Thoughts on low-power 1.6-2TB fileserver with PCI-X...?
hi all. time to stop the lurking now i have a project ;)
i already have 1TB of storage, but it's a mess. mimsatched drive sizes, no backup, and all in my main (currently only) pc's case. although it's very quiet and not too hot, it is no longer expandable, and i'm almost out of storage space. so, time to do something systematic!
the plan thus far: get a Broadcom RAIDCore BC4852, and start with 5x400GB Hitachi 7k400 in RAID5. i already have one of those in the main box, and the card supports online expansion, so i can preserve the data and use it in the array. as i need more space i can add up to a further three 400GB drives.
case: not out quite yet, but have my eye on the Coolermaster CM810
aside from the above, i would very strongly like to minimize power consumption on the rest of the components, eg: CPU/motherboard/PSU. i would also like it to be as near to silent as possible. the only constraint i have is that the motherboard needs to support PCI-X for the Broadcom RAID card... (i believe)
i would very much welcome any thought people have on how this all might tie together! i've seen one Pentium-M board (DFI?) that had a single PCI-X slot... there are also various good quiet power supplies from quietpc.com (i have a slientmaxx 450W in my main box, it's utterly inaudible) but not sure how much power all these drives are going to need!
also, OS -- currently thinking CentOS (the red-hat enterprise linux clone), but again, thoughts very welcome!