NASLite Network Attached Storage

I have my NAS box turn on 24/7. Currently, I am using an ECS M/B with a Celeron 320 (or something, I can't remember). A year or so ago, I plugged in the Kill-A-Watt and did my own calculation. It cost me $5-$6 a month to run my NAS (6 drives - 2TB).

With electricity rate going up, I am thinking to find a lower power consumption. Intel Atom CPU with M/B just came up - http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-D945GCLF- ... otherboard. The price is pretty reasonable too for a AIO solution. The deal killer for me is the 10/100 network (I need gigabit) since I need the PCI slot for RAID card.

Has anyone try this yet and confirm if this board work with NASlite? Maybe I can used it to build a backup Naslite box

I'm interesstet in this question, too.

I have this board. But I am running Windows XP home on it. This is what I am on the web with now typing this. With a WD green type hard drive I think this would use only about 30 watts of power! I still waiting on a small 90 watt PicoPSU-90 Power Kit then I can see what watts it takes. But I am sure NASLite will work on it. But it only has one PCI slot.

I will see if I can add a html file that cpu-z did of this M/B setup.

The extension htm is not allowed.

See if I can zip it. Looks like it worked like that.



It is a nice board. It only cost me about $72 + about $40 for the 2 MB ram. I think I could of found that at a better price. I am waiting on a 90 watt power supply that cost about $50. I made my own case for it.

It can play online videos good. Tested the WoW game with it and it gets about 10 FPS. The only fan is for the video not the CPU! That CPU stays cool and it just has a little heat sink on it. I am not sure if you can disable the video in the bios. Because if using it for a NAS you would not need the video and could unplug the fan for it then.

If you want 2 TB and save power look for the WD Green Hard drives like the WD10EACS one. It cost about $170 Update $135.80 free shipping, each. Update again $117.99 now! Update yet again $115.99 now on 11/04/2008 as time goes by it goes down more at that address. Today on 11/12/2008 it's $111.99 neet list here showing how the price goes down. Update again today on 12/15/2008 they have it for $99.99 free shipping! But that should be the best power saver and you could run them with one of the PicoPSU-90 Power Kit. I guess with this setup it take less then 50 Watts. The M/B and 2 1TB green hard drives. So 90 watts would do. That should cost you about a $1 a month in electricity!

-Raymond Day

This atom M/B will not work with NASLite!

On the 1st boot up you get this error!

"PCI: Unable to handle 64-bit address space for"

It just stopps there and does not go on!

I am waiting for the NASLite M2 and I think that my work with this M/B.

-Raymond Day

They have a gigabit LAN one now! It's all so dual core atom CPU in it now. With a S/Video out too.

http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-D945GCLF2D-Mini-ITX-Motherboard

Now you can plug in your raid card. Just hope the next NASLite M2 works with this Atom CPU board!

The 1TB green hard drive I BLOCKED_WORD to in the post before this one has went down to $118 with free shipping! At that web link it seems like the more that get sold the better the price gets.

As long as M2 work with this board you can have a nice set up for it like you wanted.

-Raymond Day

A small step of progress to report.

I bought the D945GCLF2 board (Atom 330, dual core, Intel® EM64T, Hyperthreading) because of the Gigabit LAN (and all the other usual reasons (low power, blah, blah)). Tried booting NL2 v2.06. Got same "Unable to handle 64-bit address space for PCI". BUT ... if you go into BIOS, at the main screen, the first item that's highlighted, being "Hyperthreading", if you DISABLE it, NL will boot

There's still a problem, though. The Realtek RTL8102E is not recognized. If it helps ... be aware that even my tests with Windoze Vista64 and WinXP-SP2 installs both did NOT initially see this on-board LAN. I had to install drivers from the CD supplied with the mobo.

So ... since you can boot now ... you can use the single PCI slot for a LAN card. I haven't tried that yet, but will update this post as time allows me to experiment further.

Hopefully NL v2.07 will support version E of the Realtek.

Georg

Update 1: Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Live CD) works like a charm with the onboard NIC, and with Hyperthreading on (=default). So then I looked at Intel site for Linux compatibility (Linux on this board). An interesting footnote says for some distributions "Need external driver. Download Linux* driver for RTL8111c here.*". So, even though this is Realtek RTL8102E, looks like drivers for C might work. And notice minimum supported Linux kernel is 2.6.16.

That's good to know turning off Hyperthreading naslite will boot. It to bad it don't work with the Realtek RTL8102E Gigabit Ethernet. I hope they can add the driver to the M2 one for it.

