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Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

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  • Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

    hello i want to build a computer a big computer, when i say big i mean big >< ive seen ppl put "clusters" of mini computers togethere and call htem a super computer but i think windows cant use that. so i was thinking about making a semi super computer :P i want to have atleast 1tb hardrive so i will star with that i will like the computer to end up in an "cabinet" or tower not sure what you guys call it. as you can see i dont konw what im doing. i made my own computer but i dont konw wnough to make it as good as i want. . so why did i post in this forum? well i want to start with hte hardrives i was thinking baout building a big metal box with with a old motherboard that has a 500 hz celeron cpu. i was going to buy the cards that alow yo uto conect hardrives to them the pci ones. i cna buy 4 of those i cna put 2 hardrives in each so is 8 in totals plus the 4 the computer allows by default and one flopy disk for updates and stuff. so thats 12 hadrives in total i 250 gb each. i will also need a 800 wats pws? and a fan for each hadrive. hten this computer will be conected some how? ( this is where yo uugys come in ) with out bloking te internet in main computer. so can this be done? is this what RAID means? or ATA or somting like that? is there a beter way to get a 1TB? another thin hardrives die and i neeed to keep my data save, dvd are cool but i have to many i lose them i scrathc them i forget to put the names is plain hell but i dont want my hadrives diying on me when i have 250 gigs of data in them. i collect anime and im looking for a safe way to store it. maybe in caset i hear those are safe and hold 60 gigs! i only need wirte once stuff that is safe. can you guys help me?o yea and i cant spend more than 2 dollars per gig well if is very safe i can go up to 5 but not more. ( maybe i can make a box where i store 500 dvds liek a 5 dvd changer but with 500, i will just wirte a list i nmy pc or somting ) any wya cna som eon egive me an idea? i only have like 200 gigs of anime atm but once my computer is on or atleast my super storage device il get 500 ggis more. thanks in advance and sorry if m yidea are plain stupid lol im learning i love this ><!

  • #2
    Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

    Your post is so poorly-written that I stopped about half-way through. I think I have an okay idea of what you'll need.

    You're going to want a dual socket 940 motherboard, meaning you can fit one or two AMD Opterons or one socket 940 Athlon 64 on the board (or you could just get asingle socket 940 baord if you don't need lots of CPU power). You are going to want one with several PCI-X slots. In those PCI-X slots you will place either SCSI/RAID or SATA/RAID controller cards, SCSI allowing for faster drives, SATA being cheaper and having cheaper drives. These will allow you to use several hard drives in a RAID array. Read more about RAID here. RAID 5 would probably be the best idea for you. I'd suggest SATA controller cards with 200GB drives.

    For a much cheaper, but much slower and much less reliable method, you can simply use regular PCI IDE/RAID controller cards in a board without PCI-X slots (your average desktop board). This doesn't need to use expensive hardware other than the controller cards and drives themselves. It makes sense if I misunderstood your post (which wouldn't be hard) and you just want storage, not a computer with lots of processing power.

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    • #3
      Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

      dint knew my english sucked so much !!!


      yea i just want safe reliable storage, dvds i lose scratch break. hardrives die on me once in 2 year or so and there is no way to get data back when they die. any other idea? i dont want pc i have one made i need storage only

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

        Than just grab some IDE/RAID controllers and a bucnh of big IDE drives and put the in a RAID array, RAID 5 being a good choice for reilability and storage capacity.

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        • #5
          Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

          thanks alot but konw i saw the link you gave me i just see some pictures... lets sya the circles are hardrives, what are the cables? will they auto back up? what program should i buy? hwat tower/case do yo urecomend. thanks alot :)!! really gald found help

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

            The circles are just for illustrative purposes... It won't look like that. I can't help you with what type of case as I have little experience with the subject. If you are in the U.S., I would suggest you browse Newegg.com for something appropriate.

            If a new motherboard and CPU are out of the question (although you're already going to have to spend quite a bit of money), then IDE RAID is the only viable choice as SATA will just be a waste of money because regular PCI can't accomodate the bandwidth needs. I honestly have no experience with setting up this sort of system, but I think a few of these would be good controller cards:
            http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...115-002&depa=0

            While it's a bit expensive, the cheaper equivelents seem to be less reliable, and you will want RAID 5 for reliability without losing too much space. Under RAID 5, you will lose one drive in the array. So if you have 5 200GB drives, you'll get 800GB of space. If a drive fails, you get aboslutely no down-time or file loss. You simply send it to the manufacturer, get a replacement, and put it back in the array. It should take some time to rebuild, but this is a very reliable way of storing your data.
            For a drive, I would highly recommend the Seagate 200GB 8MB Cache 7200RPM:
            http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...148-032&depa=0

            Seagate makes quality drives, but the point is you get a five year warranty. I'd say there's a good chance one or more drives will fail within five years, so you will never end up buying drives again if you keep this.

            Basically, you get the controller card and however many drives you need. I'm guessing it supports up to eight IDE drives, so if you need more than 1400GB of space, get bigger drives or get another controller card (bigger drives is probably the better option for speed; a second card is better for money).

            Under this system, everything is pretty much backed up automatically on every drive, so you won't lose files even if a drive fails. I don't believe you'll need any third-party software. Everything can be done within Windows XP/2000 (unless you know Linux, I would highly recommend you use either XP or 2000). You'll have lots of space, reliable storage, and it shouldn't be nearly as hard to setup as you're probably thinking.

