Possable project

[imgregrice]

hes is a list of the hardware I have thus far
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=109
Dual Pent. 3 (if needed I can pull the the cpus out again and get #s off them

I have aprox 12 hard drives ranging from 20 gig (acctualy one 10 gig) - 80 gig.
this mobo has 4 built in Ide spots and a promise Pci raid adaptor that has ide ports
I do plan on putting one CD or drive in

I belive I have an old Vodoo 3 around somewhere or maybe a Vodoo 2 or so.
of cource a nic.

I will take pix after I eat and post them of this huge server case ( all metal ) about 3 foot tall on casters and a nasty green. color
I plan on replacing the color with http://www.autobarn.net/dupmp400.html


thoughts ideas? everything welcome is the system even worth messing with an OC or should I go just for style on the case?

last but not least the raid.... how in the heck do I set all of these hard drives up lol
I can get all the info off the promise set up if needed

thanks all I hope to make this a ton of fun been wanting to do it for quite some time

[public_eyesore]

i thought hardrives needed to be identical to use raid. Please explain. :confused:

[Xbrid]

That's what i thougth as well. :confused:

[imgregrice]

well they do and they don't
I have 2 of each flavor drive

to be perfectly honest I am more interested in the case than anything

I took some pix for everyone to see. hoping I can start some sort of game plan


http://img150.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img150&image=frontdoorclose2us.jpg
http://img94.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img94&image=frontwopendoor2je.jpg
http://img94.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img94&image=mesurements9cd.jpg
http://img94.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img94&image=side5oj.jpg

[Xbrid]

You have a lot to work with there. Good luck :D

[Chapel]

:eek: WOW that case is a monster. HUGE. That paint will look nice on a big case like that. you should put lots of fans and lights in there to show off all the hybrid glory that you are creating.

As for your RAID its pretty simple. Basically (As far as my knownledge goes) There is 3 ways to do RAID. RAID 0 (Striping) combines 2 harddrives and makes them into one, reading and writing the data too 2 hard drives instead of one, thus making it faster. An example of how RAID 0 improves preformance: I have a friend (this is going off his word too, so i dont know how accurate it is)... He has a 3.0ghz 64bit athalon or something expensive like that, and he has 2 WD Raptors (Which are damn fast drives) anyways he claims that he can go from the windows install boot to the desktop in 8 minuets, supposidly 3 or 4 times faster than a regular drive. With RAID 0 you can expect atleast 2x preformace for load times.
RAID 1 (mirroring) is where the file is writen to each hard drive at the same time, making a prefect back up. IMO this is only necessary if you have important files you CAN'T lose (corporate docs... ect..) The neat thing about it is ive been told you can hot swap or something to that nature, where the drives will automatically keep themselvs identical. So you could run it with only one hard drive, and then when you put the other one back in, it would automatically update itself to mirror the previous drive.
The last RAID option i know about is RAID 0+1 (Mirroring and Striping). This takes 4 drives, 2 to stripe and then another 2 to mirror the strip. Good preformance, great security. LOL its can be expensive though.

Anywho thats my thoughs on your case and RAID. Happy Modding! :cool:

[public_eyesore]

:eek: WOW that case is a monster. HUGE. That paint will look nice on a big case like that. you should put lots of fans and lights in there to show off all the hybrid glory that you are creating.

As for your RAID its pretty simple. Basically (As far as my knownledge goes) There is 3 ways to do RAID. RAID 0 (Striping) combines 2 harddrives and makes them into one, reading and writing the data too 2 hard drives instead of one, thus making it faster. An example of how RAID 0 improves preformance: I have a friend (this is going off his word too, so i dont know how accurate it is)... He has a 3.0ghz 64bit athalon or something expensive like that, and he has 2 WD Raptors (Which are damn fast drives) anyways he claims that he can go from the windows install boot to the desktop in 8 minuets, supposidly 3 or 4 times faster than a regular drive. With RAID 0 you can expect atleast 2x preformace for load times.
RAID 1 (mirroring) is where the file is writen to each hard drive at the same time, making a prefect back up. IMO this is only necessary if you have important files you CAN'T lose (corporate docs... ect..) The neat thing about it is ive been told you can hot swap or something to that nature, where the drives will automatically keep themselvs identical. So you could run it with only one hard drive, and then when you put the other one back in, it would automatically update itself to mirror the previous drive.
The last RAID option i know about is RAID 0+1 (Mirroring and Striping). This takes 4 drives, 2 to stripe and then another 2 to mirror the strip. Good preformance, great security. LOL its can be expensive though.

Anywho thats my thoughs on your case and RAID. Happy Modding! :cool:

...awesome... ive never known what raid was until you just explained it, all i knew is that it took 2 drives :p . If its that much faster, as your friend claims, i want it :D

[Chapel]

anytime man, im pretty sure that there are more options, but yeah thats a starter. Just remember that a 36.8gb raptor is about 150, and you need 2...

[imgregrice]

thanks for the run down of the raid.... I know a little about setting it up and such and have all the harware I need. anywhoo back to the case..

I took the monster apart tonight and took some pictures. I am going to start a new thread in a logs section so ill stop this one now and start the new one :D hope I can get some help and make this a gourgous beast!!!!!!!

[jonopaul01]

As for your RAID its pretty simple. Basically (As far as my knownledge goes) There is 3 ways to do RAID. RAID 0 (Striping) combines 2 harddrives and makes them into one, reading and writing the data too 2 hard drives instead of one, thus making it faster.




