NAS build questions

[lcdguy]

ok so i am trying to build a small 4 drive nas that consumes as little power as possible so i am looking at gp drives for data and a ssd/cf for boot drive. Now here's my dilemma.

1. I would love an atom board that could run my sas card but i doubt i will find one for less than $130. so if there are any recommendations don't hold them back.

2. I will most likely be using either openfiler or whs i haven't decided yet. I will also be using 2TB wd GP drives since i already have 2. Do you think i will run into a tler issue if i use them in either a raid 1e or raid 1 configuration or linux software raid. (i know i don't have this issue with WHS and DE.)

all this is doing is providing network storage that's it. Here are the rest of the parts.

Norco RPC-230 Chassis
Antec Earthwatts 450
2x 2TB WD GP (will upgrade to 4 eventually)
8GB CF (or 40GB SSD)
IBM BR10i SAS/SATA Raid Controller
Intel Atom based board (either 330 or D510)
2GB DDR2/3

Nic is onboard Realtek crapfest on all the boards but there is not much i can do about that.

Ideally the perfect board would have 2 onboard sata connectors, 1 pci x8, 1 pci, intel atom. But i don't think it exists.

or a atom board with 6 sata ports or dual pci slots.

[Arinoth]

You have to be careful with the atoms boards. Last i looked at them you actually do get 6 usable sata ports. You can 4 and 2 raid or 3 and 3 raid which you can use either one or the other. Its why i shied away from it.

[lcdguy]

except the only board i saw with 6 ports was around $200+ which at that point i am wasting money and should just get a matx+amd chip which kind of defeats the minimizing power.

[Arinoth]

Can you link me that one, I may have seen it when I was looking to update.

[tangrisser]

Arinoth

Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Pineview Boards | X7SPA-H
NCIX.com - Buy Supermicro X7SPA-H-O Intel Atom D510 Mini ITX 1PCIE 6XSATA3.0G 2GLAN VGA Motherboard Retail - X7SPA-H-O In Canada.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Pineview Boards | X7SPA-HF
NCIX.com - Buy Supermicro X7SPA-HF-O Intel Atom D510 Mini ITX 6XSATA3.0G 2GLAN VGA IPMI Motherboard Retail - X7SPA-HF-O In Canada.

The only difference between X7SPA-HF and X7SPA-H is the IPMI and slightly different integrated video but otherwise virtually the same.

[lcdguy]

way to expensive no to mention they use so-dimm memory. was hoping for something in the 100-130 price range (not including ram.)

[tangrisser]

Sorry those were meant for Arinoth. I was about to edit and quote your original post but that seems like way too much effort right now :P

1.
NCIX.com - Buy ASUS AT3IONT-I Atom 330 DDR3 NVIDIA ION mITX 1PCI-E16 HDMI Video Sound GBLAN Motherboard - AT3IONT-I In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy Zotac NM10-B-E MINI-DTX Atom D510 NM10 Express PCI-E16 PCI-E1 SATA Wifi Video GBLAN DDR2 Motherboard - NM10-B-E In Canada.

Unfortunately, Atom boards almost exclusively come in Mini-ITX (I recall seeing mATX but that was a while ago and I don't think it's being manufactured anymore) and those two were the only ones I could find with a PCI-ex4 slot or bigger.

2.
When you say GP drives, do you mean Caviar Green or the RE4-GP? If you mean Caviar Green, you might have an issue since it does not support TLER but if you are referring to RE4-GP, it should be alright since it does support TLER.

[lcdguy]

the mini-itx is fine since the rpc-230 is a shallow case. Any word on the reliability of the zotac mobo's i am not familiar with them.

And yes i mean the caviar gp not the re

[Arinoth]

That zotac one is one of the ones i was talking about. According to the manual sata connectors 1-2 are for ordinary sata hdd and sata connectors 3-6 are for creating sata raid. Zotac even lists it as have 4 sata, meaning you cant run all six at the same time.
ZOTAC NM10-B-E Atom D510 1.66 GHz Dual-core Mini ITX WiFi Intel Motherboard

[3.0charlie]

Nice explanation about the sata ports of that Zotac board at the ncix forum. NCIX FORUMS - 4+1 SATA Ports or 6 +1 - Zotac NM10-B-E MINI-DTX Atom D510 NM10 E...