First Build (Norco 4220) Questions

Hello all!  Long time lurker, finally getting to my first build (computer, server, or otherwise).  I'm basing my build on Raj's 20 Drive Budget Build (Rackmount) including the listed fan upgrades with the following exceptions. 

A) CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 3.4GHz Dual Core

B) RAM: Kingston KHX133C9D3B1K2/8G

C) PSU: SeaSonic S12II 620 Bronze 620W

I will be starting with 5 drives.  All my computers at the house are Mac OS X.  Other components are:

Mobo: ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1)

Case: Norco 4220

SATA Expansion Card: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port SAS/SATA Add-on Card x 2

Cables:

    NORCO C-SFF8087-4S Discrete to SFF-8087 (Reverse breakout) Cable x 1

    1m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male to Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male Cable x 4

    No SATA cables needed

Fanplate: Norco 120mm fanplate

Fans:

    Nexus PWM Series D12SL-12PWM 120mm Case Fan x 3

    ARCTIC COOLING ACF8 Pro PWM 80mm Case Fan x 2

Flash: Kingston MobileLiteG2 Reader

So far I've figured most of it out from other folks threads, however I've got a few questions that I'm coming up blank on.

1) The 4220 case has a total of 12 case switch / LED's that must connect into the Mobo's "Front Panel Header", which has 9 pins.  I don't find anywhere that clarifies which to omit.  Best I can tell, the "Power SW" connects to pins 6 & 8 on the Mobo.  The "H.D.D. LED" connects to pins 1 & 3.  "Reset SW" connects to pins 5 & 7.  That leaves "NIC 1LED", "NIC2LED", "Power LED+", and "Power LED-" coming from the 4220 and pins #2 - FP PWR/SLP (MSG LED+), #4 - FP PWR/SLP (MSG LED-), and #9 (RSVD - Reserved) on the Mobo. 

First, can anyone confirm if I'm approaching this correctly or if I'm totally off base?  Second, on the 4220 connectors that have 2 pins, can anyone confirm which is + & -?  The back of each 2 pin connector has one with an arrow and one without, but I don't know what the arrow denotes.

Update: Connected "Power SW" to pins 6 & 8, "H.D.D. LED" to pins 1 & 3, and "Reset SW" to pins 5 & 7.  I'm assuming I have something connected improperly here, thus the reason for the server automatically re-powering up after I shut it down from the prompt or the the Server Management Utility as outlined in posts below.

2) The 120mm bracket is in place with the new fans, but I'm confused on how to supply power to the fan's 4 pin connectors.  On the original bracket each of the 4 fans plugged into a common that fed to a 4-pin molex with only 2 pins.  How & where do I connect these new 3 ea. 120mm 4-pin fan connectors?  The Mobo has 1 ea. 3-pin SYS_FAN connection and 1 ea. 3-pin PWR_FAN connection.

Update: Connected three fans with two 4-pin Y-harnesses and a 12V 3-pin to molex adapter tied into the remaining molex plug from the PSU.

3) The 2 ea. 80mm Arctic Cooling fans are installed on the back of the case.  I understand from the installation paperwork that the connections can be piggy backed with the CPU Cooler and have that setup.  However, each fan also has a 3-pin lead and the instructions say you have the "Option" to connect these to the 3-pin AUX FAN sockets on the Mobo to read the fan speed.  The Mobo has 1 ea. 3-pin SYS_FAN connection and 1 ea. 3-pin PWR_FAN connection.  Do I plug the case fans into these two spots?

Update:[/u] I did connect the optional 3-pin to the SYS_Fan connection on the Mobo. 

4) I have a lot of leads from the PSU still available after connecting 5 ea. Molex to the backplanes, the 24-Pin ATX Power and the 8-Pin ATX 12V to the Mobo.  I see in several threads that several of the remaining leads are tied off and left alone.  Just want to make sure I'm not missing something. 

Update:[/u] Confirmed.

5) I see several threads where people are trying to figure out what the switches SW1 & SW2 are on the Norco's.  Anyone figured it out?  Should they all be set the same?  All mine are SW2 except for the top right drive which is SW1.

Update:[/u] Set it to SW1 to match.  Pretty certain I moved it when building the box.

6) Some folks have mentioned testing their backplanes.  How exactly do I do this?

Update:[/u] Thanks to Raj for the extensive explanation detailed below.

