Server upgrade

Well, I'm afraid to say that this blog entry isn't directly about Mythtv.  This one is about the new hardware I just added into my server.  So here's the baseline, pre-upgrade:

• Biostar 6100-based motherboard,
• AMD 3800+ X2 CPU
• 1 or 2 GB of RAM (I forget how much)
• 1x 8GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
• 4x 400GB Samsung SATA hard drives
• Seasonic 430W PSU
• Antec P180 case

The reason for the upgrade?  I ran out of hard drive space of course.  1.6TB just doesn't cut it anymore!   So, by way of a recent shellshocker at Newegg, I purchased a 1.5TB Western Digital Green Power hard drive.  However, because I had already fully populated the available SATA ports on the motherboard I was forced to add a SATA controller.  On a whim I purchased a Vantec 4+1 SATA II 300 & PATA controller.  It includes 2x internal SATA ports, 2x eSATA ports and one IDE port but theoretically only Windows support.  Well, after a few minutes of fiddling I am happy to say that the new controller and hard drive started right up with no fiddling on my part (other than formatting the new hard drive).

The problem that I ran into was that one of my Samsung hard drives didn't want to start back up after I added the new hard drive.

It had nothing to do with the new hard drive, I tried removing that and it still didn't work.  Well, after a couple of tries I was able to get it started again.  So I figure that I'd better back up the data as quickly as possible in case it happens again and I can't get it working.  So I get ready to copy when numbers start jumping into my head...  I have 1.6GB of data to back up and 1.5TB of space to back it up onto...  Hmmm... That's not gonna work.  Well, Newegg comes to the rescue again.  Just today I find that the same 1.5TB Western Digital hard drives are on sale, and on top of that Newegg had a promo code for 10% off all hard drives!  I the end it turned out to be the same price as the shellshocker.  Not bad at all.  So in a couple of days I'll start the backup process for real so that I don't have to go through this again.  Hopefully I'll be able to get by for a while with 4.6TB of space.  Only time will tell.

While I'm here though, I just thought I'd throw out some power numbers that rather surprised me.  This was the first time I've tested how much power my server was sucking.  With all of my current drives installed there was a spike at powerup reaching about 225W and then settled in at around 130W in average use.  As a point of comparison I also ran the same tests without the Samsung drives installed.  At powerup the system spiked at around 125W and settled in at 110W.  Apparently those Samsung drives spike a little at power up.  It looks like in everyday use they each draw about 5W.  I am sad to say that I did not take power measurements before and after I added the new drive, however I will try to do that when I add the new drive to the mix.

Hope someone out there found that somewhat exciting.  Feel free to drop me a note.  Now I'll go back to testing Mythtv distros.  Cya!