Building a 1TB+ File Server

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: Pariah

$2600 for a do-it-yourself terabyte of useable storage to store music and movie files that at most 2 people will ever be using at once? You can probably get a corporate prebuilt/preconfigured NAS box from Dell with a similar feature list and techsupport in the same price range

Show me a link for a 1TB RAID-5 NAS with hot swap bays and a hot spare for $2167.

The UPS doesn't count. That was going to be purchased regardless.

I could spend $300 less if we didn't want hot swap bays but the convenience is worth it.

I could drop another $100 by getting rid of those Vantec fans but the peace of mind is worth it.

I am open to suggestions.

This is not just for "music and movie files." This server is a backup for two large radio stations.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: The Manufacturers Site
The 64-bit PCI-X architecture supports transfer rates above 1 gigabyte per second, and operates up to 133MHz. In addition, it is backwards compatible with the existing standard PCI bus.

 

[lansalot]

Why not mirror the system drive? Single point of failure there still. Or make it part of your raid5, just carve off a small partition for that.

Why risk the stability of the system on a single drive? Not worth it.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: PerfeK

Originally posted by: Phil
Here's a link to a 5-bay hot-swap SATA caddy, we use them at work and they're very reliable. One thing I should mention is that it has a maximum transfer rate of 150Mb/sec - I don't know if this is per-drive or per-caddy (i.e. either 150Mb/sec per drive, or 150Mb/sec for all 5 drives). If it's the latter, then this will impede performance, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a regular desktop motherboard that has PCI-X slots, so I wouldn't worry about it too much

As for auto-rebuild; yes, if the controller supports it then it should start rebuilding automatically. It's highly recommended to keep the GAM software for the card loaded (array monitoring software), as not only will this inform you of any problems, it can perform maintenance on the array, such as displaying bad block lists, adding/removing hot spare drives, etc.

You'll definitely be wanting a UPS. APC make great UPSs, but they're expensive. Belkin-made units are also pretty good.

Low-noise cooling is going to be an issue. Any half-decent 5-bay caddy will have a 60mm/80mm fan mounted in the front (see the link I posted above for an example), and these tend not to be the quietest of fans in the world - they're designed to keep drives cool, and that's it.

A good bet might be to look at an Aerogate fanbus controller- as long as it's set up correctly, it will spin the fans up and down depending on the temperature readings it receives. For example, mine spins the rear exhaust fan up if the graphics card probe reads above 65C, and spins it back down to 1400rpm (virtually silent) when it cools back down. Recommended

[Edit] The LSI controllers are good performers and reliable - definitely a good choice.

[Edit2] This UPS should do you fine, 1500VA which gives ~800W for 4 minutes - long enough for a shutdown. Half-load should give you 12 minutes runtime, and that's roughly what you're aiming for.

[Edit3] One more thing - I cannot recommend strongly enough for you to keep a spare drive around should one of the drives in the array fail. If a drive fails, then you're skating on thin ice until it's replaced and the array has completed a rebuild. The array will keep running if a drive dies, but you should swap the failed disk, stat, unless you enjoy running the risk of losing your data

This is why a large proportion of the RAID systems we sell at work come in a 3+1, 4+1 etc setup - 3 or 4 drive in the actual array, and one more as a hot-spare; i.e. one that will kick in automatically and begin a rebuild without any intervention. Once the dead drive is replaced, then it becomes the new hot spare.

Do you have any links to better looking hot swap bays?

We use ICY-Dock units exclusively at work, so I don't know unfortunately. However, looks should be your last concern- we have had one failure of this bay in the last year, and that was the fan becoming gummed-up with dust. Highly recommended.
I have no experience with the Vantec hot-swap bays, but I would seriously, seriously look at something that doesn't come with a pointless LCD screen and other gimmicky features - this server is about stability and reliability, and you don't want anything compromising that. Remember, it's more to go wrong

I'll definitely remember to keep the software running. Thanks for the recommendation.

:thumbsup:

What will that UPS be able to power the server, his notebook and his 2405FPW? Doesn't the UPS send a signal that tells the computers connected to shut down?

I'm not sure if you'll be able to power all three, for that I'd look into a 2200VA unit that will provide some serious muscle, if you need it.
However, all decent UPSs will send a signal to attached PCs running the (for example, APC use PowerChute) software to tell them to shut down. A UPS is not designed to run attached equipment for any useful length of time - it's designed to give clean power and a clean shutdown should the power go out.