7) I don't fully understand the "Cache" drive option at this time.  Do I have to setup the initial build with a cache drive or can I add it later when my drive count gets 15+?

Update:[/u] Thanks to Raj for the info below.

Can someone confirm the 2 ea. Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 should be installed in PCIEX16 & PCIE16X_S slots?

Update:[/u] Confirmed.

Thanks for any & all help.  I've already learned a great deal from this forum.  Never would have thought I'd be able to do this 5 years ago.

2) The 120mm bracket is in place with the new fans, but I'm confused on how to supply power to the fan's 4 pin connectors.  On the original bracket each of the 4 fans plugged into a common that fed to a 4-pin molex with only 2 pins.  How & where do I connect these new 3 ea. 120mm 4-pin fan connectors?  The Mobo has 1 ea. 3-pin SYS_FAN connection and 1 ea. 3-pin PWR_FAN connection.

Looks like a 4-pin PWM Y-cable may do the trick? 

http://www.frys.com/product/6524853

If I used two of these I could daisy chain the three fans together leaving me with a single 4-pin PWM connector that I believe would plug into the SYS_FAN connector on the Mobo, correct?  I read the PWR_Fan connection on the Mobo is for your PSU.  The Seasonic does not have a 3 or 4-pin connector, so I'm assuming the PWR_Fan connection is left unused.

3) The 2 ea. 80mm Arctic Cooling fans are installed on the back of the case.  I understand from the installation paperwork that the connections can be piggy backed with the CPU Cooler and have that setup.  However, each fan also has a 3-pin lead and the instructions say you have the "Option" to connect these to the 3-pin AUX FAN sockets on the Mobo to read the fan speed.  The Mobo has 1 ea. 3-pin SYS_FAN connection and 1 ea. 3-pin PWR_FAN connection.  Do I plug the case fans into these two spots?

Being that the instructions say this connection is "Optional", I'm assuming the will not be connected to anything on the Mobo.  Not knowing any better, I suppose I could pickup two more of the 4-pin Y-cables and connect all 5 fans and plug the remaining 4-pin into the SYS_Fan connector on the Mobo, but I can't imagine the Mobo is going to be able to differentiate the 2 different types of fans and read fan speed on them.

Picked up two of the Y-Splitters linked to above, which will leave me with a single 4-pin.  Also picked up one of these http://www.pactech-inc.com/user/image/pa-fanwx-copy.jpg to adapt the last 4-pin to a 12v molex.  This would allow me to connect to the last available 4-pin on the PSU. 

However, as I was connecting these new adapters, I found a FDD(4P) Y-Adapter that came with the Seasonic PSU.  It has 2 ea. 4-pins to one 4-pin Molex.  Now I'm really confused.  The 4-pin allows for the system to read & control fan speed, correct?   Update: these are Floppy Disk Drive connectors.  Thanks c3 for the clarification!

I also picked up a Y-adapter that will accept the 2 ea. 3-pin connectors on the 80mm case fans and take them down to a single 3-pin connector.  So, assuming it can be connected to one of the two slots on the mobo I should be good to go.

However, as I was connecting these new adapters, I found a FDD(4P) Y-Adapter that came with the Seasonic PSU.  It has 2 ea. 4-pins to one 4-pin Molex.  Now I'm really confused.  The 4-pin allows for the system to read & control fan speed, correct?

FDD power connector is not a 4pin fan connector.

FDD pins;

1 red 5V

2 black gnd

3 black gnd

4 yellow 12V

Fan 4pin;

1 black gnd

2 yellow 12V

3 green sense

4 blue control

However, as I was connecting these new adapters, I found a FDD(4P) Y-Adapter that came with the Seasonic PSU.  It has 2 ea. 4-pins to one 4-pin Molex.  Now I'm really confused.  The 4-pin allows for the system to read & control fan speed, correct?

 

FDD power connector is not a 4pin fan connector.

 

FDD pins;

1 red 5V

2 black gnd

3 black gnd

4 yellow 12V

 

 

Fan 4pin;

1 black gnd

2 yellow 12V

3 green sense

4 blue control

Good information, thank you!

I was having no luck when trying to power up and tried this test for the Seasonic PSU, which worked.  Re-hooked everything up and it powered up fine.

Plugged in the flash drive and booted up fine.  I didn't install the UnMenu and Pre-Clear scripts to on the flash drive prior to booting up since the UnRaid Configuration Tutorial said you can skip these steps initially.  So after confirming my IP address I tried to shut down using the "shutdown -h now" and "poweroff" command.  Both shut everything down, but the 4220 immediately powers up again after a few seconds and takes me back to the "Tower login:" prompt. 

