Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the now-thats-a-lotta-pr0n dept.
Delta-9 writes "Here is a writeup on how to combine 6 200GB IDE drives into a small tower and hack together some firewire controllers to give you one giant 1.2TB firewire drive." Very cool project, both technically and aesthetically.
'Fraid it's only a mozilla grab... clicky. Images are still uploading, but I got them all...
/.'ed
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Informative
A few years ago while browsing the Halted Anniversary Sale, I came across a 4 bay 5.25" SCSI drive case for something really cheap (I think $35). I can't pass up a deal like this so I snagged it. Well it sat around for a long time, past the point of me giving up on SCSI. I had replaced my 3 36GB SCSI drives with 2 80GB IDE drives and never wanted to go back. So it sat. While performing the SparcStation ITX hack, I discovered that firewire to IDE bridgeboards could be had in the $50 to $80 range. After using one there I started a little thread in the back of my mind about what other nefarious uses I could find for these little gems. Then one day I saw an ad for a full height 5.25" box that held 3 3.5" hard drives. Suddenly inspiration struck me like a bolt of lightning, and in true Dr. Bob fashion, I took it to an extreme.
The largest drive available at the time I started this hack was the Maxtor 200GB.
What do you think?
Here's how I did it:
1. Start with the empty case.
2. The original case fans were very noisy. In addition to that, the fan grilles cause lots of turbulence noise. So I cut them all out and replaced them with PanaFlow fluid bearing fans and wire grilles. I had to make custom power cable harnesses for these fans as well
3. As long as I was replacing noisy fans, I replaced the fans in the drive carriers with think PanaFlow FDB fans. I threw their grilles out altogether as they operate with their doors closed and the grille is, well, pointless.
4. Next I downloaded the art work for the firewire logo from Apple's web site. I printed out one that would fit and glued it to the boring beige top case. Black indicated material to be removed. First I drilled pilot holes to get the tool bits in. Then I started cutting to remove the big chunks, then I cut closer to the edges with my dremel tool, and finally filed it smooth with my half round bastard (not shown here). Those that know the joke are now snickering.
5. After this the whole case was sanded and painted with Krylon Fusion Burgundy Red. This paint takes 7 days to fully polymerize so I set it aside and focused on the electronics. I also bought a hunk of clear acrylic from TAP plastics and a 30mm round for the center of the logo.
6. OK I've got a firewire hub that mounts in the same hole as the old Centronics connector did (firewire depot), and 3 dual drive FireWire to IDE controller cards. Plus I need to supply power and route the cables for data and the LED's. I decided to mount them on the empty panels between the back of the drives and the back panel. First I had to measure the card for the stand off. Never leave home without your trusty calipers.
7. Now the cards can be mounted on my 3/4" standoffs and 4/40 screws. This project would be impossible without round IDE cables. The powered hub is visible in the lower left of the 1st picture.
8. This might look like a chaotic mess to you, but it's actually a carefully choreographed symphony of cable. The truth is, it's the only way it would all fit.
9. This is glue. Strong stuff.
10. When the front was dry, I hit it with some 3M Imperial Hand Glaze. That made it nice and shiny. Mmmmmm Shiny. (droooool)
11. Now it's time to get silly. I installed 2 6" and 2 12" tri-color cold cathode lamps. These will really spice up my life. After messing with EL wire, I have decided that it's not bright enough to be worthwhile for almost any use. CCFL lamps however are bright enough to be seen in any lighting conditions including camera flash. EL wire is only visible in low light. CCFL lamps also last longer.
12. Like EL wire, cold cathodes require a high voltage inverter.
13. Finally I mounted some LED's in the front connected to the busy signal outputs on the firewire controller cards. I may at a later date remove this metal grill to improve the lighting and airflow.
All done. Here are some beauty shots:
Please visit my archive of art work photos for this project. Click on any picture for a very high resolution photo. Some of these really move me.
Tech Specs:
Firewire 400 (sustained transfer rate of 35MB/s, max for firewire 400)
Oxford 911 chipsets
6 Maxtor 200 gig ATA 133 hard drives
4 cold cathode lamps with a combined output of 12 watts
16 LED's
Powered firewire hub
Re:Forgive my hardware ignorance but...
by
kasperd
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Doesn't sound like ignorance to me. If the six 200 GB drives make up a 1.2TB logical drive, there cannot be any redundancy. Six IDE drives, and no redundancy - I don't hope he have any important data there. Had he at least used RAID-4 or RAID-5 giving him a 1TB logical drive and one redundant disk, he would have a fair chance of keeping his data (assuming the broken disk gets replaced before the next fails).
