Project of the Day : New Computer

Originally Posted by JE3146

I have 14TB on my HTPC... a friend of mine has 26TB on his central media server.

To add to what you said.... You run out of space real quick with blu-rays backups for XBMC, tv shows on RSS feed and FLAC audio.

As it stands I literally have less than half a TB left of space.

XBMC + sickbeard FTW!

I work for a computer company that builds media server ( crazy expensive stuff). I biggest server is a 16bay 3u 32TB

[mfarre03]

Originally Posted by shilala

With the mobo and the six core on the one psu and all the peripherals on the other, neither psu will ever even get warm.
It makes a lot more sense than a single 1000w or 1500w psu, and the price is right. It may not be a straight out of the box solution, but everything lasts longer. It's worth a little messing around and soldering.
Another thing it's good for is that there's tons of connectors. It makes wire management easier and makes a much cleaner job when it's done.
If I decide to go to xfire later, it's not a problem, either. It just leaves tons of expandability.
The only reason I haven't done it in the past is because of the lack of dual psu compatible cases on the market. The stuff that's out there now is simply awesome and never-ending. I could sure waste tons of money.

Really awesome rig Never thought to run dual PSU's, now you have me thinking, LOL. I havn't upgraded my system in a couple years and I'm getting all itchy to do it again. Love how clean your install looks, nice and well thought out. The last PSU I purchased was one that had modular connections that you could unplug from the PSU if you weren't using them. This was a great idea that only lasted until the first time I turned it on, lol. Took out the vid card and optical drives, wth. I agree with windows 7, just an awesome OS, havn't had any problems in the last few months. I'm always afraid of a new OS ending up like Millennium or Vista, lol.

[shilala]

I ordered another blue-ray burner to replace the dvd burner I had put in it. That one was just laying around, we'd used it to try to fix an old Dell.
It's been flaky since day one, so I finally just bit the bullet and ordered the right burner. It matches and it'll look a lot better, too. Now I just need to find two minutes to get it installed.
I almost bought another vga card to go xfire, but stomped that idea pretty quick.

[shilala]

I just got this pig all ironed out.
The Dominator RAM did not work with the ASUS mobo, caused me all sorts of grief. I just switched it out to Kingston stuff and the system recognizes all 16gb of RAM.

I also got a 120GB Kingston HyperX SSD. It absolutely screams. Bill(86) turned me onto it, he was right on the money.
It was a royal pita to install. The bundled Acronis bootable software didn't work at all, kept hanging time and time again. Finally I decided to clone my old primary hdd through windows with a free utility called Macrium Reflect. It was free and worked perfectly the very first time right in Windows.
I swapped out the drives and Bam!!! Problems solved.
I went from a 5.5 windows experience index to a 7.7.

Now I have to plug in all my other drives, button her up, and rock out.
That only took 10 months to finish, not bad. I got the computer done quicker than my deck. It'll be another 8 months or so before that's done.

[Bill86]

I love Acronis software, it's a bit complicated at times but it can do wonders.

Hopefully once you get it all plugged in you'll notice the immediate much faster boot times. I'd have paid the price of admission alone just for that.

[shilala]

It's snappin' like a fargin firecracker, Bill.
It's all back together, drives are reassigned, and everything works perfectly.
I can't get over how fast programs populate and how fast I can snap between webpages. It really shows just how crazy fast our internet is here. 23mbps down and 1mbps up, and it's recognized.

The biggest problem is the size of that drive. It's only 120gb. I already wish I'd have sprung for the 240. I figured I'd have no problem gutting garbage and moving folders to other drives, and I did just that.
The biggest issue? iTunes. It's a bloated redundant pig. I've really got no choice but to gut it and install it on a different drive, it's hogging up almost 60GB of the SSD and I already moved the media files off my boot drive.
I'm minutes away from fixing that issue.

[Bill86]

Oh yeah with that kinda internet speed you'll definitely be flying all the time

I hear ya. I figure I'm just holding out till prices drop and whatnot. When they are a good price I'll get a 250+ gig.

As of now though it's just much easier to throw files on a spare 1 TB+ HD.

I hate Itunes so much

[shilala]

The hell is, iTunes finally works.

[Bill86]

[backwoods357]

Scott, maybe you could create a junction point for the itunes bloat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_ju...ing_disk_space
If you move the itunes directory to the spinning disks and then create a junction in C: where it was, pointing to the new location you should be able to reclaim your space.

If you do decide to go for a larger SSD, there is a wealth of information in this recent article. http://techreport.com/articles.x/22358/1
And hey it's only 13 pages long.

You have the coolest projects.

[jluck]

Wow....this thread makes me feel really dumb. I will stick to cigars...

[mithrilG60]

Originally Posted by shilala

If you're serving media to the whole house, storing video, music, pics, etc, it takes no time at all to load up 10TB. This bluray thing makes it even worse.