After a couple tries, I switched off the power supply before it could boot back up, so I can pull the flash drive and load the scripts.  Am I missing something here with the shutdown process?

Installed the scripts and have the server running after assigning a static IP using the wealth of info from this thread and this link.  Had to use the Terminal approach as my permissions wouldn't allow me to edit and save in text edit.  All my computers & router are Macs, so I got to learn some stuff tonight.

Next up, figure out how to update the firmware on my Seagate ST31500541AS & Samsung F4 HD204UI HDD's.  That will have to come tomorrow.

Hi thegreatgumbino, sorry it has taken me a while to respond to your thread.  If I'm following the thread correctly, you now have all of your fans connected directly to the power supply with Y splitters.  This is fine.

4) I have a lot of leads from the PSU still available after connecting 5 ea. Molex to the backplanes, the 24-Pin ATX Power and the 8-Pin ATX 12V to the Mobo.  I see in several threads that several of the remaining leads are tied off and left alone.  Just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

This is normal.

5) I see several threads where people are trying to figure out what the switches SW1 & SW2 are on the Norco's.  Anyone figured it out?  Should they all be set the same?  All mine are SW2 except for the top right drive which is SW1.

No one has figured it out yet, to my knowledge.  Norco has advised that the switches should all be left in the default position, which I thought was SW1.  It seems a bit odd that some of yours are different.  You might want to contact Norco and ask them about it.

6) Some folks have mentioned testing their backplanes.  How exactly do I do this?

At Greenleaf, we test backplanes several ways.  First, we run at least one pass of preclear on every backplane port.  Since you have a 20 drive build, that would mean 20 individual passed of preclear.  This can be a lot of wear and tear on a drive (we have a bank of small capacity test drives for this purpose).  Secondly, we build an array with drives spread out across the various backplanes.  Assuming you don't have 20 drives at the moment, take your current drives and spread them out so that there is at least one drive on each backplane.  First check that unRAID detects all the drives (they should show up on the drop down menus on the 'devices' page in 4.7 and the main page in 5.0 beta).  Next, assign the drives and run a parity sync.  Once that completes, run a parity check - it should complete without errors.  The third and final test will test the NIC as well as the backplanes, cables, and most of the other core components.  Create a new user share called 'test data' or whatever you like with the disk allocation method as 'most free'.  Copy at least 100 GB of data from another hardwired computer onto the new share.  Due to the 'most free' setting, the data will be spread out across all the disks, which will force it to pass through all the backplanes.  Ideally you would use TeraCopy with the 'test after copy' option enabled, but if you don't have access to a Windows machine then you can instead transfer the data with Mac's finder and then later run your own MD5 scan on the original data and the data on the server.  This will ensure that the data was transferred to each disk safely without corruption.  Finally, copy the same data from the server back into a temporary folder on the source computer.  Again, use TeraCopy or run your own MD5 checks.  If all of these tests complete, then the backplanes are trustworthy.  Granted, all of these tests take quite a while (our total burn in procedure typically takes about 2 weeks), so many people skip these tests, or only run one of them.

7) I don't fully understand the "Cache" drive option at this time.  Do I have to setup the initial build with a cache drive or can I add it later when my drive count gets 15+?

You can add or remove a cache drive at any time.  This thread should help you decide if a cache drive is right for you.

Can someone confirm the 2 ea. Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 should be installed in PCIEX16 & PCIE16X_S slots?

That is correct.

So after confirming my IP address I tried to shut down using the "shutdown -h now" and "poweroff" command.  Both shut everything down, but the 4220 immediately powers up again after a few seconds and takes me back to the "Tower login:" prompt. 

 

After a couple tries, I switched off the power supply before it could boot back up, so I can pull the flash drive and load the scripts.  Am I missing something here with the shutdown process?

The 'powerdown' command should work.  Are you using 4.7 or one of the betas?  The best way to shut down the server is to stop the array and then use the 'power down' button on the unRAID web GUI.  You can also look into installing the powerdown add-on, which helps with troubleshooting.

Thanks for your help, Raj!  Regarding the switches, I'm fairly certain that I moved the switch when trying to build the system.  I second guessed myself though and thought I should ask.

