Homemade 16TB NAS dwarfs the competition with insane build quality (video)
By Sean Hollister 
posted May 7th 2010 4:59AM
posted May 7th 2010 4:59AM
posted May 7th 2010 4:59AM
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That thing must be pumping a lot of power to run. And all those drives must be getting hot all bunched together like that.
@mp3 The 2TB Greenpower are rated at
Read/Write 6.00 Watts
Idle 3.7 Watts
Standby 0.80 Watts
So times 8 we get 48/29.6/6.4 watts. Not a lot at all. The amount of heat generated is directly related to the power usage so if you had a psu with 80% efficiency your own looking at about 60watts plus maybe a couple for fans/display. There are many processors and graphics cards that use more power than that. I have 4 15k drives that use 19 watts each (76 for 4) and can easily be cooled with a one 80mm fan.
Very cool and great gob, but how do you remove just 1 drive from the stack... But it's still really amazing to say the least.
Bravo sir, bravo!
Airflow is non-existent. The UI to manage this would have to be seen... It is cosmetically nice.. but not practical.
I'd like to buy just the controller for this setup, and use a small case with drive bays that are swappable. Anyone have info re:
controller used
UI to mange..
please email me: trumanhw@gmail.com
@TrumanHW
RTFA the parts list is there
Oh - and how DARE he put USB instead of eSATA?!?
This guy needs to farm out the building of this unit and start selling them commercially.
The unit has that techo feel with the visual hard drives. And it would fit into my pile of drives decor on my desk.
Way to go NEWEGG,
This guy deserves to have Black WDs, not Greens.
@justit "Meet the Black Dwarf" (but with green WDs b/c NEWEGG was too cheap to fork out black WDs)
@justit
The performance difference is negligible, he probably rather have the power savings with the Green drives.
Despite what 'xtreme overclockerz omg raid 0 for great justice' marketing literature has been telling some fools their whole lives it does not seem that actively cooling a drive influences its fate one way or the other; see 'Failure Trends in Large Disk Drive Populations.'(http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf)
I can't authoritatively answer whether angled mounting induces premature failure in a drive but I'd reckon that it does not. Gravity has no influence on the normal operation of a drive and the magnitude of the force created by it acting on the drive platter is probably negligible from the spindle bearing's perspective, making the only possible mode of failure seem rather unlikely.
@brainskill almost every drive today(on many older drives it was not advices to lay them on their side) are equally reliable if ran vertical,horizontal, upside-down, on there side etc. Most drives are made to be ran so that they are flat though, so laying on its side is ok, but shouldn't be on its side at like a 30 degree angle.
Very Nice, but man that's a lot of work
I thought WD Green Hard Drives were not ideal for RAID because of the variable spin rate, did he set them all to 5400 RPM?
@coldmast Unless something changed recently the Green drives never really had a variable spin rate. One problem that can happen is that the GP's are setup to lift the reading heads to reduce drag on the disks to increase efficiency, the problem is the timeout is very short, like 7 seconds. Even things like reading the SMART data or Temperture data from the drives will cause them to unpark. The consumer version is "only" rated for 300,000 parks and the "raid" version 600,000 parks. If you had software that checks the HD data or a computer that writes out some sort of cache to disk every 30 seconds they would park 2,880 times per day (2 x 60 x 24) which means they would reach the rated spec in a little over 104(consumer)/208("raid" version) days.
The editing must have taken forever.
This guy is my hero. Or maybe a God.
That said, he probably could have built a less precise case in 1/10 the time. I know that's not the point.
Amazing camerawork, too. This is the best 1080p video I've seen on YouTube.
That's a nice amount of storage for Blu-ray backups.
What OS was he going to use. I would think a Linux based NAS Software
With a system this pricey i estimate without the drives and metal for the enclosures I priced it at 614.98
that is just for the Mobo, ram, display, Raid card. think 8 2tb drives at 160 each? 1280 so close to 2k?
@Major Payne
Metal is hella cheap. 1 pound of aluminium is ~ $1.00.
@Major Payne This build is heavily sponsored. From what I can see he at least got the drives, the RAM (not sure about the mobo) and actually some of the tools used from sponsors.
So, not expensive :) It helps having that much talent I guess...
I hope he remembers to turn on TLER or he won't be happy the first time a drive has a sector error.
Skills = Awesome
Design = A Duff Man "OH YEAH!"
Function = HOT HOT HOT No Swap Swap Swap
Practicality = Burning Hundo's to light cigars
Awesome video and nice build. This guy really knows what he's doing. Build quality is good but not industial yet. Would've also been nice to have hot swappable hard drives :p.
It is always a special treat to see technology built by hand, especially when they put such care into it.
But can he make a wooden key holder?
Absolutely awesome work! Definitely the best 18 or so minutes I've spent watching YouTube in a LONG time. I'd love to have this sitting on my desk just humming away.
@MRCUR - I couldn't agree more!
Watch the Behind The Scenes vid, too!
I like this guys work. Well done in a garage fabrication shop.
I want his equipment! I think that most of us envy not only the results but his talent and skills to produce something that, in the end, looks very professional (despite not using a prototyping 3D modelling software & CNC system. Very good welding! Aluminium is VERY difficult to weld - right.
I really want the equipment list that he used to build this. I have room in my converted carport/lab/shop to do this and I want better equipment.
Cheers from Downunder!
@MizuInOz I think all the welded parts were steel.
I am just wondering why he didn't use SATA connectors or did I miss that. Looks like USB to me. BUt I need reading glasses to find my glasses! :)
@MizuInOz All the drives are connected using SATA. The two connectors on the front panel are USB, presumably for moving files to memory sticks and portable hard drives.. Makes sense, as USB is still much more compatible than eSATA.
Wow, that was impressive, wish I had those tools available to me.
Man, that was awesome to watch. What a skillful guy in so many areas. If he replaced the clear top with a steel one it could double as a fallout shelter for hard drives! Lol.
Amazing man! I watched both parts & I'm amazed at the work, effort, time & skill that went into your project! Superb job dude!
God bless ya!
everything about him yell "Insane!!!'' All that techniques, all those manly tools,gosh!!
wow, he not only knows computers but also his tools and video editing!!
very well done, very well done indeed!!
This is so totally awesome. I almost wet myself. Best YouTube video I've ever seen.
As far as I know, it's not healthy for HD drives to be angled. They should be positioned in any 90 degrees position (horizontal or vertical). Not doing so will shorten these drives life. It was like that around 10 years ago, and I still think it's the same gravity that exists. But, anyway - this is just for showing.
This is indeed awesome. But now you have another problem. Backing this sucker up.
And don't you dare say that RAID5 means you don't need to back it up. Dumbass.