I'm buying six drives, putting five into a 1TB RAID-5 array and using the 6th as a hot spare in the system.

Good stuff :thumbsup:

I think you may have missed this so I'll ask again. Is this a good RAID card? If not, could you recommend something from ZipZoomFly? I couldn't find any reviews online. It's an SATAII card with NCQ.

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_300_8x.html

Nope, I already answered that:

The LSI controllers are good performers and reliable - definitely a good choice.

It'll be fine, I definitely prefer LSI controllers to Promise, for example, as their BIOSes are well laid-out, and they perform decent background initialisation amongst other things. I don't have much experience with Highpoint either though.
The company I work for uses enterprise-class hardware in 90% of it's servers (for example, the Intel SC5300 chassis with the Intel hot-swap bays), and anything less than that uses Promise cards (because they're cheap... <spit>).

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: PerfeK

Originally posted by: dowxpLSI isn't a crap company.

Thanks. As long as they aren't bogus, I'm cool.

I really appreciate all of the help. I'm FINALLY done. Time to email the lists and bide my time until I hook this up on July 11th when I visit him.

So what's the procedure for setting up a server like this?

-Install hardware except for RAID card and HDDs
-Install XP on Systm Drive
-Install RAID card in PCI, add hard drives
-Boot into RAID utility and configure?

Is that how it works? Do I just do it like any other computer? The card should come with software, right?

Yes.

You won't need to worry about pressing F6 during the Windows install as you won't be booting from the array.
Configuring the RAID with, for example, an LSI card is simple- you wait for the LSI BIOS screen to show (when it scans for drives) and then I think the key combo is Alt-R for RAID options (although it'll show this on the screen), and then choose the Assisted RAID setup option, which will take you through the various options. Set your stripe size to 64k or less, there's no reason to set it any higher unless you need balls-to-the-wall speed; something that your network won't be able to keep up with anyway, so you might as well stick to a smaller stripe size.
Then, you'll have to Initialize the array, but you can boot into Windows and carry on while this completes- you'll notice a lot of hard disk activity while the initialisation completes, but you can still use the array while this is happening.

Two things:

1. Remember the GAM software!

2. Test the UPS - make sure it's fully charged and the software's loaded on the PC, then pull the connection to the wall and make sure it a) runs the server okay for an "acceptable" timeframe and b) that the software is shutting the machine down cleanly. If you don't test it properly and you have a power outage, you'll be kicking yourself

Good luck!

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: lansalot
Why not mirror the system drive? Single point of failure there still. Or make it part of your raid5, just carve off a small partition for that.

Why risk the stability of the system on a single drive? Not worth it.

The single drive is independent of the array. If that fails, the array is protected. This isn't mission critical so I'm not worried about it. We'll just buy another one if anythig happens. If push comes to shove, I'll do a RAID-1 of the system drive down the road.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: PerfeK

Originally posted by: Phil
Here's a link to a 5-bay hot-swap SATA caddy, we use them at work and they're very reliable. One thing I should mention is that it has a maximum transfer rate of 150Mb/sec - I don't know if this is per-drive or per-caddy (i.e. either 150Mb/sec per drive, or 150Mb/sec for all 5 drives). If it's the latter, then this will impede performance, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a regular desktop motherboard that has PCI-X slots, so I wouldn't worry about it too much

As for auto-rebuild; yes, if the controller supports it then it should start rebuilding automatically. It's highly recommended to keep the GAM software for the card loaded (array monitoring software), as not only will this inform you of any problems, it can perform maintenance on the array, such as displaying bad block lists, adding/removing hot spare drives, etc.

You'll definitely be wanting a UPS. APC make great UPSs, but they're expensive. Belkin-made units are also pretty good.

Low-noise cooling is going to be an issue. Any half-decent 5-bay caddy will have a 60mm/80mm fan mounted in the front (see the link I posted above for an example), and these tend not to be the quietest of fans in the world - they're designed to keep drives cool, and that's it.

A good bet might be to look at an Aerogate fanbus controller- as long as it's set up correctly, it will spin the fans up and down depending on the temperature readings it receives. For example, mine spins the rear exhaust fan up if the graphics card probe reads above 65C, and spins it back down to 1400rpm (virtually silent) when it cools back down. Recommended

[Edit] The LSI controllers are good performers and reliable - definitely a good choice.