So after confirming my IP address I tried to shut down using the "shutdown -h now" and "poweroff" command.  Both shut everything down, but the 4220 immediately powers up again after a few seconds and takes me back to the "Tower login:" prompt. 

 

After a couple tries, I switched off the power supply before it could boot back up, so I can pull the flash drive and load the scripts.  Am I missing something here with the shutdown process?

 

The 'powerdown' command should work.  Are you using 4.7 or one of the betas?  The best way to shut down the server is to stop the array and then use the 'power down' button on the unRAID web GUI.  You can also look into installing the powerdown add-on, which helps with troubleshooting.

I'm using 4.7 and still running into this issue.  I had not added any drives at this point.  Doesn't matter if I use the Web GUI or the prompt, the results are the same with the power down and immediate reboot. 

Now that I'm trying to add drives, I'm coming up with the blinking cursor at boot up after installing 4 drives.  Tried entering the bios & confirmed the boot order had changed.  Re-selected the flash drive, saved, and exited bios.  Same issue of the blinking cursor.  If I shut down, pull out the drives, and restart UnRaid boots fine.

Working through the blinking cursor problem.  I'm using a Kingston MobileLiteG2 Reader, which has two slots (1) SDHC, which I'm using, and (2) Micro SDHC.  I'm starting to wonder if the system is trying to boot off the second empty slot as the following bios configuration now gets me to "Reboot and Select proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key".  In the BIOS the options for boot devices do not specify a difference between the SDHC or Micro SDHC slots, it only shows Kingston Reader.  Sure enough, on the "Advanced Setup" tab, if I scroll through the options under 1st Boot Device there are two separate "Kingston Reader" options .  I set one for the 1st Boot Device and the 2nd Boot Device as the other.  Saved & Exited and booted into UnRaid without issue.

Standard CMOS Setup

IDE BusMaster - Enabled

Advanced Setup

AMC C&Q - Auto

Enhanced Halt (C1E) - Disabled

Quick Power on Self Test - Enabled

Boot Up Numlock Status - On

APIC Mode - Enabled

1st Boot Device - Flash Drive (Kingston Reader - 1st listing)

2nd Boot Device - Flash Drive (Kingston Reader - 2nd listing)

3rd Boot Device - Disabled

Hard Disk Drives > 1st Drive - Flash Drive (Kingston Reader), 2nd through 5th Drive - Disabled

Removable Drives > 1st Drive - Flash Drive (Kingston Reader)

Boot Other Device - No

ECS eJIFFY Function - Disabled

Advanced Chipset Setup

Internal Graphics Mode - UMA

Share Memory Size - 32MB

GFX Clock Override - Disabled

Init Display First - PCI

Memory Remap Feature - Enabled

HDMI Audio - Disabled

Integrated Peripherals

Onboard SATA Mode - Enabled

SATA Configuration - AHCI (UPDATE: Changed to AHCI per Raj's recommendation)

Onboard Audio Function - Disabled

Onboard LAN Function - Enabled

Onboard LAN Boot ROM - Disabled

Serial Port1 Address - Disabled

USB Functions - Enabled

Legacy USB Support - Enabled

Power Management

ACPI Suspend Type - S3

PWRON After PWR - Fail - Power Off

Resume by RING - Disabled

Resume by PCI/PCI-E/Lan PME - Disabled

Resume by USB (S3) - Disabled

Resume by PS2 KB (S3) - Disabled

Resume by PS2 MS (S3) - Disabled

EUP Support - Enabled

PCI/PnP Setup

Init Display First - PCI

I didn't change anything in the remaining BIOS tabs.

Onto Pre-Clear.  Ran into trouble with trying to Telnet from my Mac.  Was getting "Cannot find terminfo entry for 'xterm-color'" error message when trying to run Screen.  Followed advice this thread and entered"TERM=ansi" then "screen" get it to work.

Started to pre-clear drives and got 3 of the 4 drives going.  Here's the crux.  When I noted the drive information prior to starting pre-clear, I had the following:

/dev/sdb ST31500541 AS_5XW0270P

/dev/sdc scsi-SATA_WDC_WD7500AAKS-_WD-WCAPT0121327

/dev/sdd ST3808110AS_4LR2FTYS

/dev/sde SAMSUNG_HD204UI_S2H7JD2B410043

Now, when I telnet in and run "./preclear_disk.sh -A /dev/sdb" it actually pulls up the information for the WD drive which should be "sdc" as listed above.  I went ahead and said yes to pre-clear.  Then ran "./preclear_disk.sh -A /dev/sdc" and it shows:

Sorry, but /dev/sdc is currently mounted and in use:

/dev/sdc1 on /boot type vfat (rw,noatime,nodiratime,umask=0,shortname=mixed)

Clearing will NOT be performed

Why is it confusing the devices and how do I get it pre-clear to run on the 1.5TB Seagate?