Re:/.'ed but i can imagine...
by
Raffaello
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you actually read the article, you'll see that he's running Mac OS X, and that the OS sees his box as a single, 1.1 TB, Mac OS Extended volume called "BigHonkingDrive." So, no, the "PC" doesn't see it as 6 200 gig firewire drives.
guess the firewire aint fast enuff to prevent /..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
to prevent the/. effect.
the firewire terabyte drive has just maxed out
----------------- Tech Specs:
Firewire 400 (sustained transfer rate of 35MB/s, max for firewire 400)....
--------------- thats not enuff for you being able to escape the wrath of slashdot....
OS X software RAID / LVM
by
djtack
·
· Score: 2, Informative
While it isn't mentioned in the writeup, the firewire bridges will not make the drives appear as one. The OS will still see 6 different drives. OS X pretty easily supports software RAID and LVM, so he's almost certainly using one of those methods.
And yes, if any one of those drives dies, he's SOL, although as somebody else mentioned a RAID 5 would help this situation.
Re:Right about now....
by
veritron
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Actually, the way they get all those sick specs is by overclocking the system like crazy and installing a really nasty cooling system. Considering the insane prices they're charging for the thing it's so not worth it.
But yeah, if you do order one, it'll probably live up to the claims - it'll just be a huge waste of money.
Re:Only one thing wrong...
by
EinarH
·
· Score: 2, Informative
1/2 gigabyte per second?
I'm not aware of any IDE RAID controller that can do that, but I could be wrong.
The 3ware Escalade 7500 series is some of the best IDE RAID controllers out there and they do burst at max 190MB/s streaming (RAID 5) in read and max 70 MB/s sustained.
--
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Re:Forgive my hardware ignorance but...
by
JimRay
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It's a little confusing, especially if you're not on an OS X box, but this guy has built a software RAID setup. Essentially, all six disks are acting as one because he's used the OS X Disk Utility to set them up as one.
The problem with this is that OS X's Disk Utility doesn't support RAID 5 in software, at least not out of the box. So, you either have to stripe the six disks (lots of space, no redundancy) or mirror them (as much space as your smallest drive, full redundancy) . It looks like he went for the striping option, which is how he got over a terabyte. However, as it's been pointed out several times already, this is a bad idea because if one of those disks fails, his data is lost. And I seriously doubt he's backing this "disk" up...
What he should do (and quite possibly is doing for all I know, it's not detailed) is use something like Raid Toolkit to create a RAID 5 setup. Since RAID 5 uses both data striping and parity, his data is protected even if a disk gets hosed.
However, software-based RAID 5, at least in my understanding, isn't exactly a performance champ, so if he's doing a lot of reading and writing to that drive, he's probably better off getting a real RAID controller. However, this would make a killer media backup box.
The linux based software RAID HOW-TO is actually pretty informative for a general understanding of software RAID.
Cheers
-- My other computer is your Windows box
Re:One 1.2TB drive to the OS, or a bunch of 200GBs
by
jo_ham
·
· Score: 2, Informative
He does in fact, have it striped in OS X.
He had a screenshot of the Finder's 'get info' window for the drive. He named it, aptly enough, "BigHonkingDrive".
Re:Forgive my hardware ignorance but...
by
afidel
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Wrong calculations, that's for a 3 drive RAID-5, for a 6 drive array it's 5/6ths or 1TB in this case. In general it is (N-1)*capacity.
-- There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Be sure to use a journalled fs and LVM
by
Tracy+Reed
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Others have mentioned the necessity of RAID 5 in a setup like this but let me point out that you don't want to fsck 1T of disk. I have had to watch the fsck of 500G of disk back before we had journalled fs and it was terrible. When we started attaching many terabytes of disk to Linux boxes we needed a better solution. So you will want to use a journalled fs. Reiserfs is my favorite. Then you will not want to have to backup/restore when you decide your current partitioning layout was a bad idea or just generally want to shuffle things around so be sure to use LVM also. I use LVM on all of my machines, even desktops, and it has really made life easier. Often you will need more room on/home but notice that/var has a couple gig unused and with LVM you just shrink/var and expand/home all without reboot and you are good to go.
Re:Uhm..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
you don't need to buy a full box - you can buy a cheap old scsi box, remove the centronics ports from the back and replace them with firewire boards to connect drives to - check out the boards at firewire bridgeboards
Not an invitation for a DOS, but I would like to see what some real traffic looks like.
This is not a challenge for bots, just an underutilized server on a big pipe.
the joke (naughty words)
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Moderator - I'm not a user and I'm not familiar with your policy on naughty words so feel free to edit this post for content.
