Nice find of that laptop!

HP z220 and HP z420

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-06, 18:27:

6) has built in raid controller ( raid levels 0-4 ) with 4 drives.

I'm not a fan of hw RAID controllers. If they fail, you're hunting for a replacement so you can salvage your array. Software redundancy with today's CPUs is extremely fast and more resilient.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-07-14, 22:21:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-06, 18:27:

6) has built in raid controller ( raid levels 0-4 ) with 4 drives.

I'm not a fan of hw RAID controllers. If they fail, you're hunting for a replacement so you can salvage your array. Software redundancy with today's CPUs is extremely fast and more resilient.

I agree wholeheartedly . Outside of some specific scenarios, hardware RAID is not really needed, especially for home users and even more so if you are running a dedicated DIY NAS .
Additionally, hardware RAID controllers need specific drivers and get deprecated, which means your next OS update may drop support, whereas AHCI is likely to be with us for a while still .

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-07-14, 22:21:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-06, 18:27:

6) has built in raid controller ( raid levels 0-4 ) with 4 drives.

I'm not a fan of hw RAID controllers. If they fail, you're hunting for a replacement so you can salvage your array. Software redundancy with today's CPUs is extremely fast and more resilient.

They have gotten much better. Most of the latest controllers i've gotten my dirty dick beaters on, can read arrays made by otehr models of cards, provided the new card is the same brand and has the physical features needed to do so.

That said, my 24 drive array at home has a "proper" raid card, however I flashed it to "dumb" mode and I run FreeNAS with ZFS3.

first thing I did with the raid controller in my server was flash HBA firmware ^^

luckybob wrote on 2020-07-15, 00:08:

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-07-14, 22:21:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-06, 18:27:

6) has built in raid controller ( raid levels 0-4 ) with 4 drives.

I'm not a fan of hw RAID controllers. If they fail, you're hunting for a replacement so you can salvage your array. Software redundancy with today's CPUs is extremely fast and more resilient.

They have gotten much better. Most of the latest controllers i've gotten my dirty dick beaters on, can read arrays made by otehr models of cards, provided the new card is the same brand and has the physical features needed to do so.

That said, my 24 drive array at home has a "proper" raid card, however I flashed it to "dumb" mode and I run FreeNAS with ZFS3.

My array isn't as big, but ZFS sure is snazzy.

You're probably right in that a lot of OEM RAID controllers are using an LSI chipset these days, so compatibility should be better. The vendor recommended method to avoid this issue probably remains to have cold spares in stock as it remains the best method for avoiding incompatibility. Using HBAs completely sidesteps the issue which I like a lot.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-07-15, 02:19:

luckybob wrote on 2020-07-15, 00:08:

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-07-14, 22:21:

I'm not a fan of hw RAID controllers. If they fail, you're hunting for a replacement so you can salvage your array. Software redundancy with today's CPUs is extremely fast and more resilient.

They have gotten much better. Most of the latest controllers i've gotten my dirty dick beaters on, can read arrays made by otehr models of cards, provided the new card is the same brand and has the physical features needed to do so.

That said, my 24 drive array at home has a "proper" raid card, however I flashed it to "dumb" mode and I run FreeNAS with ZFS3.

My array isn't as big, but ZFS sure is snazzy.

You're probably right in that a lot of OEM RAID controllers are using an LSI chipset these days, so compatibility should be better. The vendor recommended method to avoid this issue probably remains to have cold spares in stock as it remains the best method for avoiding incompatibility. Using HBAs completely sidesteps the issue which I like a lot.

To be fair, I recently replaced the H700 LSI-based RAID controller in my R710 homelab machine with a cheap Marvell SATA HBA and I did not need to format any of the "single drive arrays" that I had. I imagine a RAID1 array might be recoverable too (or at least the data, if not the array itself) using mdadm . I have strong doubts that anything else would work .

Bought a used Intel 6950X from somebody in China who said they upgraded to a new AMD chip a few months back.... price was really, really, really, really good so we shall see what I get when it arrives. Hopefully not a scam... If so, I'll just put in an eBay dispute and go from there.

darry wrote on 2020-07-15, 03:00:

To be fair, I recently replaced the H700 LSI-based RAID controller in my R710 homelab machine with a cheap Marvell SATA HBA and I did not need to format any of the "single drive arrays" that I had. I imagine a RAID1 array might be recoverable too (or at least the data, if not the array itself) using mdadm . I have strong doubts that anything else would work .