This. I have a pair of 10TB media servers at home and both will soon need extra drives to expand out to 12 or 14.

[shilala]

Originally Posted by backwoods357

Scott, maybe you could create a junction point for the itunes bloat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_ju...ing_disk_space
If you move the itunes directory to the spinning disks and then create a junction in C: where it was, pointing to the new location you should be able to reclaim your space.

If you do decide to go for a larger SSD, there is a wealth of information in this recent article. http://techreport.com/articles.x/22358/1
And hey it's only 13 pages long.

You have the coolest projects.

The junction point needs to be built into the program, or I'd have to create a subroutine, from what I can see. It does present a cool workaround, but it's WAY over my head.
What I've done is saved file trees and media folders and backups to a different drive. Once I delete itunes, I can drop those folders back in the new instance of itunes on the different drive. That should solve my problem.
Even if itunes burns down, I don't care. I'll start from scratch. I really won't lose anything.

[backwoods357]

It is a feature of NTFS (the filesystem) so really you create it once (using a command in the command line or a utility to run it for you and you are done) and the program sees the data as being in it's original location but it occupies no space on that drive. If you need more info if you pm me the folder location and the path where you want to move the files to I should be able to pm you the cmd to create the junction or you can use this app: http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm
I can't personally vouch for it, I just found it in a quick google. You would need to completely close itunes first, even the crap that runs in the background. Then copy the folder to its new home and delete the contents of the origional. Right click on the app and run as admin then click create. select the original folder on the left and the new folder on the right. Should do the trick.

[shilala]

I did much like that, Jorgen. I just saved folders, reinstalled on another drive and replaced folders. It all went smoothly, zero issues, and I cleaned up 40gb or so.
I had migrated folders within itunes earlier and the new install recognized them on the new drive, so it went even smoother than I'd planned.

I'm right where I want to be, but I still have a boot issue. It's either this ASUS software running cool n quiet and overheating my cpu, or I have a short in one of my rails, or the ram is running at too low a voltage.
It likes to hang in Bios and sometimes booting Windows, but only when she's hot.
I'm building a reef water system right now, so this has got to wait. Usually a little time away puts the answer in my melon. I'll get it ironed out soon.

[Bill86]

I would just look up CPU fans and just get a really nice CPU fan for $20-$50 bucks or so.

My old fan was like 10 years old. Ridiculously huge fan. Now it sits on my router

Keeps that thing nice and cool

Just rocking the stock fan now without a problem.

[backwoods357]

Originally Posted by shilala

Usually a little time away puts the answer in my melon. I'll get it ironed out soon.

A digital power supply tester can be had for cheap: 1 2 3 They are great for diagnosing voltage problems.
If you don't need one long term, I need a digital one and would be willing to buy you out when you are done with it.
Have you run a full memtest from a boot cd? Iso or auto installer for flashdrive This happening on boot intermittently makes me think of power draw from all the HDs spinning up at once. Does it happen without the raid array?
Cool and quiet can be turned off in the bios, also what thermal paste did you use on the processor?

[Scothew]

Not sure i caught the whole itunes issue, but you can point it to where ever your media is and have it run it there, just go to preferences > advanced. it can be on other drives and such.

[shilala]

Originally Posted by backwoods357

A digital power supply tester can be had for cheap: 1 2 3 They are great for diagnosing voltage problems.
If you don't need one long term, I need a digital one and would be willing to buy you out when you are done with it.
Have you run a full memtest from a boot cd? Iso or auto installer for flashdrive This happening on boot intermittently makes me think of power draw from all the HDs spinning up at once. Does it happen without the raid array?
Cool and quiet can be turned off in the bios, also what thermal paste did you use on the processor?

No, I haven't run memtest, great idea.
This ram is supposed to run at 1.5v and I haven't been able to see what it's set at in bios, so I'm not even that far yet.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the hdd's all spinning up at once.
No, I don't think I had issues yesterday with them all unhooked, but I'm not exactly sure. I wasn't focusing on power draw, I was thinking short.
None of my hdd's are in raid. They all stand alone, I just backup one to another. They're just for media. This way I know when one pukes.
I also saw my H drive drop out twice, so I need to isolate and see which that one is and check backwards.
I'll do all that later when I have time.
It's working fine now that it's booted, and I never shut it down, so I can fight it when I have time.
I'll look at those testers, too, brother. Thank You!!!
Oh, and Arctic Silver. Not the cheap one, the expensive one.

[backwoods357]

If I ever go completely storage nuts I think I will build a rig taking a page from BackBlaze's book.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20...-more-secrets/ 135TB in a 4u server chassis.

I wouldn't go for the full 135, I would be more than happy with 24 or 32TB. A few weeks ago I actually came across one of these in a data center.
BTW that pic is one I just grabbed from their blog for illustration.