First plex already made mistakes

[Stinksatthis]

Going to be building my first plex. I ordered 5 8tb drives, but forgot to check if the are sata, so 5 sas drives, so ok going to use them, make lemonade and all that, how would I attach them to an old pc (4 years old), I looked at raid cards though most are vague on of the support sas, how fast should I be looking at for a plex (8 gig pope to much?) Is there a better way of make a raid setup? Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[johnt]

Look for an LSI 9300-16i HBA. They are much easier to identify and purchase reliably. The 9300-8i is way too common with way too many manufacturers. And then you purchase mini SAS to SAS adapters to connect the HBA to the drives. I'll provide a link that connects to the 16i.

 

Depending on the drives, your PSU might not be able to power them if the drives have power disable "features." You will have to pull the 3v cord out of your PSU wires to make the drives spin. If you provide the make and models, we can provide more assistance (make and model of the 8TB drives and the PSU).

 

Adapter:

https://www.amazon.com/AdcAudx-Mini-SAS-Cable-Connector/dp/B09ZLGHZ5S

[Electronics Wizardy]

28 minutes ago, Stinksatthis said:

(8 gig pope to much?) Is there a better way of make a raid setup? Thanks in advance for any help!

 

Where are you seeing 8 gig? Generally HDDs are pretty slow, so any semi recent HBA/RAID card would be more than enough to take full advantage of your drive.

 

Do you want software/hardware RAID? Thats the big factor if you should get a HBA/RAID card.

[Stinksatthis]

17 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Where are you seeing 8 gig? Generally HDDs are pretty slow, so any semi recent HBA/RAID card would be more than enough to take full advantage of your drive.

 

Do you want software/hardware RAID? Thats the big factor if you should get a HBA/RAID card.

The 8 gig was from the interface pci 2.0 I think may be 3.0, I would like to make plex streaming as smooth as possible, which would be better software or hardware, and if hardware, what kind of raid card would you recommend, I read a few reviews on raid cards, they say they are compatible with sas, but then don't talk about them in the rest of the article

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, Stinksatthis said:

The 8 gig was from the interface pci 2.0 I think may be 3.0, I would like to make plex streaming as smooth as possible, which would be better software or hardware, and if hardware, what kind of raid card would you recommend, I read a few reviews on raid cards, they say they are compatible with sas, but then don't talk about them in the rest of the article

What software are you using?  Many NAS oses are built around software raid, so you really want to use a HBA.

 

Whats the rest of the hardware?

 

The PCIe speed won't matter, any of those x8 slots is way faster than your drives.

 

 

[Stinksatthis]

5 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What software are you using?  Many NAS oses are built around software raid, so you really want to use a HBA.

 

Whats the rest of the hardware?

 

The PCIe speed won't matter, any of those x8 slots is way faster than your drives.

 

 

Using a i5 9th gen, 16 gig of ram ddr4 i think, gtx 1070 512 m.2 for boot drive (not sure if I can use it for page file on a raid system), for software I'm honestly not sure, something easy to use, most likely I will wait for that new NAS software linus was talking about (think he invested in it) it sound like it will remove most of the hard parts of making a plex (sorry can remember it's name)

[Stinksatthis]

23 hours ago, johnt said:

Look for an LSI 9300-16i HBA. They are much easier to identify and purchase reliably. The 9300-8i is way too common with way too many manufacturers. And then you purchase mini SAS to SAS adapters to connect the HBA to the drives. I'll provide a link that connects to the 16i.

 

Depending on the drives, your PSU might not be able to power them if the drives have power disable "features." You will have to pull the 3v cord out of your PSU wires to make the drives spin. If you provide the make and models, we can provide more assistance (make and model of the 8TB drives and the PSU).

 

Adapter:

https://www.amazon.com/AdcAudx-Mini-SAS-Cable-Connector/dp/B09ZLGHZ5S

Looks good, so just put sata power cable into the back of the adapter and plug in the drives with the otherside then pull in the other end into the card? 

[Dedayog]

On 9/9/2024 at 11:09 PM, Stinksatthis said:

Going to be building my first plex. I ordered 5 8tb drives, but forgot to check if the are sata, so 5 sas drives, so ok going to use them, make lemonade and all that, how would I attach them to an old pc (4 years old), I looked at raid cards though most are vague on of the support sas, how fast should I be looking at for a plex (8 gig pope to much?) Is there a better way of make a raid setup? Thanks in advance for any help!

 

I am at 2.44GB used out of 4GB (I use 2x4GB drives for simple mirroring, as movies/TV shows aren't serious data for me) for 578 Movies (720/1080p) and over 1000 TV Show episodes.

