Before my storage needs exploded I used to have a server that was based on an old computer with a hard drive or two. But due to a combination of increasing photo/video file sizes and slower hard drive density the one or two drives soon became three or four, and the cases I used became a limitation. Thus in 2011 when my then server died without warning I bought my first computer intended for that purpose from the start.
Money was a bit tight at time so I got a machine that was just good enough, and i3 Sandybridge. It was OK and it did have support for up to six drives on the motherboard but was meant as a first step and thus about three years later in 2014 I aimed a bit higher.
Since it was assembled while the existing one worked I was able to make a more considered choice. As a result, this one had a better quality motherboard that supported eight drives, an i7 processor, and loads more room for drives. However updating drives was a serious pain and it often took several attempts to have all drives connected correctly when one was replaced. The solution?
Icybox dock. This replaced the 5 1/4 bays with 5 more 3 1/2 bays that were easier to swap. It was OK, but in time it became unreliable and thus the next solution was an external box.
I'll rant more about this later, but in short it made swapping drives easier at the price of much slower (USB3) speed. Fast forward to two years ago and, after an innocent restart, the server failed to restart. Many attempts were made, but it was a heavily used 10 year of board (and I needed the server back up) so I repurporsed a testing machine as a server and started planning a new server.
In the mail right now I have coming a Jonsbo N5....