I have a mini-ITX that naslite will not boot in that gets the "Unable to handle 64-bit address space for PCI" but it has no Hyperthreading. It's bois says the CPU is a 1.20 GHz Celeron Intel (R) EM64T Capable. I been waiting for M2 to come out and hope it works on this motherboard I have.

Thanks for keeping us posted about the D945GCLF2 board working with NasLite.

Good thing you got and test this mother board out before NasLite M2 is out because maybe they can add that gigabit Etherner driver.

-Raymond Day

They just did a update to NASLite V2.10 and my download link still worked with out paying $5 to get the download link working again.

So I burned the new SEI-NL2-HDD.iso my old one was SEI-NL2-NN.iso When it boots the installer stopps a little at:

"PCI: Unable to handle 64-bit address space for"

for about 4 sec. But it goes to the installer.

I put a hard drive on it to test it that I did not use.

This time it booted. On the boot is stopps at "PCI: Unable to handle 64-bit address space for" but only for about 4 sec. Then goes on!

Yes they fixed it! I am waiting for M2 and want to install it on this mini-ITX I have. I guess M2 will be out soon because it uses this same CDD, USB, HDD boot loader! It says that my be why it works in a 64-bit address space now! Yes.

You said I have a Ubuntu 8.10 server and the kernel is 2.6.27-7-server. Not sure what 8.01.1 is but if it's what NASLite-2 V2.10 has 2.4.36 or lower then it should work with your onboard gigabit NIC.

If you get the NASLite-2 V2.10 update let us know if it works with your onboard NIC. That would be so nice to have NASLite work with that mini-ITX. I hope it does.

-Raymond Day

Any news about the onboard nic issue ?
Thanks

Spidercy

Thanks for the feedback guys. I am still holding off on this.

On my new Nas box, I don't want to use any RAID card. If the RAID card went kaput (instead of the HD(s)), said bye bye to your data too.

I can used a gigabit PCI card on this, but I am waiting for 2TB HD to come out in the market.. pop a couple in, set up rsync and I am good...

The reality of it is that the data will still be there, you would just have to plug in a replacement card and away you would go. Most, if not all, RAID cards have what is called a RoD file or RAID on Disk file that defines the array and the disks part in it to contend with just that kind of problem.



As far as waiting for the 2TB drives, LOL you are going to be having some fun since both Seagate and WD are having reliability issues with their 1TB drives, how much worse do you think it will be with a 1.5TB or 2TB drives? Remember that all drives now are based on PRML and so they are in essence just guessing at the data on the drive based on the data before and after. With the aerial densities going up and quantum limits being reached for the medium I for one am not likely to trust my data to them anytime soon.

The sweet drive right now is the Seagate 750GB NS series of drives. Fast, reliable, reasonably priced.

Mike

Were did you see this? I got 2 WD 1TB drives. One is running 24/7 and working real good. Had it now for about 1/2 year I guess.



I think with there 150TB drives they just add another plater so 2 750GB in one. If the sweet drive is a 750GB why would 2 in one 750GB not be a sweet drive too?

Check the reviews of the 1TB drives by users at Newegg. From what I gather they have moved the fabs for these drives to china to save a few bucks and remain competitive in the market, as a result the quality has taken a dive. Likely the drives you have are from the fab in Taiwan and as such of more reliable stuff.
The 750GB drives are made in Taiwan from what I gather and the NS series of drives are built a bit better than the run of the mill consumer drives. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that they are the HDAs that grade higher under pretesting than the consumer drives due and so get the upgraded software and NS rating.

Mike

Can an Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard be fitted into an ATX case? It looks like the mounting holes that it uses are C, F, H & J and so it should fit. Intel claims that the board is micro-ATX compatible, but can anybody (georg?) confirm this.

Also, is the onbaord LAN now supported by the latest kernel in M2?

Thanks.

leicray:

Unable to confirm 100% ... a) I have not upgraded NL (I am using WinXP on this board at the moment); b) I built my own custom lucite mini case.

I did however check Intel's Product Specs, and in the equivalent drawings the four mounting hole positions are identical to an older P4 D875PBZ motherboard that is an ATX board. The PCI slot (which I currently do not use) on the mini board is in the position of an AGP graphics card slot (on a non-Intel board I have), so an ATX case should have an opening for any PCI card you'd want to use in the proper location on the back of the case. The I/O shield also looks like standard size. (For some strange reason the D875PBZ AGP slot in in the position where normally the 1st PCI card goes.)

Basically, I think, the ATX spec has "upward" compatibility, so that any <smaller>-ATX (like mini, micro, etc) board should fit into an ATX case that accommodates that size or larger up to ATX board size.

Hope this helps.
Georg