Yes, that makes sense.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-07-15, 14:45:

darry wrote on 2020-07-15, 03:00:

To be fair, I recently replaced the H700 LSI-based RAID controller in my R710 homelab machine with a cheap Marvell SATA HBA and I did not need to format any of the "single drive arrays" that I had. I imagine a RAID1 array might be recoverable too (or at least the data, if not the array itself) using mdadm . I have strong doubts that anything else would work .

Yes, that makes sense.

RAID 1 is just a 1:1 mirror. You can hook up one of the drives from the array and read it without having to do any type of recovery.... As long as at least one of the drives is still good that is.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-07-15, 21:49:

RAID 1 is just a 1:1 mirror. You can hook up one of the drives from the array and read it without having to do any type of recovery.... As long as at least one of the drives is still good that is.

I'm familiar with RAID levels. RAID 1 (and JBOD which isn't really RAID) is simple enough that vendors can't really mess up the format.

890fx motherboard, 2 Biostar 990fx boards, 2 Phenom ii 1055t's, corsair h50 cooler, 16gb ddr3 1600 and a r9 Fury. Dirt cheap!

Got these "black crystal pudding keycaps" from Ebay from some random chinese seller.. figured they would be garbage for $20. Well, they look pretty epic on my Ducky One TKL RGB keyboard. haha. They are pretty much just a cherry profile keycap, doubleshot with one layer being black with the letter shine-through, then the whole overcoat is thick clear resin. They feel a little weird as far as the surface finish goes, similar to a plastic piano key, very glossy. 🤣 But for $20 shipped, I am more than satisfied how they turned out. Really, I'm just using them as a temporary keycap set until my GMK Mecha-01's come in from a group buy.

This HP z220 with sata SSD and 16bg of ram and quad core Intel i5 works very well with MS Windows.
I like it. 😀

I just bought a Kingston 480GB SSD for my backups and virtual machines needs. I can now free some much needed storage space on my MacBook to that SSD.

My latest toy:

I have a Dell Force10 S55T-AC-R 48-port Gb switch with 4x 10Gb fiber ports on the way. This is gonna be sweet to use once I have my office set up and have my servers racked.

For some reason these can go really cheap used. $75 shipped for a fully decked out switch ain't bad at all.

Going to have this setup for the 10Gb ports.
1. File server
2. My computer
3. Wife's computer
4. ??? Maybe a VM host.

Then the rest will be through the 1Gb ports.

I was also looking at used HP switches but the power draw of newer Dell switch is only 130w (I guess fully loaded) while the idle power draw of the 24 port HP switch is 169w and the 48 port was over 200w.

Either way, the power draw of the Dell switch is way less which is not surprising as it is a newer platform.

I've already got the Chelsio 10Gb fiber cards and have for a while. They are older ones that came from Netapp SANs but they work great. The drivers haven't been updated in a very long time but they still work just fine in Windows 10 and Server 2019.

Hoping to back up everything to the file server and then have the backup folder shared out and mapped to one of our computers and have Backblaze back it up. Guess I probably need to get a UPS and put in at least one 20A 120v circuit.

Oh yeah... I'll most likely put up a permanent ftp server as well at that point. I should end up having around 24TB or so of available storage if I only use one file server.

UGG. I gave up on the chelsio cards. I got lucky and found 5x i540 cards for $30 each. (lot auctions are awesome)

luckybob wrote on 2020-07-23, 02:30:

UGG. I gave up on the chelsio cards. I got lucky and found 5x i540 cards for $30 each. (lot auctions are awesome)

The Chelsio cards work perfectly. You just have to have the correct driver for them. Ples you have to have the correct fiber cables... 50/125. The first cables I bought were not that and they didn't work.
I use these:

But getting those Intel cards for $30 a piece is pretty sweet.

I've already got fiber cables and the Dell switch has the fiber port add-on cards... so everything will just work. I'll have to get some nice long fiber cables later on but fiber cables are fairly cheap.