How do people connect a LOT of hdd's to one m-itx motherboard?

[NotGonnaGetWhoooshed]

I have built a lot of gaming PCs and have a lot of experience with it. One thing I don't have experience with is servers. I decided I would create my own home server with 40 terabytes. I have seen linus build servers with a lot more than 40 terabytes however he never really showed the process so don't know how to do it.

Thanks in advance

[GrockleTD]

Just now, NotGonnaGetWhoooshed said:

I have built a lot of gaming PCs and have a lot of experience with it. One thing I don't have experience with is servers. I decided I would create my own home server with 40 terabytes. I have seen linus build servers with a lot more than 40 terabytes however he never really showed the process so don't know how to do it.

Thanks in advance

I mean, other than the times he has shown how...

[Windows7ge]

First you have to chose do you want to use:

 

1) Hardware RAID

2) Software RAID

3) Both

4) None

 

If you want Hardware RAID you'd need to pick an PCI_e RAID card with enough ports to create your array

If you want Software RAID (dependent on File System) you would want to look for an HBA (Host Bus Adapter)

If you want a combination of both (dependent on File System) you would want RAID controllers and something to RAID those together

If you want none you would want HBAs (Host Bus Adapter)

[mariushm]

40 TB is not a lot.

 

4..5 x 10 TB drives will be enough to achieve this, which means just the 4-6 SATA ports on a regular motherboard would be enough.

 

If you want a better price per GB, you'd probably want to go with 6 TB drives, in which case you may want to go with 8 x 6 TB = 48 TB of disk space.

A 30$ HBA adapter card with 8 SATA ports would be enough to connect the 8 drives to a single controller.

 

You can use solutions like unRaid to connect all 8 drives without resorting to hardware or software RAID, which could cause problems if you have a hardware failure. Such software solutions can also give you the option to use the free disk space to have backups of your files, or to use a part of each drive as recovery data for other drives so if a drive fails, data from it can be recovered from the other drives.

[Senzelian]

Most ITX boards support up to 4 or 5 SATA devices.

 

If you're going to use a graphics card, you won't be able to use the PCI-e slot to inrease the amount of SATA ports. If you're not using it for the graphis card, you can get an adapter to connect even more SATA drives.

 

Another method are external USB drive enclosures.

[Enderman]

Just by 8-12TB drives and you'll only need a couple of them.

If you need mroe use a PCIe storage controller/expansion card.