Completed 62 TB FlexRAID Media Server

[AshleyAshes]

I've finally finished the migration from DriveBender to FlexRAID.  There's a lot of talk on this forum abuut FreeNAS (Why does no one ever talk about NAS4Free?), RAID5 or 6 and other older solutions.  Firstly, for important NAS storage, these solutions are actually great.  I'm a big fan of ZFS myself.  However for a constantly expanding hoard of pirated media files that feed my HTPCs, these are highly inflexible.  You can't easily expand the storage arrays and some solutions can go critical if the scenario isn't perfect during restoration.  FlexRAID is a snapshot parity system so using a dedicated parity drive it can reconstruct the files on any other drive.  Should there be an error, it will only fail to restore the one file with the error.  Should recovery fail (Two discs fail at once) only the data on the failed discs will be lost.  I can also add more parity drives to survive additional concurrent drive failures.  So between $80 CAD spent on a FlexRAID license and the $269 spent on an 8TB Seagate Archive drive to act as the parity drive that's about as much money as I wanted to spend protecting stolen or format shifted files.  The data is just not important enough for a better system but I don't want to have zero protection either.  An added bonus, I can add drives with files ALREADY ON THEM, and they even get merged into the FlexRAID setup, no trouble.  In addition to this, any drive in the FlexRAID setup that is not in use, will spin down as per Windows rules, so drive life can be preserved and power conserved by keeping drives not in use spun down.  Being a low usage server waiting for drives to spin up is hardly a critical impact.

 

The hardware!

 

Case: Corsair 750D with extra HDD cages installed. ($185 CAD, plus $150 CAD in cages, air flow panel and solid panel to replace the windowed panel.  Shipping and exchange really screwed me here)

Motherboard: Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 (Free!  Bought it five years ago for a college workstation, this mobo has been decommissioned and in a box for two years before being repurposed.)

CPU: Intel i5 2300 2.8ghz ($80 USD, basically the cheapest compatible CPU I could source without going dual core.  Also, in retrospect, I should have looked at the equivalent Ivy Bridge to save some more power.)

RAM: 2x4GB Corsair SMS08GX3M2A13339C 1333mhz SO-DIMM DDR3 memory.  (Free!  In a drawer since a laptop was upgraded to 16GB.  Yes, no joke, SODIMM in a DIMM board, we'll get to that later.)

Graphics: Asus Radeon HD 5450 EAH5450 SILENT/DI/1GD3‏(LP)‏  ($37 CAD on eBay!  It's overkill, but I needed video out to access the BIOS and for emergency servicing... But I get you it plays Portal 2 decently)

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 650w P2 ($99 CAD)

Extra SATA Controller: SYBA SI-PEX40064 ($34.99 CAD.  I'll just add more of these as needed) x 2

RAM Adaptor: SO-DIMM to DIMM DDR3 adaptors  ($9.54 USD)

 

The Hard Drives:

System drives:

1x256GB Samsung EVO 850 (OS)

1x500GB Seagate Momentus Thin 2.5" (Temp Downloads)

1x2TB Seagate Barracuda 2.5" (Download Holding Tank)

 

 

Storage Drives:

1x2TB Seagate Green 5900RPM drive

3x4TB Seagate Desktop HDD

3x8TB Seagate Archive HDD

3x8TB Seagate Baracuda HDD

 

Parity Drives:

1x8TB Seagate Baracuda HDD

 

Truth be told, the 500GB and 1TB drives were added because they were pulled from other machines, were in excellent condition according to SMART, and why the heck not?

 

The server does a series of tasks.  It runs my Transmission torrent client but it also automatically downloads and sorts files off UseNet for my HTPCs using SickBeard, CouchPotato and SABNZBD.  It runs MySQL for a shared database for my HTPCs.  The CPU is probably overkill because all this box really does is move files, UnRAR and process parity data but at least it's future proof?  It also undervolted very well and the whole box can idle at 45w.

 

 

This Whole Machine:

 

 

 

 

A close up of the i5 2300 under a cooler recycled from an i7 3770K and the SODIMM RAM adaptors.  Why waste money on new RAM when I can recycle old Laptop RAM?

 

 

 

Space for twelve 3.5" drives, plus whatever I can fit in the 5.25" bays and there's also four 2.5" mounts on the back of the motherboard tray!

