servers and sata drives?

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richms

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#82739 5-May-2011 01:00

You know all those HP and DELL servers you see come up ex lease for a couple of hundred which are 2u and have a bunch of hot swap bays on the front, I am wondering if I was to get one of those if you can just whack a heap of 2TB drives in them or if they are something else on them.

I know that really old servers were scsi so its not going to happen, but I thought that sata and sas were interchangable but with different performance on them.

Basically I need to get all my file storage and torrenting off my desktop machine as it seems that is what brings it to its knees after a few days of being running, and one of those looks like a nice way to get the drives in something that I can put away somewhere and share on the network - assuming they will fit and work.

I am meaning things like this one which I picked at random off trademe - http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Servers/Servers/auction-373267568.htm but there are others that have the drives vertical and take more.

Richard rich.ms

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#465538 5-May-2011 01:52

TBH that server is likely the old school SCSI but I may be wrong.

Yes there is no problem with using SATA drives in SAS ports. If there are things like double channel for redundant host bus adapters you won't be able to take advantage of those but otherwise no problems. Try and get a server that has a built in RAID card like a PERC as that will give you better performance in most cases.

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richms

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#465540 5-May-2011 02:05

Is there a good resource for finding out if they are sas or vintage scsi? I have the drives setup in mirrored pairs which I cant really afford to go converting to raid 5 at the moment with all the spares I would need to hold things temporarily.

Not really too concerned about performance, as its just going to have a single machine either moving completed torrents onto it or else playing it, and probably not even at the same time.

Its just those ex lease oldies cost less than another sata bay thing virtually so I thought I would be able to do it cheap.

Richard rich.ms

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#465546 5-May-2011 06:33

Be aware that servers are not built for quietness. Generally in a home situation you are going to KNOW that it is running! Also even the newer so called green servers will still use a lot more power then their consumer counterparts (something has to run all those fans).

As for finding out if is uses SCSI or SAS generally you can find that out from the manufacturers web site.

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#465590 5-May-2011 09:02

Nety: Be aware that servers are not built for quietness. Generally in a home situation you are going to KNOW that it is running! Also even the newer so called green servers will still use a lot more power then their consumer counterparts (something has to run all those fans).

I agree with Nety. I don't know of course what sort of capacity you're talking but have you considered a NAS of some sort. Either one that will take your existing drives, or start from scratch. A lot of them come with torrent clients or can be easily modded to run them. It'd make a difference to your powerbill too.

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richms

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#465871 5-May-2011 18:06

Have had a bad run with NAS's in the past.

Also I need to be able to do permission on them, which it seems none of the cheap ones offer. Ideally I want it to support a domain server to auth against.

Richard rich.ms

blakamin

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#465923 5-May-2011 19:20

Have a look at www.graysonline.co.nz
Heaps of recent ex-lease gear on there everyday