[Edit2] This UPS should do you fine, 1500VA which gives ~800W for 4 minutes - long enough for a shutdown. Half-load should give you 12 minutes runtime, and that's roughly what you're aiming for.

[Edit3] One more thing - I cannot recommend strongly enough for you to keep a spare drive around should one of the drives in the array fail. If a drive fails, then you're skating on thin ice until it's replaced and the array has completed a rebuild. The array will keep running if a drive dies, but you should swap the failed disk, stat, unless you enjoy running the risk of losing your data

This is why a large proportion of the RAID systems we sell at work come in a 3+1, 4+1 etc setup - 3 or 4 drive in the actual array, and one more as a hot-spare; i.e. one that will kick in automatically and begin a rebuild without any intervention. Once the dead drive is replaced, then it becomes the new hot spare.

Do you have any links to better looking hot swap bays?

We use ICY-Dock units exclusively at work, so I don't know unfortunately. However, looks should be your last concern- we have had one failure of this bay in the last year, and that was the fan becoming gummed-up with dust. Highly recommended.
I have no experience with the Vantec hot-swap bays, but I would seriously, seriously look at something that doesn't come with a pointless LCD screen and other gimmicky features - this server is about stability and reliability, and you don't want anything compromising that. Remember, it's more to go wrong

I'll definitely remember to keep the software running. Thanks for the recommendation.

:thumbsup:

What will that UPS be able to power the server, his notebook and his 2405FPW? Doesn't the UPS send a signal that tells the computers connected to shut down?

I'm not sure if you'll be able to power all three, for that I'd look into a 2200VA unit that will provide some serious muscle, if you need it.
However, all decent UPSs will send a signal to attached PCs running the (for example, APC use PowerChute) software to tell them to shut down. A UPS is not designed to run attached equipment for any useful length of time - it's designed to give clean power and a clean shutdown should the power go out.

I'm buying six drives, putting five into a 1TB RAID-5 array and using the 6th as a hot spare in the system.

Good stuff :thumbsup:

I think you may have missed this so I'll ask again. Is this a good RAID card? If not, could you recommend something from ZipZoomFly? I couldn't find any reviews online. It's an SATAII card with NCQ.

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_300_8x.html

Nope, I already answered that:

The LSI controllers are good performers and reliable - definitely a good choice.

It'll be fine, I definitely prefer LSI controllers to Promise, for example, as their BIOSes are well laid-out, and they perform decent background initialisation amongst other things. I don't have much experience with Highpoint either though.
The company I work for uses enterprise-class hardware in 90% of it's servers (for example, the Intel SC5300 chassis with the Intel hot-swap bays), and anything less than that uses Promise cards (because they're cheap... <spit>).

I'm going with the Highpoint RocketRAID 2200 instead. It is half the price and compatible with the motherboard. The LSI is keyed for PCI-X only unfortunately.

 

[jamori]

Originally posted by: PerfeK
I'm going with the Highpoint RocketRAID 2200 instead. It is half the price and compatible with the motherboard. The LSI is keyed for PCI-X only unfortunately.

Thank god .. that other was far too expensive.

FYI, that card doesn't do the hardware RAID5, but that isnt as big of a deal if you've got the 3000+ and aren't using the computer for anything else.

To answer a queston from earlier, yes, the HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A does have hardware assisted RAID5 and supports up to 8 drives. The only place I found the IDE adapters was on eBay, but I didn't look very hard. Check out highpoint's website (highpoint-tech.com)

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: jamori

Originally posted by: PerfeK
I'm going with the Highpoint RocketRAID 2200 instead. It is half the price and compatible with the motherboard. The LSI is keyed for PCI-X only unfortunately.

Thank god .. that other was far too expensive.

FYI, that card doesn't do the hardware RAID5, but that isnt as big of a deal if you've got the 3000+ and aren't using the computer for anything else.

To answer a queston from earlier, yes, the HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A does have hardware assisted RAID5 and supports up to 8 drives. The only place I found the IDE adapters was on eBay, but I didn't look very hard. Check out highpoint's website (highpoint-tech.com)

I'm using SATA drives so adapters aren't needed.

Which should I buy, the 1820A with hardware RAID-5 or the 2200 with SATAII and NCQ.

I know that the 2200 has staggered spin-up but I'm not sure if the 1820A has it. That is important as there is only 17A on the second rail for the drives.