 

 

 

I've done the math, even spinning up 9 drives concurrently at power on, I can't breach the 200w mark.  There's a lot of people who think that drives suck down tremendous power at spin up and large PSUs would be needed if staggered spin up isn't an issue but this isn't true.  I could put 20-30 drives on this 650w PSU without issue.  I went with the SuperNova P2 for reliability and efficiency.

 

 

 

This GPU mostly does nothing but wow does it ever have one pretty heat sink.  I obviously went with passive since it keeps it quiet and it's not a high TDP GPU at all.

 

 

 

Yes, I'm sorry, when used all six SATA ports on the motherboard I didn't buy a super expensive RAID controller.  I got the cheapest PCIE 1x controller with 4 ports on it.  I'm spinning mechanical drives and serving a 1GBPS network, why would I spend money on something better?  I don't need better, anything 'better' would offer no real world performance enhancement for my use case but it'd cost me more money.

[dalekphalm]

Awesome, well done!

 

I've been using FlexRAID for like... I dunno, got to be 3-4 years now. I gotta say, I've always been pretty happy with it.

 

*grumbles about having a smaller server - only 12TB*

[leadeater]

Nice, really like the use only what you actually need design and reuse what you can (SO-DIMM ). 

[AshleyAshes]

16 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Nice, really like the use only what you actually need design and reuse what you can (SO-DIMM ). 

Junkyard wars is a good template that older hardware can still perform a lot of work for someone.  So I see nothing wrong with older parts, assuming they fit your need.  Obviously some parts have issues, like high TDPs compared to something new, though the i5 2300 is really not that bad and it undervolted really, REALLY well.  If I was building something new, sure I'd go with some kind of i3 or Pentium and just focus on a mobo with enough PCIE Slots and/or SATA ports but since I was going used, overkill on the 2300 wasn't bad and it should be able to do this job for 10+ years.  I don't see SATA going obsolete for large storage drives any time soon and even if it does, there will be PCIE Controllers for whatever replaces it.

 

A lot of what you see on this forum is people getting caught up in being 'Spec Nerds', where they want everything to be the fastest, most blazing, high spec setup they can assemble and to fail in this is to assemble a pile of garbage.  But use case and budgets should always be considered.  And frankly, this is a media server, even if 10gbit home networks became the norm, this thing would rarely ever saturate that.  Media files are played back in real time and don't even need 100mbit for playback.  (54mbps is the max total bitrate of a Blu-Ray disc even).  And don't get me started on how so many people talk about 'Bottlenecking' like it's some kind of 'PC Cancer' when what it means in most cases is 'if you spent $200-$500 on a new CPU and/or motherboard, you might get 5-10 more FPS out of that GPU!)

[leadeater]

24 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

A lot of what you see on this forum is people getting caught up in being 'Spec Nerds'

Somebody called, I'm here .

 

But more seriously yea, people often don't realize just how low demanding a basic file server is. None of the gaming/workstation computer building advice and experience applies to these workloads and there is a reason off the shelf NAS's use Atom/APU/Pentium processors and not i3/i5/i7/FX.

 

For a very long time I never had a computer with a single new part in it. From a Cyrix to Pentium Pro, Pentium 4, AMD FX-57, E7300 CPU's and Matrox G200 to MX440, ATI 9600, FX 5700, X800GTO to AMD 4850 GPU's everything was second hand and pieced together through hard work and long searching for good deals and not once could I not play a game I wanted.

 

My first new computer was built with money I got as a graduation prize from university and since then I have been fortunate enough to have a well paying job to feed my tech hunger but you learn so much more about hardware and computers doing the hard work than compared to buying new, computers are colour coded lego now days. I am a self confessed over spender now but I do it at reasonable time frames, I'm still running X79 and dual 290X's.

[AshleyAshes]

16 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Somebody called, I'm here .

 

But more seriously yea, people often don't realize just how low demanding a basic file server is. None of the gaming/workstation computer building advice and experience applies to these workloads and there is a reason off the shelf NAS's use Atom/APU/Pentium processors and not i3/i5/i7/FX.

 

For a very long time I never had a computer with a single new part in it. From a Cyrix to Pentium Pro, Pentium 4, AMD FX-57, E7300 CPU's and Matrox G200 to MX440, ATI 9600, FX 5700, X800GTO to AMD 4850 GPU's everything was second hand and pieced together through hard work and long searching for good deals and not once could I not play a game I wanted.