Update: I'd rebooted the system and the drives were allocated differently than previously.  1.5TB drive moved to SDA.  It is currently preclearing.

Under Integrated Peripherals, set SATA Configuration to AHCI (not RAID or IDE).  This will give you the best performance.

Everytime you reboot the server, the disk assignments (SDA, SDB, etc.) may change.  This is due to different drives taking different amounts of time to initialize.  When you want to preclear a drive, the drive cannot be assigned to the unRAID array.  This is a safety mechanism built into preclear by Joe L. so that you can't accidentally preclear one of your drives that is full of data.  If you've already assigned the drives, you'll need to unassign the ones you want to preclear.

Through telnet, try this:

root (to login)

cd /boot (to change to the boot directory)

preclear_disk.sh -l (that is the lower case letter L - this will display a list of all drives that are not assigned to the unRAID array and therefore available for preclearing)

preclear_disk.sh -A /dev/sdX (where X is the drive letter of the drive you want to preclear)

Yes (to confirm the preclear)

By the way, pressing the up arrow key will bring up whatever syntax you typed in last time.  This can save you a bit of time when typing the preclear command more than once.

Only the flash drive is formatted as fat, so the error you saw was because you tried to run preclear on your flash drive.  The flash drive is always assigned to the unRAID array, even if no other disks are.

Thanks for the clarification on the SATA Configuration.  I'll update the BIOS after the pre-clears finish.

:Smacks Forehead:

I remember reading that the disk assignments change and didn't think about that.  I did reboot, so it changed.  It is now SDA and currently pre-clearing.

Hello all!  Long time lurker, finally getting to my first build (computer, server, or otherwise).  I'm basing my build on Raj's 20 Drive Budget Build (Rackmount) including the listed fan upgrades with the following exceptions. 

 

A) CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 3.4GHz Dual Core

B) RAM: Kingston KHX133C9D3B1K2/8G

C) PSU: SeaSonic S12II 620 Bronze 620W

 

I will be starting with 5 drives.  All my computers at the house are Mac OS X.  Other components are:

 

Mobo: ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1)

Case: Norco 4220

SATA Expansion Card: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port SAS/SATA Add-on Card x 2

Cables:

    NORCO C-SFF8087-4S Discrete to SFF-8087 (Reverse breakout) Cable x 1

    1m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male to Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male Cable x 4

    No SATA cables needed

Fanplate: Norco 120mm fanplate

Fans:

    Nexus PWM Series D12SL-12PWM 120mm Case Fan x 3

    ARCTIC COOLING ACF8 Pro PWM 80mm Case Fan x 2

Flash: Kingston MobileLiteG2 Reader

 

Hi there.

I'm very interested in this build as I'm attempting to put something together myself. I've built several "regular" computers, but SAS, raid, etc... are all kinda new to me. Please forgive the ignorant questions, but what is the purpose of the 1m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male to Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male Cable x 4?

Also, did you need any additional molex or other power cables? If not, what do you use to power each drive?

I am planning on putting something similar together based on a sandy bridge celeron/pentium design.

Last question- when full with 20 drives, are most people building a single array with one parity drive in UnRaid or are they building multiple arrays?

Thanks for any assistance!

unless you plan on doing ESXi your only option with a single unRAID license is to have one single large array.

Hi there.

I'm very interested in this build as I'm attempting to put something together myself. I've built several "regular" computers, but SAS, raid, etc... are all kinda new to me. Please forgive the ignorant questions, but what is the purpose of the 1m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male to Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male Cable x 4?

Also, did you need any additional molex or other power cables? If not, what do you use to power each drive?

The Norco 4220 has 5 backplanes that control 4 drives each for a total of 20 drives.  Each backplane has a single SF8087 Mini SAS connector and 2 ea. molex 4-pin power connectors.

Raj explains the Norco 4220 SAS cable setup in this thread.

