I'm looking to setup a file server at home and seeking advice before I buy.

[Robin Laing]

Scot L. Harris wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 11:11, Robin Laing wrote:
> 
> 
>>As I am planning the same thing, I have found that looking at all the 
>>"good" RAID cards will require a new motherboard that can handle PCI-X 
>>based adapters which rate as the fastest.  This is an issue for 
>>multimedia that I want to do.  Of course, if you look around, you can 
>>purchase hardware to support the RAID card for a reasonable price.
>>
>>The case is an issue as I want the case to fit within the stereo stand 
>>and allow the addition of drive in the future.
>>
>>Review of RAID adapters.
>>http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/557
>>Some of the cards come with Linux drivers.
>>
>>At present I am going to use software raid.
> 
> 
> What is your tolerance of noise?  A while back I built a system that is
> now located with my TV. It has four 300GB harddrives.  I did not use
> RAID for this configuration but did build a 1TB file system using LVM
> for use with mythtv.
> 
> For the most part the system I built is not distractingly noise.  But I
> am more tolerant of that than most I think.  About the only time I hear
> it is after shows are recorded it starts the commercial flagging
> process.  This increases the load on the processor which causes the fans
> to spin up faster.  Almost sounds like it is rewinding a tape for a few
> minutes.  
> 
> With seven drives you will want to make sure you have adequate cooling
> and select drives that are known to be quite.  If you don't have good
> cooling the life span of your drives will be impacted.
> 


Ah, noise.  What a pain.  Of course there is heat and ....

I am looking at Peltier coolers and having the equipment behind a door. 
  Then I have to deal with the issue of getting the heat from the heat 
sinks.

If they are good enough to be used in auto AC systems (trial), then it 
should work in my stereo system.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/peltiercoolers/

I don't find the noise of a computer that bad but I am older and my ears 
are not as good as they used to be.  :)

-- 
Robin Laing