 

Realistically, how much media are you looking to put on this Plex?  Ripping takes time to do, and downloading can eat your ISP limits and still takes time.

 

I usually grab things someone in my house wants to see that I can't get on Netflix/Amazon/etc.  

 

It's fun at first, but it can be a time sink if you want to get ALL those Star Trek episodes for EVERY damn series.

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

37 minutes ago, Stinksatthis said:

(not sure if I can use it for page file on a raid system),

Sure you can, raid doesn't affect what drives you can use for a page file/swap drive.

 

37 minutes ago, Stinksatthis said:

y I will wait for that new NAS software linus was talking about (think he invested in it) it sound like it will remove most of the hard parts of making a plex (sorry can remember it's name)

Thats basically TrueNAS, so ZFS and you want a HBA for that. I'd get the HBA here then.

 

 

[johnt]

49 minutes ago, Stinksatthis said:

Looks good, so just put sata power cable into the back of the adapter and plug in the drives with the otherside then pull in the other end into the card? 

Yes, it is that easy. But it does depend on the drives you purchased. If they have power disable, then you will have to figure out how to disable the 3v wire coming from your power supply.

 

SAS drives are meant for data centers, and pushing a 3v signal to a newer drive actually prevents the drive from spinning. They do this to lower the power surge when they turn on a server. They start the main components, and then turn off the 3v signal, at which point the drives begin to spin and operate normally. It is totally backwards, but that's how it operates to balance the power load. I purchased a data center grade SATA drive and I had to separately purchase a pin extraction tool to remove the 3v pin from the PSU connector. Luckily I am using a modular PSU in my server/nas, and so I was able to do this. I can just plug it back in and use it again if necessary in the future. It just dangles in the case. I'm not sure to what extent you will need to do this. The extraction tool was like $10. I can send you a link if you need it. The major problem is if you are using a non-modular cable for your SATA power, then you may have to completely snip the 3v wire at the connector. It's not that difficult if you are electrically inclined. See the photo.

 

And to address another point that was discussed........ I'm not sure why hardware RAID was mentioned. It is nearly dead for consumer uses and it is another component that can go bad and destroy your pool and/or data. An HBA with software RAID is the way to go. If the HBA fails, you just replace it and reconnect your drives to the new one, and the software should do the rest to get your pool running again.

[Stinksatthis]

22 hours ago, Dedayog said:

I am at 2.44GB used out of 4GB (I use 2x4GB drives for simple mirroring, as movies/TV shows aren't serious data for me) for 578 Movies (720/1080p) and over 1000 TV Show episodes.

 

Realistically, how much media are you looking to put on this Plex?  Ripping takes time to do, and downloading can eat your ISP limits and still takes time.

 

I usually grab things someone in my house wants to see that I can't get on Netflix/Amazon/etc.  

 

It's fun at first, but it can be a time sink if you want to get ALL those Star Trek episodes for EVERY damn series.

 

 

I worked at a movie store for 16 years, I have way way to many blurays and dvds, mostly will be only streaming to 1 or 2 devices, over wifi 6, and cat 5

[Stinksatthis]

22 hours ago, johnt said:

Yes, it is that easy. But it does depend on the drives you purchased. If they have power disable, then you will have to figure out how to disable the 3v wire coming from your power supply.

 

SAS drives are meant for data centers, and pushing a 3v signal to a newer drive actually prevents the drive from spinning. They do this to lower the power surge when they turn on a server. They start the main components, and then turn off the 3v signal, at which point the drives begin to spin and operate normally. It is totally backwards, but that's how it operates to balance the power load. I purchased a data center grade SATA drive and I had to separately purchase a pin extraction tool to remove the 3v pin from the PSU connector. Luckily I am using a modular PSU in my server/nas, and so I was able to do this. I can just plug it back in and use it again if necessary in the future. It just dangles in the case. I'm not sure to what extent you will need to do this. The extraction tool was like $10. I can send you a link if you need it. The major problem is if you are using a non-modular cable for your SATA power, then you may have to completely snip the 3v wire at the connector. It's not that difficult if you are electrically inclined. See the photo.

 

And to address another point that was discussed........ I'm not sure why hardware RAID was mentioned. It is nearly dead for consumer uses and it is another component that can go bad and destroy your pool and/or data. An HBA with software RAID is the way to go. If the HBA fails, you just replace it and reconnect your drives to the new one, and the software should do the rest to get your pool running again.

Many many thanks, especially about the power being disabled, probably save me a month of trouble shooting