FreeNAS-8.2.0-BETA3-x64
Nexus VALUE 430
AMD Phenom II X2 560
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P
Patriot 2x4GB DDR3
IBM M1015 2x SAS2 card w/ IT firmware
Patriot Dash 8GB Flash Drive for OS
2x Western Digital WD20EADS 2TB
2x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB
3x Samsung HD204UI 2TB
1x Seagate/Samsung ST2000DL004 HD204UI 2TB
I forgot if I mentioned, but I found out why I kept getting < 30MB/s effective transfer speeds with the server when using the Atom 330 1.6GHz and Athlon X2 4000+ 2.1GHz... TOO. SLOW. Samba is single threaded so what I actually needed was a highly clocked CPU. Didn't really find that out until on a whim I ran the server on a Q6600 3GHz and immediately started maxing out the gigabit connection. Immediately went on to get the Phenom II X2 3.3GHz.
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I got the additional Samsung drives when they went on sale for $100 (finally, back to the price of two years ago) and intended to run the 8 drives in two RAIDZ arrays, but the mobo only has six SATA ports so... ended up connecting them to my existing Rosewill RC-209-EX 4 port SATA I card. The card turned out to be too slow though, 26.6 MB/s write and 98.0 MB/s read was HORRIBLE. I mean... for comparison, the integrated mobo ports got me 130.9 MB/s write and 136.4 MB/s read.
So, got an IBM M1015 card instead which is more legit than I imagined I'd get... >_> It has two SAS2 ports, each can be either connected out to a SAS expander (such as this) for a virtually endless expansion into more SAS ports, or simply split out into four SATA III ports. I did the latter, for now.
New speeds:
314.4 MB/s write and 355.0 MB/s read
Ahhh, much better.
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Pics!
http://www.mylilsite.net/images/albums/server-1/
In the single photo view, you can click on the i circle button to bring up a link at the bottom right to the original resolution version.
It has one pic,
http://www.mylilsite.net/images/albums/ ... ld8HDD.jpg
that shows the original setup before I got a Cooler Master bay to hold four 3.5" drives in a three 5.25" space and upgraded to the IBM M1015.
This pic,
http://www.mylilsite.net/images/albums/ ... mPower.jpg
is what I put in both the server and desktop as a safer implementation of having a molex cable supplying 5V in the 12V spot. This time, the Y cable allows me to keep one end normal and one end with 5V and no 12V. This should be much safer because even if I accidentally plug something like a drive into the wrong one, it'll only be getting too-little voltage on the 12V.