space.

4 200 gig hard drives, pretty good though, raid 0 I assume? Or actuall 4 separate ones? That's very risky, it's very difficult to backup those up. If you have 4 drives you need to make sure to keep them all cool, with fans blowing air directly over them, when you have that many they generate a lot of heat. Hot drives = prematurely dead drives.

The kind of data requirement you have are exactly what forced us to do a big data storage upgrade, high resolution digital photos, lots of them, several gigabytes every few weeks often, plus huge powerpoint presentations.

Our next move will have to be to network attached storage I think. Or maybe just another gigabit networked box with 5 or 6 more hard drives, that's probably cheaper to make I think. Use old mobo, maybe another of those gigabyte ones, they are cheap now, doesn't have to be fast processor, it's just moving data from hard drive to network, drives need to be fast though.

By the way, if you haven't checked out gigabit networking, it's amazing, you can transfer files almost as fast as internally, big files too. From the tests I ran, it looked like both do true data transfers of about 40 mB per second, internal ide hard drive versus networked drive, network a little slower, but not much, that's for 100+ mB files too.
Back to top
jimbeetle
Status: Interested
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 18
Reply Quote
It's the Antec case, I'm just not able to get inside right now so I wasn't sure if there was an extra fan mount in the back or not. Now that I know that there is I'll pick up an extra fan.

The 4 200 gigs are going to be separate ones. Had to keep costs down a bit and the Maxtors were the best bang for the buck, about 52 cents per gig at zipzoomfly. The project is for a family archiving many years of slides taken by the late Dad, so it's not absolutely a mission critical type of thing, just so that I'm sure I have enough space to hold stuff as I get the scans written to DVDs, that's why the Lite-On dual layer writer.

As for gigabit, I actually have a couple of 50 foot cables hanging to get the kinks out to make them easy to run (they wind the consumer stuff so tight I find it hard to run right out of the package), then I can pick up cards for the other desktop so I can get rid of the wireless. Looking forward to it.

Thanks again, Jeff.
Back to top
rkoenig
Status: Interested
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 16
Reply Quote
:: Quote ::
As for gigabit, I actually have a couple of 50 foot cables hanging to get the kinks out to make them easy to run


Make sure for gigabit networking all components are at least rated at cat 5e, ideally cat 6. Cat 5 tends to slow it down a bit, although I've seen the networking cables run fine, they get hot though. Same with the connections.

Cat 6 is cheap now, 50 feet for probably $20 or so. Maybe a little more.
Back to top
jeffd
Status: Assistant
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 594
Reply Quote
Glad it's all working for you. I do have one question however, how did you mount the hard drives, I assume you now have 5, plus the 2 optical drives?

I ended up cramming one into the extra floppy 3.5 " drive space, very bad choice due to overheating problems, though I'm blowing air down on it from another fan, but it's still got almost no airflow.
Back to top
jimbeetle
Status: Interested
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 18
Reply Quote
Hey Jeff, somehow didn't notice your last post, had some hard drive installation problems over the past few days and I guess I was a bit preoccupied.

The HDD cage in that Antec case (SLK3700AMB) holds five drives so it's no sweat. I have my main work drive, the 80 gig SATA mounted right in the middle to get the most benefit from the front fan, with two 200GBs both above and below. Overall system temp has been holding at around 35C, so it's looking okay so far.

I have to thank you for recommending the round IDE cables. For anything like this they are a must. I've was able to squirrel the 2 HDD cable along the bottom of the case, and the one for the optical drives out of the way near the top.

I wouldn't have been able to do that with flat cables, and they would have completely mucked about with the airflow.

In your case, do you have an extra 5.25" bay? If so, pick up an adaptor kit and an add-on HDD fan. Might work.
Back to top
jeffd
Status: Assistant
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 594
Reply Quote
:: Quote ::
I have to thank you for recommending the round IDE cables. For anything like this they are a must. ..I wouldn't have been able to do that with flat cables, and they would have completely mucked about with the airflow.

In your case, do you have an extra 5.25" bay? If so, pick up an adaptor kit and an add-on HDD fan. Might work.


I've solved some interesting case problems using round cables. I added a second hard drive to one of those very low profile corporate cases, drilled mount holes in the side of the case and screwed in the hard drive, but no flat cable had enough length to reach from the front hard drive to the side mounted hard drive, little case mod. A standard length round cable did the job perfectly, since it doesn't really lose any length when you curve it or bend it.

Unffortunately, my case is the older style 3 x 5 1/4, 2x3 1/2 external, 3 x 3.5 internal. I had to use the 3 internals, one of the 3.5 externals, and one of the 5.25 for the hard drives, I use front mounted fans on the 5.25 apapter mounted hard drives, and on the bottom of the 5.25 hd I have another bottom mounted fan. Not very elegant, the 3.25 exteranl bay mounted hd has no real airflow except from the top fan.

Ontop of all that I have the removable drive bay. and the cdrom. It's as full as it can be. But the round cables really make it look pretty clean inside, I have pictures, I'll post one or twol

Plus the case is very loud, there are so many fans in it, I think I'll switch it to your style case next time, with the 120 mm fans, that will be much quieter, and hold the drives better.
Back to top
Display posts from previous:   

All times are GMT - 8 Hours