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Comment on Mini-ITX RAID5, finally! by Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:39:28 +0000

Hey there, yes, you will need the PCI riser card for the SATA300 card to fit into the case with the lid closed. The card is small, but the PCB is just barely too tall on one end to fit in the case without the riser card. Cheers.

Comment on Mini-ITX RAID5, finally! by StuntThug

StuntThug — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:15:35 +0000

Hello everybody! I don’t know where to start but hope this place will be useful for me.
Hope to get some assistance from you if I will have some quesitons.
Thanks and good luck everyone!

Comment on Mini-ITX RAID5, finally! by heq

heq — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:48:46 +0000

techlife, would you pls tell how is the promise SATA300 card fit in chenbro casing?
do you need pci riser or anything else to install it?

I’m planning build a similar NAS using chenbro casing and promise SATA300, and atom MB,
pls give your advise.

pls send me email for above questions, thanx in advance.

Comment on Mini-ITX RAID5, finally! by techlife

techlife — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:15:16 +0000

Hey Harold,
Not sure why you're experiencing those issues with the case, but I've had no issues using it with the back pane intact with my 4x 640GB WD drives. Good to know bout the 180W for larger drives. Will likely need to pick that up for the future.

Yea I found out the hard way that the RAID5 daughterboard doesn't work with freenas 0.7. As for a solution, I'm using a Promise SATA300 TX4 PCI controller card (http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail.a...). There is no on-board chip raid with that card, but that's what you want, cause most freenas admins will tell ya to let freenas do the software raid and to not rely on the on board chip raid. Freenas has native support for this card, but you'll also need a low profile PCI riser card to get it to fit right in the case.

I did have some issues using a combination of SMB/CIFS, ZFS v6 & freenas 32bit. It was causing lockups and reboots of freenas. I found an unofficial ISO (from one of the main freenas devs of iscsi) of the newest freenas built that had v13 of ZFS ported into it. I also used the 64bit version this time, and this combo seems to have solidified any issues I was having. I couldn't do more than a 20GB transfers before it would kernel panic and reboot, but i completed a 335GB transfer and it stayed rock solid. I'll be updating with a full post later with my experiences once work settles down.

Thanks for the feedback.

Comment on Mini-ITX RAID5, finally! by haroldvanaalderen

haroldvanaalderen — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:38:28 +0000

There is a little bit of a downside to this setup. Which I mostly have lying beside me
First; Trying to put in any sata disk into the diskbay of the Chenbro ES34069 Mini-ITX Home Server/NAS Chassis failed because although the trays locks the drive doens't actually connect to the backplane of the chassis
second; You would need the 180W powersupply since the 120W isn't enough to power 4 1.5 TB disks I bought (bummer)
third and final the Marvell 88SE6145-TFE1 isn't supported by FreeNAS 0.7 so you don't see any disks

First item can be solved by opening the case and removing the backplane. You can then use normal cables to connect the drives
Second is solved by buying the additional 180W powersupply
Third...I have no solution for the third problem yet.

Comment on Mini-ITX RAID5, finally! by q

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:22:22 +0000

Has there been any issues with the RAID5 daughterboard?

Comment on HP 2140 HD screen is here – but only if you call in by techlife

techlife — Fri, 22 May 2009 18:06:50 +0000

I actually found out a couple of days ago that you can apparently order it directly from HPShopping.ca by searching for the SKU number. It appears that the you still can't order it over the phone though.

http://h20386.www2.hp.com/CanadaStore/Product.a...

Comment on HP 2140 HD screen is here – but only if you call in by Nigelicious

Nigelicious — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:23:43 +0000

Ask your friend to use his credit card, and send a check to him by mail. That should get rid of that problem. Also, there is usually the option of shipping the product to a person other than the cardholder as a "gift".
I am not sure if HP offers this, especially to Canada from the U.S., but I think It'd be worth a try as your friend/you will have to pay the extra cost of shipping the laptop from the cardholder's address to yourown.

There are a lot of barriers, but hopefully HP Canada will just bite the bullet, and get the HD models to us.
I have also been waiting a while. I've called HP Canada, and the most they can say is that it will be available here in the next 2 months, so basically by June or July.

Comment on HP 2140 HD netbook orderable from Canadian vendor! by Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:01:04 +0000

Nice find! I actually got mine through Compugen, and their price is the same as what you’ve found. Hopefully others won’t have to wait as long as cendirect.com is currently giving as an ETA on new units – they’re saying the end of May / early June?!

Comment on HP 2140 HD netbook orderable from Canadian vendor! by Clement

Clement — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:02:26 +0000

You an also order it from Cendirect for a bit less. (http://www.cendirect.com/main_en/tech_specs_JO73350L.html). I ordered one a couple weeks ago, but it’s yet to arrive. Hopefully CDW will get yours to you faster!