 

My first new computer was built with money I got as a graduation prize from university and since then I have been fortunate enough to have a well paying job to feed my tech hunger but you learn so much more about hardware and computers doing the hard work than compared to buying new, computers are colour coded lego now days. I am a self confessed over spender now but I do it at reasonable time frames, I'm still running X79 and dual 290X's.

I hear you on the X79.   A friend let me use their Intel Retail Edge account to get a 4930K and I built a system around it at Christmas 2013, it's still GREAT.  It'll be three years old this Christmas and while I've upgraded the GPU, I see it easily doing another 2 years before I need to seriously consider a new workstation.

 

Though on the server, one thing I don't regret going all out on is the Corsair 750D.  It just makes working with a system with lots of drives SO MUCH EASIER.  I previously used a super cheap 'Senty' brand case which was 'fine' when I only had a couple of 2TB drives but as the thing grew, it became a knot of wires and efforts to fit in more drives.  A huge EATX Case like the 750D was a smart purchase for it's size and ease of use.  Not to mention with the EATX form factor, I could be using it for 10-20 years for who knows what arrangements, so even at $200 CAD or so it's a smart, long term purchase.

[KuJoe]

Personally the CPU is a little overpowered for my taste but if it's a compatibility thing then I won't knock it.  25+ TB is nice but if I had that kind of storage I would be doing 10Gbps network ports to better utilize the storage (boot from SAN anyone? )  and eliminate the local storage in the rest of my devices.

 

All of my horrible criticism aside, looks good. How loud is that thing with all of the spinning drives? I haven't had 3.5" hard drives in a long time so I can't remember what they sound like but my SSDs can be annoying with their dang whining.

[AshleyAshes]

3 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Personally the CPU is a little overpowered for my taste but if it's a compatibility thing then I won't knock it.  25+ TB is nice but if I had that kind of storage I would be doing 10Gbps network ports to better utilize the storage (boot from SAN anyone? )  and eliminate the local storage in the rest of my devices.

 

All of my horrible criticism aside, looks good. How loud is that thing with all of the spinning drives? I haven't had 3.5" hard drives in a long time so I can't remember what they sound like but my SSDs can be annoying with their dang whining.

 

It's not loud at all.  HDDs aren't terribly loud and I find the loudest noise is the faint 'ticking' noise they make with the read/write head is engaged.  Being a media server, it's not too much reading and writing and if it is, it means I'm watching TV and any sound is easily drowned out by the TV.  It sits in a corner of my bedroom and I have no issues with it.  (Living room, which already hosts a workstation, HTPC, displays, and an air conditioner was a LITTLE close to it's limit for the 15amp circuit. But the bedroom is a separate circuit)  I would have to turn off everything in my room to hear it, it's 140mm fans are probably louder.  Being a big case though, the fans don't even have to run fast, there's lots of space to move air through and to keep it cool.  (Not that it runs hot at all)  On top of that, any drive not in use by the FlexRAID array spins down after 30mins when not in use.  (So if I'm playing am movie, it's being read off only one of the seven storage drives in the pool, the other six will spin down because they are idle)

 

I've heard people report that HDDs are loud and I wonder if it's particular to the models they're using or drives not quite working to spec.  Most times if I had a HDD in my dock on my desk, I have to put my hand against the drive to feel for vibration so I can tell if it's spun down and safe for removal or not.  

[leadeater]

23 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I've heard people report that HDDs are loud and I wonder if it's particular to the models they're using or drives not quite working to spec.  Most times if I had a HDD in my dock on my desk, I have to put my hand against the drive to feel for vibration so I can tell if it's spun down and safe for removal or not.  

The noisier HDD's are the true 7200RPM ones like the WD Blacks, but even those are nothing compared to the WD velociraptors at 10K RPM or the 15K RPM SCSI&SAS disks I have used. I used to have a tray of 14 3.5" 72GB SCSI disks in my room, that is loud lol.

 

Edit: Also rocking the 4930k, great CPU.

[b1uew01f]

I need to look into flexraid, this sounds like the best storage redundancy approach for personal media.

 

 

[AshleyAshes]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

The noisier HDD's are the true 7200RPM ones like the WD Blacks, but even those are nothing compared to the WD velociraptors at 10K RPM or the 15K RPM SCSI&SAS disks I have used. I used to have a tray of 14 3.5" 72GB SCSI disks in my room, that is loud lol.