 

[PerfeK]

 

[PerfeK]

 

[Pariah]

PROMISE UltraTrak SX4000 External SCSI to ATA RAID Subsystem - $1153

4 x WD SE 320GB - $588

960GB usable for $1741. Even that's a pretty retarded amount to spend on something like this, but it's still $600 less than what you're spending. I could certainly build one myself without the overpriced external RAID box enclosure for much less. You'll also need a cheap U160 SCSI card. Should be found for under $50.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: Pariah
PROMISE UltraTrak SX4000 External SCSI to ATA RAID Subsystem - $1153

4 x WD SE 320GB - $588

960GB usable for $1741. Even that's a pretty retarded amount to spend on something like this, but it's still $600 less than what you're spending. I could certainly build one myself without the overpriced external RAID box enclosure for much less. You'll also need a cheap U160 SCSI card. Should be found for under $50.

Where is the hot spare? So then we need to add another $147.

That's $1888.

Then we have to figure out a way to connect that SCSI to a gigabit ethernet network. Last time I checked, you can't use PCI SCSI cards in laptops. For this, let's just say we could. Add another $50.

$1938.

Is it expandable? No. I'm stuck at that size unless I buy another enclosure or throw away the drives for larger 400-500gb ones.

If I spend $71 more, I can get this:

$158 - Coolermaster CM Stacker
$266 - Highpoint RocketRAID 8 Port SATAII RAID-5 Card
$82 - Antec Truepower 2.0 430W (12v - 17A x2)
$146 - AMD Athlon 64 3000+
$82 - Chaintech VNF4 Vanilla
$41 - Corsair 512MB Value Select
$44 - eVGA GF4 MX4000 PCI card
$65 - Samsung Spinpoint 80GB System Drive
$774 - (6) Seagate 7200.8 250GB SATAII Drives (~1TB RAID-5 + 1 Hot Spare)
$329 - (7) Vantec EZ-Swap Mobile Hot Swap Racks w/ LCD screens
$67 - SMC Gigabit Switch w/ Jumbo Frames
______________

That's $2009.


If I wanted, I could drop the RAID card to the 1820A which has hardware RAID-5 processing. That's $1952 total, only $14 more than your config.


Since I have lots of money left over, I can add these to replace the stock fans in the case which do a decent job anyway:

$54 - (3) Vantec Thermoflow 120mm Fans
$24 - (4) Vantec Thermoflow 80mm Fans

____________

$2087

Now which seems like the better deal?

Mine can run windows

uses SATA instead of IDE (IDE can't be hot swapped)

is upgradeable (i can add another 750gb of RAID-5 with ease)

has a better processor


________

If I wanted, I could drop the RAID card to the 1820A which has hardware RAID-5 processing. That's $1952 total, only $14 more than your config.

 

[n0cmonkey]

http://www.maxtronic.com/products/sa7230.html

 

[Pariah]

You clearly have no idea what you are building, but it's your money, so do what you will with it.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
http://www.maxtronic.com/products/sa7230.html

That's pretty nice. How much is it?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: PerfeK

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
http://www.maxtronic.com/products/sa7230.html

That's pretty nice. How much is it?

No idea.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: jamori

Originally posted by: PerfeK
I'm going with the Highpoint RocketRAID 2200 instead. It is half the price and compatible with the motherboard. The LSI is keyed for PCI-X only unfortunately.

Thank god .. that other was far too expensive.

FYI, that card doesn't do the hardware RAID5, but that isnt as big of a deal if you've got the 3000+ and aren't using the computer for anything else.

To answer a queston from earlier, yes, the HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A does have hardware assisted RAID5 and supports up to 8 drives. The only place I found the IDE adapters was on eBay, but I didn't look very hard. Check out highpoint's website (highpoint-tech.com)

Both of the cards come with 8 1m cables, right? I know the 1820 does but I can't find any open box pics of the 2220.

 

[dowxp]

Originally posted by: Pariah
You clearly have no idea what you are building, but it's your money, so do what you will with it.

In chinese there is a proverb: "killing a chicken using a (large) butcher knife"

in essence, the tool is overkill for the task.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: dowxp

Originally posted by: Pariah
You clearly have no idea what you are building, but it's your money, so do what you will with it.

In chinese there is a proverb: "killing a chicken using a (large) butcher knife"

in essence, the tool is overkill for the task.