            The only problem I would see in your situation is this:
            Total cost for approximately one terabyte of space: $769 U.S.
            Last edited by Yawgm0th; 08-23-2004, 03:13 AM.

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            • #7
              Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

              thank oyu so much for the information im going with the raid 5!! with all that info i now konw that raid 5 is what i need. today wi iwll go of shoping maybe the guys at compusa sell the raid 5 cases or boxes. thanks alot for the info il check newwegg 2 as i was oging to buy a new video card today


              yea is a lot of money i get about 120 a week at work i dont mind saving up or buying one hardrive ervry 2 weeks. is reliable and with so many video in there each one hold more than one thousand dollars wich maybe i can get back but iwll will take me along time and money to get back so safety has no price :)! i will go with the 800 gigas soluiton imo


              Edited: i was cheking the links.. i think i had it all wrong RAID 5 is a controller card with 5 slots to conect the hardrive? i tought it was a box wher ei conect the hardrives hehe? wich one is it ?
              Last edited by juliox; 08-24-2004, 05:13 AM.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

                Originally posted by juliox
                hello i want to build a computer a big computer, when i say big i mean big >< ive seen ppl put "clusters" of mini computers togethere and call htem a super computer but i think windows cant use that. so i was thinking about making a semi super computer :P i want to have atleast 1tb hardrive so i will star with that i will like the computer to end up in an "cabinet" or tower not sure what you guys call it. as you can see i dont konw what im doing. i made my own computer but i dont konw wnough to make it as good as i want. . so why did i post in this forum? well i want to start with hte hardrives i was thinking baout building a big metal box with with a old motherboard that has a 500 hz celeron cpu. i was going to buy the cards that alow yo uto conect hardrives to them the pci ones. i cna buy 4 of those i cna put 2 hardrives in each so is 8 in totals plus the 4 the computer allows by default and one flopy disk for updates and stuff. so thats 12 hadrives in total i 250 gb each. i will also need a 800 wats pws? and a fan for each hadrive. hten this computer will be conected some how? ( this is where yo uugys come in ) with out bloking te internet in main computer. so can this be done? is this what RAID means? or ATA or somting like that? is there a beter way to get a 1TB? another thin hardrives die and i neeed to keep my data save, dvd are cool but i have to many i lose them i scrathc them i forget to put the names is plain hell but i dont want my hadrives diying on me when i have 250 gigs of data in them. i collect anime and im looking for a safe way to store it. maybe in caset i hear those are safe and hold 60 gigs! i only need wirte once stuff that is safe. can you guys help me?o yea and i cant spend more than 2 dollars per gig well if is very safe i can go up to 5 but not more. ( maybe i can make a box where i store 500 dvds liek a 5 dvd changer but with 500, i will just wirte a list i nmy pc or somting ) any wya cna som eon egive me an idea? i only have like 200 gigs of anime atm but once my computer is on or atleast my super storage device il get 500 ggis more. thanks in advance and sorry if m yidea are plain stupid lol im learning i love this >
                Just a couple of things that you may want to read first,
                http://www.ram.org/computing/linux/linux_cluster.html
                http://www.enterprisestorageforum.co...cle.php/947551<![/QUOTE]</P>

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

                  Originally posted by juliox
                  Edited: i was cheking the links.. i think i had it all wrong RAID 5 is a controller card with 5 slots to conect the hardrive? i tought it was a box wher ei conect the hardrives hehe? wich one is it ?
                  RAID 5 is just a type of RAID array. The controller card I linked to has four IDE slots, which should (if I'm not totally wrong) allow for up to eight IDE drives. It's not a case or any form of storage for the drives. You'll need to find something appropriate for the number of drives your using. Look through the cases on Newegg and find something that has enough space for the drives you're using.

                  Nice links Wayout, but I don't think he'll be using Linux for this. Windows XP will work fine, anyway.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

                    Originally posted by Yawgm0th
                    Nice links Wayout, but I don't think he'll be using Linux for this. Windows XP will work fine, anyway.
                    But this thread may wind up in somebody else's search (eg; "clusters" from that post) plus Linux ain't that hard to stumble around for some and the links may help others.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

                      Fair enough.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

                        I may be off base here, but I think you need to focus on getting a good regular computer built before you tackle a Semi-Super computer. RAID 5 can be a real pain to setup, and let's not get into SCSI. SCSI properly configured is tops for stability and speed, but given the price barrier - especially for mistakes - I think you should stick with SATA equipment, as the SATA/RAID controllers are super easy. You just plug the drives in and follow the wizard.

                        I have another suggestion. If you want a "Power" machine, and want to start small. Get something like an old Xeon workstation. You can used/refurbished Dual Core Xeon systems in the 4.0 ghz range (2.0ghz x 2) for next to nothing. You can order a few of those, get some refurbed HD's, a server rack or two and start building a mountainous computer from scratch. It's what I did. I don't even have a video card yet and my new (used) computer is ten times faster than my other computer (2 ghz, AMD XP 64 Palamino, somp'm, somp'm, 756 mb of ram, Geforce 4 256 DDR, RAID 10 array of 60 gig satas.) And that computer is speedy as heck.

                        I think that would be more price efficient than to start buying equipment outright, and hope it all works together. Email me and I'll give you a few links to go check out for good refurbbed stuff. :-) [email protected]

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                        • #13
                          Re: Im new but i want to transform my room into a computer cna you help :)?

                          I'm sure that post would have been really helpful a year and a half ago...

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