 

Yeah, I can def say that 10K drives are not something I've dealt with in the home.  Right now what I'm loving is these 8TB 'Archive' drives from Seagate.  They certainly aren't the fastest and are garbage for RAID5 but they're apparently pretty good for 'just files' or object storage, they fit my use case pretty well.  Certainly not something I'd suggest for a SoHo NAS or anything larger unless there was a 'Write occasionally and only read after that' use case.  For media though, they are large, they don't break the bank, and that much storage in one 3.5" drive conserves space and power in the server compared to say a pair of 4TB drives.

 

6 hours ago, b1uew01f said:

I need to look into flexraid, this sounds like the best storage redundancy approach for personal media.

I've only used it for a week but I'm pretty happy.  Before I was using DriveBender but that software only pooled drives, it offered no parity or redundancy so it was only 'half' the features you see in FlexRAID, though FlexRAID cost more.

[Mikensan]

Without a stripe array you definitely won't be saturating 10gbps so your build fits your solution perfectly. If everything was ideal you might just come shy of saturating the 1gbps while transferring a file but that's about it.

 

I recommend NAS4free when people don't want to buy ECC ram to use with FreeNAS. Because it supports UFS with most of its features NAS4Free can be a better choice. FreeNAS (not sure if it still does) lets you use UFS, but you lose almost every worthwhile feature it offers.

 

Just a note to anyone wanting to do what OP has done - assuming there's no backup (at least none mentioned) then this solution minimizes what he has to re-download in a catastrophic failure. No family photos lost, just movies. So if you go this route and have irreplaceable data, budget a backup solution (even if a single external drive). Even if only losing a single disk, that could be pictures you'll never get back. I know a lot of you want to save money and think this is a way to.. and it is, but please consider backups.

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, Mikensan said:

If everything was ideal you might just come shy of saturating the 1gbps while transferring a file but that's about it.

To be clear, mechanical drives have no trouble going beyond the 125MB/s of a 1gbit internet connection.  My drives read and write speeds range from 140MB/s to upwards to 180mbps.  They don't come 'just shy' of saturation, they manage it quite well.  The FlexRAID array in benchmarks on a mounted network shares has no issue showing that the network connection is the bottleneck either.

[Mikensan]

16 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

To be clear, mechanical drives have no trouble going beyond the 125MB/s of a 1gbit internet connection.  My drives read and write speeds range from 140MB/s to upwards to 180mbps.  They don't come 'just shy' of saturation, they manage it quite well.  The FlexRAID array in benchmarks on a mounted network shares has no issue showing that the network connection is the bottleneck either.

Transferring an uncompressed single large file I'm inclined to believe there are a few drives capable of going over 1gbps. Throw in parity calculation, weird memory configuration, and using cheap sata card - I think it's fair to say your solution would just come shy. My 7 year old WD black averages 110 in either direction (going to/from a SSD).

 

Not saying it's not possible but I've never seen a drive hit 180mbytes/ps. I've seen those numbers written on the box, just never actually witnessed it. 

 

But to make sure we're talking about the same thing - are you in a striped array or talking about a single disk achieving over 125? 

[dalekphalm]

33 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Transferring an uncompressed single large file I'm inclined to believe there are a few drives capable of going over 1gbps. Throw in parity calculation, weird memory configuration, and using cheap sata card - I think it's fair to say his solution would just come shy. My 7 year old WD black averages 110 in either direction (going to/from a SSD).

 

Not saying it's not possible but I've never seen a drive hit 180mbytes/ps. I've seen those numbers written on the box, just never actually witnessed it. 

 

But to make sure we're talking about the same thing - are you in a striped array or talking about a single disk achieving over 125? 

Depending on your configuration, FlexRAID doesn't do the parity calculations in real time.

 

You have the option for real time parity calculations, or scheduled "Snapshot" RAID, which does the parity calculations on a scheduled basis.

 

If you're using Snapshot RAID mode w/ FlexRAID, then your HDD read and write speeds are exactly what they would be with just a standard single HDD.

 

And you don't need to hit 180MB/s - you just need to hit 125MB/s.

 

I'm assuming you're not very familiar with FlexRAID or how it works?