This is not some computer for storing porn, warez and music. This is providing backup for two large radio stations. If you had any idea how long it would take to recompile this library if the data was ever lost, you'd realize why were spending this kind of money. Maybe when you get a real job and start making decent money, you'll understand.

The simple fact is, this is the cheapest/best way to get 1TB of expandable, safe, accessible storage. $2000 may seem like a lot to you but you can't find anything like this for less money.

 

[n0cmonkey]

RAID isn't any sort of backup solution.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
RAID isn't any sort of backup solution.

The data needs to be accessible.

 

[jamori]

Originally posted by: PerfeK
Both of the cards come with 8 1m cables, right? I know the 1820 does but I can't find any open box pics of the 2220.

not a clue

something at concerns me, though..

Originally posted by: PerfeK
I want, no, I need, hot swappability. I don't care how much they cost. I need hot swap bays for 6-8 SATA drives. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Yet you imply that you're not really concerned about uptime, just about keeping the data safe (having only the single non-redundant system drive, etc).

IMHO, you should really scale back some of your hardware if this thing is just going to be a fileserver.

Drop the hotswap bays alltogether. So you have to take down the system for 15 minutes to remove / replace / reboot. Big deal. If you were building a mission critical server, it would be, but that really doesn't sound like what you're doing. You just want storage space for a bunch of music and videos and such for two people to access.

Throttle WAY back on the processor, etc. The Athlon 2500+'s are a really good value right now and still get you decent performance. Get a lower-end motherboard with integrated graphics since it's going to be running headless most of the time anyway, right? And you said heat/power consumption was an issue, so grab a mobile 2500+ and underclock it a bit .

The drives you picked are nice ones, but really for mass storage PATA drives are a much better value. Sounds like most of the time, this thing isn't even going to be accessed through a gigabit network (your Dad's laptop?), so amazing performance isn't an issue, as you'll be limited by the network most of the time anyway.

Taking this in mind and considering the advice from someone in an earlier post, you might consider not going with hardware RAID. Just grab a bunch of really cheap PCI IDE controllers (2 or 4 ports apiece), throw them in your PCI slots, and do software RAID through your OS. My hardware RAID recommendation may have been a bit over-zealous.

FYI: from what I've read, windows does a fairly poor job with it's software RAID -- if you can, you may want try to do it in linux. I'm not sure what sort of hot spare options there are with software RAID, though. Be sure to read up on that beforehand.

One of the nice things about RAID is that you can get decent performance and a lot of storage for a low price. Now you can also have mind-blowing performance for a ridiculous sum of money, but that's not what you're going for. Really reconsider this large sum of money you're spending -- as was pointed out, you could get a prebuilt solution for around the same price as you're spending to do it yourself.

I'd recommend using PATA drives -- shouldn't cost more than $600 for 6, 250GB drives (that's only $0.40/GB; not hard to find that kind of deal). If you stick with hardware RAID, okay .. there's another $200 - $300 for an 8-port card. Figure $200 for your case and power supply. We're at $1100 with the hardware raid. I'd say you're nuts if you spent more than $400 on the rest of the components. That brings you to $1500 for HW raid or around $1300 for software (I'm figuring high at $25 * 4 for controller cards -- 2 port PCI).

Just consider that before you go blowing money on things you really don't need.

Nick

 

[minofifa]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
http://www.maxtronic.com/products/sa7230.html

thanks nocmonkey. this looks like what i've been searching for. I'm gonna try to find out how much it is. What do you think something like this is worth (in other words, what would be too much to pay for it). Keep in mind that i would use this with my desktop computer INSTED of building another computer for a file server (using this i could hopefully avoid buying a whole new computer for storage, including an expensive RAID card, gigabit ehternet).

I'm curious about a question that was already asked... say i have 8 hard drives ina RAID-5 setup. would windows XP see this mess as a single drive with one letter, or would each drive have its own letter?

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: jamori

Originally posted by: PerfeK
Both of the cards come with 8 1m cables, right? I know the 1820 does but I can't find any open box pics of the 2220.

not a clue

something at concerns me, though..

Originally posted by: PerfeK
I want, no, I need, hot swappability. I don't care how much they cost. I need hot swap bays for 6-8 SATA drives. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Yet you imply that you're not really concerned about uptime, just about keeping the data safe (having only the single non-redundant system drive, etc).

IMHO, you should really scale back some of your hardware if this thing is just going to be a fileserver.