IMO this is only necessary if you have important files you CAN'T lose (corporate docs... ect..)


Well I have got to say that having a really fast hard rive, even if you effectivley lose half the space, sounds really great. I have got to the point where even my 30 second boot up (which for me used to be fast) has become to slow. I have set my computer to boot up with nearly no applications to get maximum performance.
However I am a bit puzzled by Chapel's comment about important files (Quote 2). You say that it is good for back ups and other stuff like that, which is all well and good. However surely if you get a virus on one hardrive it will also be copied onto the other hard drive? And surely any changes that virus does to your windows folders/ boot up folders or any other important system files will be copied onto both hardrives? While I do not understand virus' and the way they work (obviously not being a virus writer) I would imagine that this is the kind of thing that would happen. Is it just my ignorance that brings me too this conclusion? If so please set me straight as too how this kind of technology really works.

Any way, back to the case. WOW. That case is huge! I am just wondering what you are going to be using it for. Are you gonna use it as a server or as a gaming computer. I apologize if you have already mentioned this (I am not very observant) but the way in which you will be using this case definitely is a determining factor as to the way in which you mod it. Some things will look better for a computer you will drag out to a lan (and with the computer being that size it truly will be a drag!) while other things will look better on your desk.

I have had some ideas though. I think that a window is absoloutely essential! You have so much space in the centre of the computer there that it would be a crime not too let everyone see it! With a bit of wire managment and a bit of trimming here and there you should be able to get some neat space to show. Perhaps a bit of Modders Mesh on the door of the case would give a very metal cool look. I think that you need to give us some ideas as to what you would like too see out of the case before we can give some ideas as too what you could do.

So that is my little bit. To tell you the truth I have never done a case mod project so I am probably not the best person to take advice from (I should probably not give advice as well).

[imgregrice]

I plan to use this as a image server and maybe an ftp

so looks are all that matter lol

[Matthew]

Any pics so far?

[imgregrice]

acctualy I started sanding /cutting late last night after breakfast ill go take some pics and get back to work

*edit*

I just realized I hadned posted ANY pics on this thread so ill link you to another forum I posted pix on http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=85884

[joex444]

Been using RAID in my PCs for ~4 yrs now.

To explain further:

- RAID0: 2, 3, or 4 drives combined in capacity. Thus, FOUR 60GB drives give 240GB like TWO 120GBs do. However, there is a setting when you make the array called 'stripe size.' Mine is 64K, and since I have TWO 120GBs, every other 64K gets written to ONE drive. The other drive contains the second 64K, so on and so forth. Thus, to write a 1GB file to the 240GB array (BTW, once you RAID a group of drives, it becomes one physical drive as far as Windows or Linux is concerned. It knows you have 2+ drives, but it handles it like 1 drive), 512MB gets written to drive #1 and 512MB to drive #2. To read it back, it uses both drives simultaneously, so the SPEED is increased. The read time (access time) is INCREASED as well, so small files actually read slower, but its not noticeable. For instance, I have TWO Seagate 7200RPM 8MB Cache ATA/133 drives in RAID0, and when I benchmark it (HDTach), it averages 67MB/s, not dipping below 58MB/s! If I added a 3rd for a 360GB array, it would be faster, and 4 drives is faster still. If you want raw performance and have a choice between, say FOUR 160GB or TWO 300GB, I'd go with the 160s, it will be faster. It will not be as safe, though (but you did want raw performance ;) as if 1 of these 4 fails, everything is lost. Obviously 1 in 4 drives failing is more likely than 1 in 2 drives.

-RAID1: 2 drives (can you do 3 or 4? never had them to try...maybe) with the capacity of a single drive. Thus, TWO 120GB becomes a single 120GB drive as far as software is concerned. If you write a 1GB file to the array, it gets written twice, but you can only SEE 1 copy of it. The other you dont know about (its not hidden or anything, remember its the array you access not the individual drives). It decreases read, and write speed, and increases access time.

Not talked about: RAID5...becoming more affordable. 3+ drives. Capacity of the array is the sum of all the drives capacity, less 1 drive. Ex. 4x120GB drives = 360GB; 3x120GB = 240GB. 5x120GB = 480GB (SCSI, expensive SATA cards can do 5 drives [SATA usually 8 connectors in these boards, maybe 12] [SCSI, normally limited to 7 IDs, thus 7 drives, but new SCSI, like U320 supports 15. U160 as well]). The drive not counted toward capacity is the parity drive. It recreates the missing parts of files if a drive fails. If the parity drive fails, the remaing ones recreate the parity drive when it is replaced.

ALSO: you do NOT have to use the same drives. Its recommended, tho. If you had a 20GB, 20GB, 20GB, 40GB array, for RAID0, it would be 80GB (not 100!). Take the lowest capacity drive, multiply by # of drives. Thus, a 4GB, 10GB, 20GB, 40GB array yields 16GB RAID0 -- missing out on 48GB of potential capacity.

JBOD: combine capacity, don't do anything for speed. basically, once it fills up one drive, it moves on to the next. good for mismatched sizes. makes that 4,10,20,40GB setup 74GB, but as slow as 1 drive.

ALSO: RAID controllers can act like IDE or SATA controllers. you dont need to setup RAID. you might have booting issues (like you cant) on some of these controllers. me and my friend have the same mobo, and i boot off the ide raid controller integrated into it as a raid array for 2 drives, and my friend wanted to boot a single drive and couldnt.