[AshleyAshes]

36 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Transferring an uncompressed single large file I'm inclined to believe there are a few drives capable of going over 1gbps. Throw in parity calculation, weird memory configuration, and using cheap sata card - I think it's fair to say his solution would just come shy. My 7 year old WD black averages 110 in either direction (going to/from a SSD).

 

Not saying it's not possible but I've never seen a drive hit 180mbytes/ps. I've seen those numbers written on the box, just never actually witnessed it. 

 

But to make sure we're talking about the same thing - are you in a striped array or talking about a single disk achieving over 125? 

Why do you think that it calculates parity when reading files?  And how is my memory configuration 'weird'?  SODIMM ad DIMM memory is electrically identical, I'm just using passive pinout adaptors.  Its just bog standard DDR3 memory.

 

 

But if you've never even seen a mech drive exceed 110mb/s, I'm just going to chock this up to you having little to no experience and talking out your ass.  

[Mikensan]

3 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Why do you think that it calculates parity when reading files?  And how is my memory configuration 'weird'?  SODIMM ad DIMM memory is electrically identical, I'm just using passive pinout adaptors.  Its just bog standard DDR3 memory.

 

 

But if you've never even seen a mech drive exceed 110mb/s, I'm just going to chock this up to you having little to no experience and talking out your ass.  

@dalekphalm you're correct, no experience with FlexRAID. I did not know that parity could be delayed, pretty interesting. 

 

@AshleyAshes I'm not cussing at your or attempting to demean you by any means, so I'm not sure where your hostility comes from. I'm just argumentative. Your memory configuration is weird, I believe in a previous post you yourself referred to it as "janky". I personally don't know the limitations of SODIMM so that was an assumption based off your comment. Sorry?

 

I personally don't own any new generation performance mechanical drives, so I've never witnessed such speeds. My WD Black is from 2009/2010 and best I've gotten out of it is 110-120/mbps so 180 seemed crazy to me. Last disks I bought were immediately put into an array, never tested them individually. I guess my knowledge is limited to tests of older mechanical disks (and what I personally bought) since I've been buying SSDs when I need performance. Never imagined people are getting upwards of 180mbps, very impressive to me honestly.

 

Sorry to derail your thread on discussing my lack of knowledge and assumptions. Even though you reply seems to try to insult me, I found I got something out of it. I don't want to be the reason somebody locks the thread so I just admit I'm wrong. I still think it's a pretty cool build, kudos.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Mikensan said:

@dalekphalm

@AshleyAshes I'm not cussing at your or attempting to demean you by any means, so I'm not sure where your hostility comes from. I'm just argumentative. Your memory configuration is weird, I believe in a previous post you yourself referred to it as "janky". I personally don't know the limitations of SODIMM so that was an assumption based off your comment. Sorry?

Sodimms and Simms are electrically identical, sodimms just use a smaller form factor and redundant pins are removed to reduce pinout.  Since only redundant pins are removed, performance remains identical.

[AshleyAshes]

Minor hardware update and FlexRAID expansion experience!

 

 

We're up to 33.5TB or 30.4TiB!   An 8TB external HDD from Seagate went on sale for $199 CAD, I shucked it and added it.  I'm mainly updating to underline my experiences with expanding the FlexRAID setup for an additional drive.  From a software end it went pretty straight forward.  I mounted the drive in Windows, spun down the FlexRAID pool, had it add the drive and spun it back up.  But there is a downside: With an additional HDD to manage it now had to rerun all the parity data.  On about 23TB of files it took about 2.5days to manage it all.  The good thing is, the drives were fully ready for read and write while parity was being generated.  So while the files were temporarily unprotected, they were fully accessible by my HTPCs and other software.

 

[AshleyAshes]

Just some pic updates as I've made some changes.

 

It's up to 11 drives as a repurposed 2TB Seagate Green was added today.  So we're now up to 35.5TB of storage.   With 11 drives the main bays are nearly all used but there's still the 5.25" drives that I can use. Also the smaller drives like the 500GB and 1TB drive could be easily replaced with 8TB drives later.  I am starting to run out of SATA power plugs on the PSU, but I can use splitters or get after market cables, as that many drives is no problem for the PSU itself.  I also had to add in another SYBA SI-PEX40064 which I actually got cheap on Black Friday and just kept in a box until today.  Finally, I upgraded from 8GB to 10GB of RAM basically only because I had a 2GB stick laying around and where else was I going to put it?  I'm sure someone will decry my loss of dual channel operation.

