Server that supports 8+ Sata 3 HDDs?

Hardware
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1

I would like to know which server that can be bought on ebay supports 8+ HDDs. Instead of buying a NAS, I want to do a server that would support up to 8 HDDs or more for my media consumption.

2

For media consumption it is not really worth it to do a server. Try finding a chassis, LSI card and backplate.

I have recently bought G6 based HP StorageWorks 4500 G2 and pretty much for scrap price. But it has limitations (RAID but no HBA, Backplate has an extender)

So if you can find this or super micro chassis you can go pretty low with price (like sub $300)

1 Like
3

What would be the best shucking setup?

4

Just to explain why:
Drives take power regardless of size - so you want to keep the drives nice and large 8TB SATA - so will you really need more than 3?
If you are going to transcode, then you want Ivy Bridge and newer. However PC hardware will allow you to down clock easily.
Performance will only cost you electricity - so no RAID, just do SnapRAID with daily and manual synchronizations.

So losing efficiency on things like back plate, LSI card is worth it, same goes for Ivy Bridge era Xeon (do not go older than that)

Things that depend on you application:

  • redundant power sources & PDU
  • High power fans

Things you do not want to waste power on:

  • SAS drives
  • Dual CPU systems
  • RAID (striping and sync will wake more discs more often)
5

Super micro 4U backplate with Chassis and LSI card that support as many links as you need. (Careful that those extra links need more cables and those can go up in price)

Us a nice Gold PSU, Intel board with Ivy bridge, Haswell or Kaby i7
usually just 4-8GBs of RAM and one small and not cheap SSD for transcode storage.

6

I have a 2700x and a motherboard I can use for cpu and motherboard for the server. I transcode everything with handbrake so it is compressed significantly without losing quality. This way my computer doesnt have to actively encode/transcode just to watch a file over the internet using plex.

7

I have a 2700x, c7h, and 16gb of ram. All I need is a chassis and a power supply plus the drives of course.

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Makes sense, plex will transcode often anyway due to web client (I found it quite unreliable with Firefox, Chrome and TV/PS4 apps.)

Then focus on the chassis to support your ATX board and the card supporting 8TB drives.
If you find some offers you like you can let us know and we can share the research burden.

Without knowing you location and shipping options it is harder to deal with.

BTW if you can use 8 drives you might just want to buy Fractal Design R4/R5 and one SATA3 card.

9

Generally shipping is not a problem. I am in the United States, Ohio to be precise.