How Many Gigs Do U Share?

[TRshady]

I share 8 GB, my slave hdd is devoted to kazaa , How can people share 700GB??????

[J'Pol]

Originally posted by TRshady@19 February 2003 - 15:10
I share 8 GB, my slave hdd is devoted to kazaa , How can people share 700GB??????

An intriguing question. Must be a reasonably serious server, with the capacity to add several large drives together.

For a normal home PC without doing some tweeking the most you can have is really 4 hard drives. 2 on the primary IDE and two on the secondary. At say 200GB each that would give you 800GB, but that would use up all of your available channels, so no DVD or CD.

Unless of course you either added extra IDE chanels. Or ran some of the stuff through scsi. You could also do it using external drives, either USB2 or Firewire.

Whatever way you did it it wouldn't be cheap.

The other thing is that it would be spread about various folders and not look like one big 700Gb shared folder. For it all to be in the one folder, now that would be a good trick. Unless you used some sort of software to make it look that way, but why bother.

I think the server is the only viable option

I have a 40Gb hard drive. I share around 13 GB, it fluctuates, but it is normally around that amount. It is in various locations, as that is how I like to store it. Movies in one place, mp3's in another etc. I use K++, Direct Connect, EMule and Soulseek, though not all at the same time (well sometimes). All of the shared folders are available to all of the networks. Basically I share everything on my PC that may be of any use to anyone else.


Cheers

JimF

[Luca_Snipes]

The other thing is that it would be spread about various folders and not look like one big 700Gb shared folder. For it all to be in the one folder, now that would be a good trick. Unless you used some sort of software to make it look that way, but why bother.

Most modern motherboards come with RAID chips on them, so you can put 8 drives on, or in my case 6HDD, DVD, CD-RW. these also alow you to span drives in hardware, eg - 4 x 200GB disks look like one 800GB disk to any OS that you run.
As for cheap - an average PCI IDE RAID card now costs approx. £30.


As for the server option - most only have 40GB or so, these days everthing lives on SAN's (Storage Area Networks) (£1m plus) or NAS (Network Attached Storage) (£000's)

[TRshady]

wow, thanks for that Jim F.
Interesting, I would'nt go that far though if I Wanted a Big hdd.
And I though my new 40GB hard drive was big.................

[spudlover]

My 20GB of mp3s, apps and movies don't sound all that good now

[imported_computerfreak76]

its kinda like the old saying its not how BIG it is, its HOW you use it.

[J'Pol]

Originally posted by Luca_Snipes@19 February 2003 - 19:27

The other thing is that it would be spread about various folders and not look like one big 700Gb shared folder. For it all to be in the one folder, now that would be a good trick. Unless you used some sort of software to make it look that way, but why bother.

Most modern motherboards come with RAID chips on them, so you can put 8 drives on, or in my case 6HDD, DVD, CD-RW. these also alow you to span drives in hardware, eg - 4 x 200GB disks look like one 800GB disk to any OS that you run.
As for cheap - an average PCI IDE RAID card now costs approx. £30.


As for the server option - most only have 40GB or so, these days everthing lives on SAN's (Storage Area Networks) (£1m plus) or NAS (Network Attached Storage) (£000's)

Thanks for the info, very informative.

How do your 8 drives connect. Do you have 4 physical connectors on the board, and connect two devices to each as master and slave. Or are their two connectors on the board, on which you connect four drives to each. Presumably one master and three slaves.

On reading again it appears that you had to add two RAID IDE cards. So you had the 2 connectors on the motherboard, giving you your 4 normal devices, plus 2 added as PCI cards, giving you your extra 4 devices. Hence the 8 devices. I have to say that for someone like me, that would constitute tweaking. It would also, if I read you correctly tie up two PCI devices, not so much of a problem nowadays as they aren't really used for a lot.

Where do you put all of the devices. If I am right about how you have connected them then no problem. But how do you connect them inside the box itself. I have a dvd a cd and 2hdd's. That fills my case, or at least the device slots. Where are you getting the extra four slots from. You must also have an excellent power supply, with 8 feeds, to run all of these devices. I know you can split the normal feeds in two using adaptors, but you still need a power supply that can cope.

Lets be honest you really need to have a large tower case, with 8 free slots, a top of the range power supply, with eight power connectors, two additional ide connectors, 4 200GB HDD's and some serious cooling going on. I can't see you having bought that at PC World. Neither can I see it as having been particularly cheap. It seems to be state of the art everything.

Whatever way you look at it that must have cost a few bar to put together. OK so I'm jealous, but you can't be short of a bob or two to put a system like that together.

Like I said a bit of tweeking and not cheap.

Cheers

JimF

PS Why would you want it to act like one 800GB drive. I have a 40GB hard drive and I split it into partitions. Just curious

[J'Pol]

In fact couldn't you describe your system as a RAID server.

Cheers

JimF

[Luca_Snipes]

1) The RAID boards (or on board controlers) etc act like a normal IDE chain - you put 2 devices on a cable, so a RAID card has 2 extra channels on it - therefore 4 connectors, 4 cables with 2 devices on (did you get that - i lost my self )

In other words it give 2 extra physical connectors

2) I'm running it all off a 350W PSU (OK so it's an Enermax, and they do cost a bit, but they good)

3) Just a standard Tower case - OK so it's a nice aluminum one...(mines a Coolermaster ATC210, which is only about 18" high btw)

4) Cost about £500 to do this sorta config with out monitors, and a non aluminum case

5) I don't use it all as one big disk - i know some people do, it was just an example

6) Do PC-World know what a PC is??


edit: - fixing my description a bit - I hope!