neiroatopelcc

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Hello.
I've got 7 spare 500GB drives sitting in a corner. I'd like to use them as backup volune for my system (2x2tb drives), and am looking for some kind of storage system for that.
Does anyone know a (decently cheap) solution for that? I was browsing thru drive enclosures earlier, and can't really find anyone supporting more than two drives. Alternatively I would have to buy an 8 port sas/sata controller to plug into my secondary pc (nforce 550 system with 3 raptors in raid0 as system drive).
 

pepperman

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If you have another older system (even a p3 will do) you can buy a $30 PCI SATA RAID card and turn the system into a sort of file server; you might see reduced performance due to the cpu (at least with a p3 or athlon original) but your data should be secure.
 

neiroatopelcc

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I know that theory. But I'm unable to find any controller that cheap! I've checked all 4+ channel controllers on pcie (x1-x8)
I've got an old athlon x2 system with 3gb memory and a 6800gt that I meant to put all the stuff into, but I realized it wouldn't work as it only has 4 sata connectors, and I'm using 3 for the system drive. Would a pci controller (assuming they're the cheap ones you're referring to) do the job properly? The pci bus can't even keep up with a gigabit ethernet adapter, so I kinda doubt it.

Edit: Found 3 controllers in the 25€ bracket sporting 4 sata1 ports and using standard pci32 - how poor's the performance of those?
 

neiroatopelcc

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dunno bout the performance, but I just ordered a delock 4 port sata controller. I'm sure it'll be rubbish, but with a price in the gutter I suppose that's just fair. At least it was in stock at the etailer that doesn't charge shipping :)
 

pepperman

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The PCI interface operates at a max of 133 MB/s (1066 Mbyte/s, slightly faster than Gigabit ethernet), which is more than any individual drive you'll find (less SSD or Raptor), and most likely you'll only be accessing one drive at a time (and you'll be limited by your ethernet), so you should be fine with a PCI controller, but a PCI-E controller would of course be better as allows faster intra-computer transfers. This is assuming you do not have a any other PCI devices, though, as they will take bandwidth away from the card.
 
i wouldn't worry too much about it, unless your gigabit port is on the pci bus as well, then it would be 133MB/s shared between the two

older S939 boards with 2 x Gigabit had this problem, one would be pci, the other pcie x1
 

neiroatopelcc

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I don't see how that software is going to help anything?
Any decently modern lan adapter can do iscsi, but the trick is to find something to attach to it. I would still need a system with enough sata ports to act as server anyway. And a windows share is as good as a virtaul san box for my purpose (backup of primary system every 2 weeks)

Edit: Track and trace sais I'll have a 4 port controller in the mail tomorrow. I'll see how well it works out then.