Maybe Some Discussion on my Setup

[Nside]

So I currently have This Case
It has 6x 5.25 bays where I have two of This Cage/Backplane
A possible total of 8 drives in those cages, I only have 3 populated in a pool currently while I figure out what I want to do with the rest

Running the cages is a basic cheap-ish HBA with 2x Mini-SAS ports broken out to a total of 8 SATA connections

Here's my dilemma. I like to use hardware close to its full capability.
My Motherboard has 6 SATA ports and 2 NVMe slots. I am using one SATA port for a little 256GB SSD boot drive, and an NVMe using as a cache VDEV
So I have 5 free SATA ports and one NVMe slot. Also, my HBA only uses 8 lanes of the 16x PCIe slot that I can split in the BIOS to direct to 8 more lanes to another 16x slot.

My case also has 4 internal 3.5" sleds and one built-in drive caddy type on the top of the case (really cool feature BTW)
Since I can shove the 2.5" SSD just about anywhere, I wouldn't count it as taking up space.

So I guess my case as-is can hold a total of 13 3.5" HDDs, and I have total 13 available SATA connections. Seems perfect, right?

Well why do I keep looking at new cages that can hold 5 drives per cage instead of the ones that hold 4 that I have? And why am I looking up if I can split that top 16x slot in 8x + 8x for another HBA?
15 seems like such a nice number even if i don't have the drives I want to fill them with.

Somebody talk some sense to me.
Also I'm going to need some PCIe bandwidth to upgrade my network, that onboard 1Gb isn't going to cut it for very long, but I should be Okay if I don't use the second NVMe slot even if i go nuts cramming every drive possible into this build

Rest of build:
Ryzen 5600GT
MSI X570 Gaming Carbon Motherboard
48GB DDR4 3200


 

[Mobius]

i get that itch and i suspect most of us here do too.

instead of going crazy with over 13 drives and swapping out your parts consider using fewer high capacity 24tb-ish drives.
with every additional drive you are likely adding $5-15 dollars worth of electricity to your bill each year and it adds up.

You can also go nuts with what you have now and then when you use up all your storage space you can start working on a 2nd server since the only thing better than 1 server is multiple servers lol.

[Dylan]

Hi @Nside - It may be worth considering running HexOS on your current configuration for two reasons. It will give you the space to see how your system performs enabling you to identify where you might want to make changes in a future build. This will also give you the opportunity to run HexOS and "kick the tires" as it were. Completely up to you and I know that new hardware fever but, maybe see if running it now BEFORE a purchase better informs you of how you'll spend your future dollars. Enjoy!

[Nside]

@Dylan I'm already running HexOS. It simplifies the setup for sure.

[Dylan]

23 minutes ago, Nside said:

@Dylan I'm already running HexOS. It simplifies the setup for sure.

It looks like your case even has a little (non)remote control on top of the chassis! That'll be a beast for sure.

[Theo]

15 drives! Someone needs to be posting this in r/DataHoarder 🤣

[Dylan]

Plus any backups!! My man has BIG data lol....

[Theo]

2 minutes ago, Dylan said:

Plus any backups!! My man has BIG data lol....

Those Linux ISO's can add up.... 😉

[Dylan]

RIP my Downloads. Truth, I probably have ~.5TB of ISO's. But I SWEAR I'm not a data hoarder. For real for real.

[Theo]

i'm only at ~10TB... it would be more if i had access to fiber! 

[Nside]

On 12/11/2024 at 9:29 PM, Dylan said:

It looks like your case even has a little (non)remote control on top of the chassis! That'll be a beast for sure.

Yeah, fan controllers and that slide-in drive bay. I used to use that for running HDD tests on new drives before installing them in various builds.

Most everything I do outside of this NAS is NVMe these days, so that bay's been collecting dust

[Dylan]

@Nside - Dude, I've been a hardware guy for decades and I've NEVER seen something like that. A top loading drive slot for....whatever I want? I'd pay good money for something like that today. Admittedly, my HW experience is production gear, but that is still one cool feature I wish was still around. I dig it!

[Erik Andersen]

11 hours ago, Dylan said:

@Nside - Dude, I've been a hardware guy for decades and I've NEVER seen something like that. A top loading drive slot for....whatever I want? I'd pay good money for something like that today. Admittedly, my HW experience is production gear, but that is still one cool feature I wish was still around. I dig it!

In the early 2000's there were some cases with this built in on top top or in front, Thermaltake was one of them, I'll be damned if I can remember the others besides the one the OP is using. 

I go back to 1979 in my computer journey, I miss the early 80's through to about 2002 when we would go to computer shows and be there for hours drooling over what we would build or add to our machines. Back in 1993 a buddy of mine from work showed me his dad's "secret" computer connected to DARPA, it was boring as hell because we had no access but to see the login prompt, reminded me of War Games. 

My best home brew was a VTech "pizza box" 386 I got a challenge from their engineering department in 1993 to build a 486DX2-66 out of it and the only rule was I had to use parts from their junk pile, not garbage, engineering samples etc... I modified a PSU and the case to fit a new 486DX2-66, 16megs of ram and a Boca 1 meg video card and filled all of the cache slots and that was the fastest 486 we had in the company at the time. I cobbled together a few of these and supplied a local computer store with some that made me $1,800.00 each and the company didn't care as long as I de-branded the case and sold them as is. I bought my first house with the money made from selling to that store, they loved these rigs. 

This is the Laser version of the chassis I found on Google, the one I built was Vtech branded. I wish I had pictures of the ones I built, I still have some of the computer badges sitting on my desk at home. Ok, I digress, this isn't the thread for this, sorry. 🙂

Edited December 16, 2024 by Erik Andersen