Drop the hotswap bays alltogether. So you have to take down the system for 15 minutes to remove / replace / reboot. Big deal. If you were building a mission critical server, it would be, but that really doesn't sound like what you're doing. You just want storage space for a bunch of music and videos and such for two people to access.

Throttle WAY back on the processor, etc. The Athlon 2500+'s are a really good value right now and still get you decent performance. Get a lower-end motherboard with integrated graphics since it's going to be running headless most of the time anyway, right? And you said heat/power consumption was an issue, so grab a mobile 2500+ and underclock it a bit .

The drives you picked are nice ones, but really for mass storage PATA drives are a much better value. Sounds like most of the time, this thing isn't even going to be accessed through a gigabit network (your Dad's laptop?), so amazing performance isn't an issue, as you'll be limited by the network most of the time anyway.

Taking this in mind and considering the advice from someone in an earlier post, you might consider not going with hardware RAID. Just grab a bunch of really cheap PCI IDE controllers (2 or 4 ports apiece), throw them in your PCI slots, and do software RAID through your OS. My hardware RAID recommendation may have been a bit over-zealous.

FYI: from what I've read, windows does a fairly poor job with it's software RAID -- if you can, you may want try to do it in linux. I'm not sure what sort of hot spare options there are with software RAID, though. Be sure to read up on that beforehand.

One of the nice things about RAID is that you can get decent performance and a lot of storage for a low price. Now you can also have mind-blowing performance for a ridiculous sum of money, but that's not what you're going for. Really reconsider this large sum of money you're spending -- as was pointed out, you could get a prebuilt solution for around the same price as you're spending to do it yourself.

I'd recommend using PATA drives -- shouldn't cost more than $600 for 6, 250GB drives (that's only $0.40/GB; not hard to find that kind of deal). If you stick with hardware RAID, okay .. there's another $200 - $300 for an 8-port card. Figure $200 for your case and power supply. We're at $1100 with the hardware raid. I'd say you're nuts if you spent more than $400 on the rest of the components. That brings you to $1500 for HW raid or around $1300 for software (I'm figuring high at $25 * 4 for controller cards -- 2 port PCI).

Just consider that before you go blowing money on things you really don't need.

Nick

1) I won't be around to do any of this. My father will be maintaining the server. He does not know how to install hard drives. He doesn't want to remove/replace/reboot. I know that if I do not buy him hot swap bays, he will force one of the IT guys from the radio station to come over and do it for him. I'd like to save everyone some trouble by installing some hot swaps. The HDDs will also run cooler in the hot swaps. This is important as he lives in the Caribbean where temps hover around 35°C during the day.

2) If I save money and buy an XP instead of a 64, I'll have to buy a motherboard without gigabit ethernet. I'll have to get a PCI card to put with the already bottlenecked RAID card. I don't mind spending a little more for the convenience. I do plan on enabling CnQ unless it starts to cause problems.

3) He may end up using this to stream HDTV to his television and/or monitor (Dell 2405FPW) in the future, so I'd like to leave some room for that. The primary use will be file serving right now but we may throw in some HTPC use.

4) I don't mind spending a little more for SATA.

5) His laptop does have gigabit ethernet. It is an inspiron XPS. He's very happy with that laptop despite what others often say about it (woahmg so hueg!).

6) This summer, he is looking to completely tech out the house. This is just the beginning of that. I'd like to leave some leg room incase we want to use the server for other things.

7) Spending $200 on a RAID card is not a big deal. It's a lot better than the $1000 16 port Adaptec one he was about to buy.

8) I want to stick with Windows for this. Ease of use is my main conern. I want him to be able to do everything on his own, without my help or an employee's help. Installing Linux would cause him to put us on speed dial.

You guys are acting like we're sacrificing rent money for this.

Ease of use is very important. I want him to be able to simply swap out a drive and let the server handle itself.

The original quote from the IT guy was $4000 and he was prepared to spend that. That was WAY too much. I pulled him aside and showed him what could be done for a lot less. I offered to do a complete 750gb RAID-5 using existing parts for $800.
He told me to just buy everything new so he could still use the 500gb Lacie drives for other things. $2000 is not a big deal.

If I was doing this for myself, I would cut corners and spend a lot less. I can't do that in this case. Ease of use, silence and safety are important.

I have considered and reconsidered the money and it is worth it. This is what we want and this is what we're willing to spend. If I could spend less to get the same thing, I'd do so.