Is it always the same drive? Are you using Western Digital green drives by chance?

The internal battery backup available for nice RAID controller cards is there to protect against write failures that can corrupt an array. If a system crashes when it is attempting to write data to the array then the data being written may be lost mid-write or worse, this could happen to the parity information, which can corrupt the array. If this were to happen it would report the entire array as corrupt or failed. It wouldn’t say that one drive has failed.

Could you post your system log report of the error?

Yeah, I just used a bunch of cables that I had laying around. Next time I order something from NewEgg I’ll add some short sata cables.

> are you out of sata ports?

Yep. 8 SATA hard drives.

>does yours have additional SATA slots?

My EP45-UD3R has 6 SATA ports on the ICH controller and 2 on the JMicron controller. 8 SATA ports total.

> And, as far as your 750′s, they’re, … IDE? What about ROM drive? What are
> you using for that?

No, the 750GB (boot) drives are SATA, in a RAID 1. The IDE cable goes to some random DVD drive, had to be IDE since I needed to use every SATA port.

> What do you do with 1.5TB of an OS drive?? Do you use windows backup for
> your OS drive?

In RAID 1 it’s only 750GB… I use it only for the operating system and as a temp location when I’m downloading files via the NAS. No backup, but there is nothing important on that array anyway. The only reason it is in a RAID is for availability, I wanted to reduce the risk of an OS crash during a write because of a failing system drive.

They are way over sized for my needs but they were cheap and have reasonably good performance.

I’ll take some more/better pictures of my computers eventually and make a post out of them.

The lights on the twelve are a bit annoying.. though, I can disable them. I’ve just been lazy about it. some people use lights/windows in their case as… status amongst their friends. I like elegent/streamlined things.. its tough though, as mfg have a compatible agenda with the people I just mentioned in that it promotes their product. Se la vie.

Looking forward to your pictures.. will they be in a new article when you do it? PS… not to assume your photog knowledge, but, make sure you flood your server with light to get best possible picture quality. :)

Yes, I’ve got the pics, I just need to clean them up and integrate them into the article. I’ve had a hectic week, I’ll get them up this weekend.

> Did you check out the CPU fan I mentioned? What were your thoughts..?

Yes. Thoughts: HOLY MASSIVE METAL BLOCK, BATMAN! Well, it’s impossible to have too much surface area on a heat sink, so long as the air flows through it properly. If even so much as a gentle breeze manages through that thing you will never have to worry about heat issues unless you overclock it a lot. Which I do not recommend for any kind of server, overclocking increases the chance of processor errors, which can corrupt any data passing through it (such as parity calculations).

> Do you have a proprietary DVR (as in, one you can’t save the media from) ..?

Nope, everything I have has a simple file transfer system of some kind, with the possible exception of the video surveillance system, but that has a normal hard drive and a network connection so I can get the data off of it if I need to. I try to avoid anything that makes it difficult to get the data off of it. Hell, I haven’t even had a cable TV subscription in 5 years.

> clearly image codes don’t work here.. was gonna try to make it easy for you..
> here are the links.

Yeah image tags don’t work very well on blog comments, but the links work just fine.

That looks like an awesome HTPC and the Antec 1200 looks amazing sitting with your media center. Though I don’t like how the stock Antec fans have LEDs, does the light bother you when you are watching a movie?

It’s going to be hard to hide away most of those cables, there is room behind the motherboard tray but one of the downsides of having the power supply at the bottom is how far the cables have to go to reach the motherboard power connectors. Even with the power cables it still looks clean. That massive heat sink is, imposing, lol.

> Hope this isn’t hijacking of your page.. would like to see your choices.

Not hijacking at all, this is very relevant to the article! Thank you for taking the time to post these. This conversation has been very helpful, and I’m sure anyone who reads this article will find some of the points here quite valuable.

Please ignore the studio light in the bg.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i258/trumanhw/Antec_Server/PPL_9870.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i258/trumanhw/Antec_Server/PPL_9871.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i258/trumanhw/Antec_Server/PPL_9872.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i258/trumanhw/Antec_Server/PPL_9873.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i258/trumanhw/Antec_Server/PPL_9874.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i258/trumanhw/Antec_Server/PPL_9876.jpg

In the mix.. you’ll see (not to imply you care..)

Pic1: The Server – obviously, with BD-RW and removable HDD.
Pic2: Close up pics of 4″ cables to 3 SATA drives and 10″ cable to OS HDD in cady.
Pic3: Close up pics of 4″ cables to 3 SATA drives
Pic4: The back of the eSATA dock
Pic5: The front of eSATA dock
Pic6: From top to bottom per column:

– Hauppage HD PVR (extract movies from DVR – DishTV in this case)
– VHS –> DVD burner (convenience.. pretty much done with it)
– Pioneer Elite VSX-94THX receiver**
– 750GB Ext drive for DishTV
– DishTV DVR. Its the best out right now…
– Sony 400 Blu-Ray disc player — downloads all DVD/audio titles from internet.

Center device is backup power supply for computer (nothing else attached). Tested to 13 minutes reserve.

Receiver being repaired and replaced. Weak iPod management, poor network/DLNA support, and had a weak HDCP board that burnt out all HDMI ports during haphazard trial and error to discover that my ATI 5770 [might] be putting out a hot signal. Replacing with Onkyo TX-NR807 — has Audyssy (compresses dynamic range so that the volume used to hear dialog doesn’t result in annoying your neighbors during action scenes in movies.

Hope this isn’t hijacking of your page.. would like to see your choices.

Regards

You still going to post those pictures?