 

The whole thing.  Not regretting buying case or buying the two extra drive cages.   I could fit 3-4 more drives in the 5.25" bays depending on what I install there and there's still room for four 2.5" drives along the back side.

 

 

 

It's nice to see that toe SODIMM adaptors play nice with other DIMMs and don't obstruct the other slots.

 

 

Somewhere out there, someone is clutching their LSI cards and crying while they look at my SYBA SI-PEX40064's.

[AshleyAshes]

So the old 2TB drive I added is now lighting up SMART errors.  It's still working and I've lost nothing but I have an 8TB drive here now that I'll replace it.

 

So while I'm in the process of migrating the data from the 2TB drive to the 8TB, the question is if I should also merge the 500GB drive into the 8TB drive at the same time.  Having a 500GB drive in there is, frankly, kind of inefficient, it's using as much power as the 8TB drives for 1/6th of the storage.  In fact, even the 1TB drive kinda beckons the same question.  Anyone have any opinions?  I could basically merge a 2TB, 1TB and 500GB drive into a single drive and still increase the array's storage by 5.5TB.

[dalekphalm]

35 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

So the old 2TB drive I added is now lighting up SMART errors.  It's still working and I've lost nothing but I have an 8TB drive here now that I'll replace it.

 

So while I'm in the process of migrating the data from the 2TB drive to the 8TB, the question is if I should also merge the 500GB drive into the 8TB drive at the same time.  Having a 500GB drive in there is, frankly, kind of inefficient, it's using as much power as the 8TB drives for 1/6th of the storage.  In fact, even the 1TB drive kinda beckons the same question.  Anyone have any opinions?  I could basically merge a 2TB, 1TB and 500GB drive into a single drive and still increase the array's storage by 5.5TB.

If you’re not close to running out of storage, I’d recommend consolidating as many of the smaller drives as possible into that replacement 8TB drive. 

 

How big is your PPU? Also 8TB?

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

If you’re not close to running out of storage, I’d recommend consolidating as many of the smaller drives as possible into that replacement 8TB drive. 

 

How big is your PPU? Also 8TB?

Yeah, my PPU is an 8TB so 8TB drive are the largest DRU I can add.  I guess I'll eventually get something larger than 8TB and I'll just get two, like say I'd buy a new 12TB PPU plus a 12TB DRU, then the old 8TB PPU becomes a DRU as well.  But since 8TB is well in the 'sweet spot' of cost/storage ratio still, 8TB is where I'll remain for now.

 

Also, WOW, I just opened up this 8TB Seagate external I bought (It's cheaper to shuck externals than to buy OEM drives) and while all the previous ones contained 8TB Seagate Archives, this one actually contains an 8TB Baracuda Pro, 7200rpm, ST8000DM004.    This drive is no cheaper than $365 CAD or so, often higher than $400.  I paid $229 for the external drive version on Amazon.  o____o

[dalekphalm]

53 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Yeah, my PPU is an 8TB so 8TB drive are the largest DRU I can add.  I guess I'll eventually get something larger than 8TB and I'll just get two, like say I'd buy a new 12TB PPU plus a 12TB DRU, then the old 8TB PPU becomes a DRU as well.  But since 8TB is well in the 'sweet spot' of cost/storage ratio still, 8TB is where I'll remain for now.

 

Also, WOW, I just opened up this 8TB Seagate external I bought (It's cheaper to shuck externals than to buy OEM drives) and while all the previous ones contained 8TB Seagate Archives, this one actually contains an 8TB Baracuda Pro, 7200rpm, ST8000DM004.    This drive is no cheaper than $365 CAD or so, often higher than $400.  I paid $229 for the external drive version on Amazon.  o____o

Yeah you can get some crazy deals buying external drives. 

 

Back around 2010 or so, I picked up a 1TB WD Elite drive for $20 and a 2TB Seagate drive for $30 - both external. They were clearance deals at Staples when I used to work there. 

[Salacious B Crum]

Dig the reuse of the ram didn't know they had such an option to install them and I too bought the elcheapo sata card why not it only uses the x1 slot so still have options with the rest of the x4 x8 x16 slots I'm am using unRAID though but happy so far, nice build!