Silent Unraid Upgrade

A year and a half ago I decided to build a home storage server using unraid.  I read tons of posts, selected recommended components, and built a near silent 12TB living-room server with no issues.  It has been running flawlessly since then.  Power usage was very low, performance excellent, and it ran cool (drives ran in the low 30's, and would max out between 35 and 39 deg C durring a parity check).

OS at time of building: 4.7

CPU: Intel Atom D525

Motherboard: SuperMicro MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525-O

RAM: 4GB F3-8500CL7D-4GBSQ

Case: Fractal Design Define R3

Power Supply: Corsair CX430

SATA Expansion Card(s): Silicon Image SIL3132

Fans: 2x120mm that came with the case

Parity Drive: 2TB WD20EARS

Data Drives: 2x WD20EARS and 4x Hitachi 5K3000

Warm Spare: Hitachi 5K3000

Total Drive Capacity: 12TB in use, 14TB Max

However, as I'm sure many people here have experienced, it filled up, and unwilling to give up a warm spare, I looked to expansion. 

The case has 8x3.5" slots which I've fully populated, and 2x5.25" slots which at best could fit a 3-in-2 cage, bringing the max to 11.  However, since I would have to upgrade my 2port SATA card no matter what, if I went with an 8 port card, I could support up to 14 drives.  At this point I started eying all of the empty space in the case and wondering how I can fill it with drives.  There was a nice spot between the PS and drive stack that was meant for a 120 or 140mm fan that looked promising.  After looking at many drive cage options, I opted for Caselabs MAC-101.  That was able to mount in the fan's place.  Along with an 8 port SATA Card, a Noctua NF-P12 Fan, and a few more drives, the build was complete.  I think it actually is running cooler, owing to better airflow and the 3rd fan, with temps ranging from 30-35 deg C durring a parity check.

OS at time of building: 4.7

CPU: Intel Atom D525

Motherboard: SuperMicro MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525-O

RAM: 4GB F3-8500CL7D-4GBSQ

Case: Fractal Design Define R3

Drive Cage: Caselabs MAC-101

Power Supply: Corsair CX430

SATA Expansion Card(s): SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8

Fans: 2x120mm that came with the case, Noctua NF-P12

Parity Drive: 2TB WD20EARS

Data Drives: 2x WD20EARS and 5x Hitachi 5K3000

Warm Spare: 2TB WD-EARX, 2TB WD-RED

Total Drive Capacity: 14TB in use, 26TB max

I've started with adding my old warm spare to the array, and am debating if the RED drive should replace the parity (as it has the highest load), or just add it to the pool.  There is still space for 2 more drives in the cage, and I can still put 2 more drives in the 5.25" bays.

I thought I would share this build with the community as it has a high drive density, is still near silent, and looks good enough to have out in the open.

Primary Use: Media Storage and Backups

Likes: Near silent, very low power usage (sorry, no numbers, I don't want to unplug it to use my Killawatt)

Dislikes: Not easy to replace the drives, but I hardly ever open the case, so it's not a big deal to me.

Add Ons Used: UnMenu

Future Plans: 2 more drives in the cage, then 2 more in the 5.25" bays (which will max out the Mobo and Sata Card).

Nice build. 

Is that hard drive orientation OK in the long run?

Is that hard drive orientation OK in the long run?

I've always assumed, from a physics point of view, that it wouldn't make a difference.  In most hot-swap bays they're mounted long-side down, and in many external hard drives they're mounted short-side down (like in my additional bays).

Still, I did a google search, and while I couldn't find any authoritative sources, the internet seems to agree.  Interesting caveats are that it should not be at a funny angle where one surface isn't parallel to the ground, and some have said that its orientation should not be changed after formatting, due to potential for misalignment of the heads.

http://www.howtogeek.com/128397/does-hard-drive-orientation-affect-its-lifespan/

Backblaze, a leader in high-capacity servers, mounts their drives on the short side too.  Maybe there's something to it...

http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/

Nice clean build.

It reminds me a lot of my first unraid build. same setup in a different case. (and then WHS v1 before that.)

Is that hard drive orientation OK in the long run?

that's debatable.. dell and HP both have hung HDD's in that orientation in some desktop models.

As long as it is on some form of a 90deg axis it "should" be ok.. some odd diagonal, i would say no...

that PSU will probably at its max before the server is maxed out.

lots of enterprise arrays have the drives "sideways" if you know what I mean

lots of enterprise arrays have the drives "sideways" if you know what I mean

His are nose down. I have seen people claim the extra stress on the drive in that orientation wears it out faster. I have seen no evidence to prove that.

but yes, sideways is about the same stress IMO,

I'm interested in the comment by Johnm about the PSU maxing out.  I've used various online PSU calculators, and it seems like even with 14 drives, I'll be well under the PSU's rated limit.  For example, using http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine and assuming all of my hardware with 14 "Green" drives (which I mostly have), it recommends a 211W PSU.  With 14 5400rpm drives, it jumps to a recommended 350W PSU.

Both of those numbers include some headroom, so a 430W supply seems more than sufficient.  Am I missing something?  Given everyones experience, what is a reasonable number of drives I should put in here?