A religious woman gets a job at the local hardware store. The manager shows her where everything is so she can help customers. Some time later a guy comes in looking for a file. So she takes him to the file section. While there, she picked up a rat tail file and said "How about this nice round file here?" and the customer replies "No I'll take this flat bastard instead." The woman is shocked and runs to the manager. "That man called that file a Bastard!" THe manager explained that the term bastard refers to the type of cut on the file and that it's a perfectly normal thing to say.
A few days later another guy comes in looking for a file. Again she leads him over to the file section, but this time eager to impress, she picks up another file and says "How about this nice half round bastard?" and the guy replies, "No I'll take this little bitty motherf*cker over here."
ba dum bum
Bobby "Never though I'd have to explain that line to 4 million nerds" Kinstle
Re:What about a USB 2.0 Drive tower?
by
Curtman
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Slashdot Mirror
'Fraid it's only a mozilla grab... clicky. Images are still uploading, but I got them all...
The largest drive available at the time I started this hack was the Maxtor 200GB.
What do you think?
Here's how I did it:
1. Start with the empty case.
2. The original case fans were very noisy. In addition to that, the fan grilles cause lots of turbulence noise. So I cut them all out and replaced them with PanaFlow fluid bearing fans and wire grilles. I had to make custom power cable harnesses for these fans as well
3. As long as I was replacing noisy fans, I replaced the fans in the drive carriers with think PanaFlow FDB fans. I threw their grilles out altogether as they operate with their doors closed and the grille is, well, pointless.
4. Next I downloaded the art work for the firewire logo from Apple's web site. I printed out one that would fit and glued it to the boring beige top case. Black indicated material to be removed. First I drilled pilot holes to get the tool bits in. Then I started cutting to remove the big chunks, then I cut closer to the edges with my dremel tool, and finally filed it smooth with my half round bastard (not shown here). Those that know the joke are now snickering.
5. After this the whole case was sanded and painted with Krylon Fusion Burgundy Red. This paint takes 7 days to fully polymerize so I set it aside and focused on the electronics. I also bought a hunk of clear acrylic from TAP plastics and a 30mm round for the center of the logo.
6. OK I've got a firewire hub that mounts in the same hole as the old Centronics connector did (firewire depot), and 3 dual drive FireWire to IDE controller cards. Plus I need to supply power and route the cables for data and the LED's. I decided to mount them on the empty panels between the back of the drives and the back panel. First I had to measure the card for the stand off. Never leave home without your trusty calipers.
7. Now the cards can be mounted on my 3/4" standoffs and 4/40 screws. This project would be impossible without round IDE cables. The powered hub is visible in the lower left of the 1st picture.
8. This might look like a chaotic mess to you, but it's actually a carefully choreographed symphony of cable. The truth is, it's the only way it would all fit.
9. This is glue. Strong stuff.
10. When the front was dry, I hit it with some 3M Imperial Hand Glaze. That made it nice and shiny. Mmmmmm Shiny. (droooool)
11. Now it's time to get silly. I installed 2 6" and 2 12" tri-color cold cathode lamps. These will really spice up my life. After messing with EL wire, I have decided that it's not bright enough to be worthwhile for almost any use. CCFL lamps however are bright enough to be seen in any lighting conditions including camera flash. EL wire is only visible in low light. CCFL lamps also last longer.
12. Like EL wire, cold cathodes require a high voltage inverter.
13. Finally I mounted some LED's in the front connected to the busy signal outputs on the firewire controller cards. I may at a later date remove this metal grill to improve the lighting and airflow.
All done. Here are some beauty shots:
Please visit my archive of art work photos for this project. Click on any picture for a very high resolution photo. Some of these really move me.
Tech Specs:
Firewire 400 (sustained transfer rate of 35MB/s, max for firewire 400)
Oxford 911 chipsets
6 Maxtor 200 gig ATA 133 hard drives
4 cold cathode lamps with a combined output of 12 watts
16 LED's
Powered firewire hub
Doesn't sound like ignorance to me. If the six 200 GB drives make up a 1.2TB logical drive, there cannot be any redundancy. Six IDE drives, and no redundancy - I don't hope he have any important data there. Had he at least used RAID-4 or RAID-5 giving him a 1TB logical drive and one redundant disk, he would have a fair chance of keeping his data (assuming the broken disk gets replaced before the next fails).
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news.htm l
http://www.WinWithRealEstate.com/
FireWireDepot has a few of them.