As for power connectors, the Seasonic PSU I used provided 6 ea. 4-pin molex power connectors.  I plugged one molex power connector into each backplane for a total of 5.  There is a thread on the forum where it is clarified that everyone used to plug in two molex to each backplane, but it has since been recommended to only use one per backplane.  The remaining sixth 4-pin molex I used with a combination of two each 3-pin > dual 3-pin Y-adapter cables and a single 3-pin to molex adapter cable to power the upgraded fans (in this response above).

If you look at the picture I attached in my first post:

*Top right corner the 4-pin molex connectors attach to the yellow backplanes. 

*Middle right in the pic you will see the red cable SAS connected to the top yellow backplane.  This is the reverse breakout cable that has a mini SAS on one end and 4 SATA on the other.  The 4 SATA connect directly to mobo SATA connectors in the bottom middle of the pic.

*The remaining 4 remaining black mini SAS cables are attached to the backplanes under the red cable & routed to the two each Supermicro SAS/SATA expansion cards in the bottom left corner of the pic (2 cables per card).

Thanks. Sorry for the newb questions.

1) So the 4 SAS to SAS cables connect to the NORCO C-SFF8087-4S Discrete to SFF-8087 (Reverse breakout) Cable and that connects to the drives? Does it also power them?

I'm trying to figure out a parts list for everything I would need for a 20 drive build based on an 1155 motherboard.

2) Is there something that explains ESXi a little better? I'm familiar with basic VMs- I'm running Win 8 CP inside a VirtualBox VM now but not sure how it would be applied to something like this.

Is it possible to run WHS2011 and unRaid off the same mb/cpu?

2) Is there something that explains ESXi a little better? I'm familiar with basic VMs- I'm running Win 8 CP inside a VirtualBox VM now but not sure how it would be applied to something like this.

Is it possible to run WHS2011 and unRaid off the same mb/cpu?

Take a look at JohnM's Atlas BUild thread in the UCD forum.  He does a good job showing and explain ESXi in there.  I also have an ESXi build though mine is based of of slightly older hardware.

Thanks. Sorry for the newb questions.

 

1) So the 4 SAS to SAS cables connect to the NORCO C-SFF8087-4S Discrete to SFF-8087 (Reverse breakout) Cable and that connects to the drives? Does it also power them?

 

I'm trying to figure out a parts list for everything I would need for a 20 drive build based on an 1155 motherboard.

 

That cable will allow you to connect 4 standard SATA ports (like the one on your motherboard for example) to a single 4 drive backplane. the 4240 has 5 backplanes

 

2) Is there something that explains ESXi a little better? I'm familiar with basic VMs- I'm running Win 8 CP inside a VirtualBox VM now but not sure how it would be applied to something like this.

Is it possible to run WHS2011 and unRaid off the same mb/cpu?

 

That entirely depends on your hardware. But Yes, if you have the hardware to support it, it can be done. I run a setup with unRAID and WHS2011 on the same PC. both run at amazingly fast speeds.

Ahh, that makes more sense now. No experience working with backplanes.

2) Right now I have no hardware. My goal was to run something off 1155 Pentium or Celeron that would get me what I wanted with as little expense as possible.

Ideally I'd like to combine boxes. One is WHS 2011 running sab, sickbeard, and mysql. The other would be some data storage solution, like unraid or flexraid. From what I've seen, unRaid would suit my needs better. I'm completely open to any builds that suit those purposes.

Would something based of the Pentium g620 work?

5) I see several threads where people are trying to figure out what the switches SW1 & SW2 are on the Norco's.  Anyone figured it out?  Should they all be set the same?  All mine are SW2 except for the top right drive which is SW1.

 

Update:[/u] Set it to SW1 to match.  Pretty certain I moved it when building the box.

My Google-Fu is strong. Apparently the switches are to turn drive activity LED's on and off.

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038112271&postcount=5

Earlier in the thread there is a picture where you can see the switches on the backplane. I found one of the threads on these forums asking about the switch to make sure it was the same switch(es).

I'm glad I found it, I hate not knowing what switches do. It definitely brings the OCD out of me. My brother in laws house has a switch that he couldn't figure out the use of. It didn't turn anything on or off in the house. I looked everywhere to find where it went. Finally when putting up christmas lights I took down a piece of soffit and found where a floodlight use to be and the wires were capped. I promptly(in absence of a multi-meter) hooked it up to the string of lights and told him to flip the switch. Needless to say, he didn't have to go outside to turn the lights on and off,