Our file server just got an upgrade....
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...but I didn't realise that formatting three 1.5TB NTFS disks would take quite that long. :doh: (On the plus side, the three 500GB disks which came out are now free for dev machine use. :) ) In the same order we received a pair of 320GB Buffalo Ministation drives for "mobile overspill and general backup stuff" use for something like £47 each. I still think that it's pretty damn amazing that you can get 320GB drives in a 2.5" form factor (I've actually also seen 500s, but the 320s were at the sweet spot) - never mind at that price. Incredible, really. :cool: Next up we're on the hunt for a pair of affordable quad core SFF machines to use as mobile grid computing demonstrators (we've a couple of conferences coming up in the spring they'd be ideal for). Shuttle is still naffly expensive for a decent spec, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. :)
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
Shuttle is still naffly expensive for a decent spec, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. Smile
Unfortunately shuttle has something approaching a stranglehold on the SFF market, and most smaller rivals seem to price at similar levels. I've looked off and on at it with the intent of setting up a dedicated nas, but going smaller than miniATX in a tower that supports full size cards is prohibitively expensive.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
Shuttle is still naffly expensive for a decent spec, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. Smile
Unfortunately shuttle has something approaching a stranglehold on the SFF market, and most smaller rivals seem to price at similar levels. I've looked off and on at it with the intent of setting up a dedicated nas, but going smaller than miniATX in a tower that supports full size cards is prohibitively expensive.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
That's what I figured, but I thought I'd ask anyway. We do know of one supplier selling 4GB Q6600 (probably good enough for this) machines in SFF for £300 or so (no OS), and I suspect that's probably as good as we're going to get. FWIW we need portable machines for this, so SFF of some form is the way to go.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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That's what I figured, but I thought I'd ask anyway. We do know of one supplier selling 4GB Q6600 (probably good enough for this) machines in SFF for £300 or so (no OS), and I suspect that's probably as good as we're going to get. FWIW we need portable machines for this, so SFF of some form is the way to go.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
I don't know how they compare on price but have you looked at a Mac Mini?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
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I don't know how they compare on price but have you looked at a Mac Mini?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
No..last I heard they weren't quad, but then I've not checked. We'd want units that we could swap 7200rpm 3.5" drives in and out of, FWIW....not sure if you can do that on a mini.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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That's what I figured, but I thought I'd ask anyway. We do know of one supplier selling 4GB Q6600 (probably good enough for this) machines in SFF for £300 or so (no OS), and I suspect that's probably as good as we're going to get. FWIW we need portable machines for this, so SFF of some form is the way to go.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Nice, I knew you could DIY a $4-500 quad, but didn't realize anyone was selling them around that price.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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No..last I heard they weren't quad, but then I've not checked. We'd want units that we could swap 7200rpm 3.5" drives in and out of, FWIW....not sure if you can do that on a mini.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
IIRC it's a 2.5" drive. A friend of mine has one and complained it was a nightmare to open up and change anything (and odds are his change was a bigger HD).
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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IIRC it's a 2.5" drive. A friend of mine has one and complained it was a nightmare to open up and change anything (and odds are his change was a bigger HD).
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
That's what I thought...we use one in our church for music during services (I'm the standby mixing desk person when our real organist is away) and given the miniscule size of the thing I'd be amazed if you could easily upgrade anything but the mouse and keyboard. :rolleyes:
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Nice, I knew you could DIY a $4-500 quad, but didn't realize anyone was selling them around that price.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
It's an Ebay seller, so I've no idea of their providence (that's the catch). Integrated graphics and no OS, but otherwise not at all bad.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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That's what I thought...we use one in our church for music during services (I'm the standby mixing desk person when our real organist is away) and given the miniscule size of the thing I'd be amazed if you could easily upgrade anything but the mouse and keyboard. :rolleyes:
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
actually now that I think about it it's a laptop CPU too, so quadding it while possible would be disgustingly expensive.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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...but I didn't realise that formatting three 1.5TB NTFS disks would take quite that long. :doh: (On the plus side, the three 500GB disks which came out are now free for dev machine use. :) ) In the same order we received a pair of 320GB Buffalo Ministation drives for "mobile overspill and general backup stuff" use for something like £47 each. I still think that it's pretty damn amazing that you can get 320GB drives in a 2.5" form factor (I've actually also seen 500s, but the 320s were at the sweet spot) - never mind at that price. Incredible, really. :cool: Next up we're on the hunt for a pair of affordable quad core SFF machines to use as mobile grid computing demonstrators (we've a couple of conferences coming up in the spring they'd be ideal for). Shuttle is still naffly expensive for a decent spec, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. :)
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Hi Anna: :rose: Noticed you were looking for a decent shuttle, http://shopsws.com/Pre_Built_Systems.htm[^] Although these guys are in the US, the freight is prob reasonable. I buy all my gear from these folks and they stand behind what they sell. Reasonable prices as well. Best of Luck rcb ;)
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Hi Anna: :rose: Noticed you were looking for a decent shuttle, http://shopsws.com/Pre_Built_Systems.htm[^] Although these guys are in the US, the freight is prob reasonable. I buy all my gear from these folks and they stand behind what they sell. Reasonable prices as well. Best of Luck rcb ;)
Thanks for the link Craig. Unfortunately it looks like those are all single or dual core systems...we're specifically looking for quad systems so we can build a mobile IncrediBuild grid with as few machines as possible. The reference machine we've found is an SFF 2.4GHz Q6600 quad box with 4GB RAM...they's going for just under £300 from a UK company. If we can match that with a recent Shuttle system, all the better...but it looks like that is a bit of a long shot.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Hi Anna: :rose: Noticed you were looking for a decent shuttle, http://shopsws.com/Pre_Built_Systems.htm[^] Although these guys are in the US, the freight is prob reasonable. I buy all my gear from these folks and they stand behind what they sell. Reasonable prices as well. Best of Luck rcb ;)
Are the systems listed there the current list, it looks like everything there's at least a year old, much more than that for the p4 boxen.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Are the systems listed there the current list, it looks like everything there's at least a year old, much more than that for the p4 boxen.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
dan neely wrote:
Are the systems listed there the current list, it looks like everything there's at least a year old, much more than that for the p4 boxen.
Dan Greetings :) Sorry my response was tardy but I was watching Obama's first news conf. Just noticed that myself, I am going to go to their store tomorrow, (I need another hdd), I will query them on that. However I think their price list page is current (at least the date tag is) :confused: http://shopsws.com/current_pricing.asp[^] regards; rcb
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dan neely wrote:
Are the systems listed there the current list, it looks like everything there's at least a year old, much more than that for the p4 boxen.
Dan Greetings :) Sorry my response was tardy but I was watching Obama's first news conf. Just noticed that myself, I am going to go to their store tomorrow, (I need another hdd), I will query them on that. However I think their price list page is current (at least the date tag is) :confused: http://shopsws.com/current_pricing.asp[^] regards; rcb