If you actually read the article, you'll see that he's running Mac OS X, and that the OS sees his box as a single, 1.1 TB, Mac OS Extended volume called "BigHonkingDrive." So, no, the "PC" doesn't see it as 6 200 gig firewire drives.
to prevent the /. effect.
the firewire terabyte drive has just maxed out
-----------------
Tech Specs:
Firewire 400 (sustained transfer rate of 35MB/s, max for firewire 400)....
---------------
thats not enuff for you being able to escape the wrath of slashdot....
While it isn't mentioned in the writeup, the firewire bridges will not make the drives appear as one. The OS will still see 6 different drives. OS X pretty easily supports software RAID and LVM, so he's almost certainly using one of those methods.
And yes, if any one of those drives dies, he's SOL, although as somebody else mentioned a RAID 5 would help this situation.
Actually, the way they get all those sick specs is by overclocking the system like crazy and installing a really nasty cooling system. Considering the insane prices they're charging for the thing it's so not worth it. But yeah, if you do order one, it'll probably live up to the claims - it'll just be a huge waste of money.
I'm not aware of any IDE RAID controller that can do that, but I could be wrong.
The 3ware Escalade 7500 series is some of the best IDE RAID controllers out there and they do burst at max 190MB/s streaming (RAID 5) in read and max 70 MB/s sustained.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
It's a little confusing, especially if you're not on an OS X box, but this guy has built a software RAID setup. Essentially, all six disks are acting as one because he's used the OS X Disk Utility to set them up as one.
The problem with this is that OS X's Disk Utility doesn't support RAID 5 in software, at least not out of the box. So, you either have to stripe the six disks (lots of space, no redundancy) or mirror them (as much space as your smallest drive, full redundancy) . It looks like he went for the striping option, which is how he got over a terabyte. However, as it's been pointed out several times already, this is a bad idea because if one of those disks fails, his data is lost. And I seriously doubt he's backing this "disk" up...
What he should do (and quite possibly is doing for all I know, it's not detailed) is use something like Raid Toolkit to create a RAID 5 setup. Since RAID 5 uses both data striping and parity, his data is protected even if a disk gets hosed.
However, software-based RAID 5, at least in my understanding, isn't exactly a performance champ, so if he's doing a lot of reading and writing to that drive, he's probably better off getting a real RAID controller. However, this would make a killer media backup box.
The linux based software RAID HOW-TO is actually pretty informative for a general understanding of software RAID.
Cheers
My other computer is your Windows box
He does in fact, have it striped in OS X.
He had a screenshot of the Finder's 'get info' window for the drive. He named it, aptly enough, "BigHonkingDrive".
Here you go.
Wrong calculations, that's for a 3 drive RAID-5, for a 6 drive array it's 5/6ths or 1TB in this case. In general it is (N-1)*capacity.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Others have mentioned the necessity of RAID 5 in a setup like this but let me point out that you don't want to fsck 1T of disk. I have had to watch the fsck of 500G of disk back before we had journalled fs and it was terrible. When we started attaching many terabytes of disk to Linux boxes we needed a better solution. So you will want to use a journalled fs. Reiserfs is my favorite. Then you will not want to have to backup/restore when you decide your current partitioning layout was a bad idea or just generally want to shuffle things around so be sure to use LVM also. I use LVM on all of my machines, even desktops, and it has really made life easier. Often you will need more room on /home but notice that /var has a couple gig unused and with LVM you just shrink /var and expand /home all without reboot and you are good to go.
you don't need to buy a full box - you can buy a cheap old scsi box, remove the centronics ports from the back and replace them with firewire boards to connect drives to - check out the boards at firewire bridgeboards
mirror
Not an invitation for a DOS, but I would like to see what some real traffic looks like.
This is not a challenge for bots, just an underutilized server on a big pipe.
Moderator - I'm not a user and I'm not familiar with your policy on naughty words so feel free to edit this post for content.
A religious woman gets a job at the local hardware store. The manager shows her where everything is so she can help customers. Some time later a guy comes in looking for a file. So she takes him to the file section. While there, she picked up a rat tail file and said "How about this nice round file here?" and the customer replies "No I'll take this flat bastard instead." The woman is shocked and runs to the manager. "That man called that file a Bastard!" THe manager explained that the term bastard refers to the type of cut on the file and that it's a perfectly normal thing to say.
A few days later another guy comes in looking for a file. Again she leads him over to the file section, but this time eager to impress, she picks up another file and says "How about this nice half round bastard?" and the guy replies, "No I'll take this little bitty motherf*cker over here."
ba dum bum
Bobby "Never though I'd have to explain that line to 4 million nerds" Kinstle
Yep