--- id: terabyte-server title: Terabyte Server summary: The home server Jamie built in 2004 with 1.4 terabytes of RAID storage. It held the family’s music, ripped from nearly 1,000 CDs plus the vinyl, and for a while it also served thingelstad.com. collection: Historical projects status: retired url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html started: "2004" topics: - archives - making sources: - kind: website url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html role: reference - kind: website url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/02/13/got-gig.html role: reference - kind: website url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/06/26/music-nirvana-achieved.html role: reference - kind: website url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2005/01/30/thingelstadcom-server-rebuilt.html role: reference - kind: website url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2007/12/30/western-digital-tb.html role: reference connections: - to: jamie-thingelstad-blog label: served detail: When Jamie rebuilt the server in January 2005, thingelstad.com went down with it. source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2005/01/30/thingelstadcom-server-rebuilt.html artifacts: - file: the-parts.jpg title: The parts on the table caption: The 3ware Escalade card in its box, six drives and the cables, before any of it met a case. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/the-parts.jpg - file: escalade-card.jpg title: The Escalade 8506-8 caption: The RAID card that started it. Its 64-bit, 66 MHz slot did not match Jamie’s motherboard, which was the first hiccup. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/escalade-card.jpg - file: empty-chassis.jpg title: The empty chassis caption: The SuperMicro case from above, bought after the dual Xeons would not clear the drive bays of the old one. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/empty-chassis.jpg - file: xeon-fans-rear.jpg title: The board going in caption: The server board in the chassis, with the two Xeon fans standing well above it. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/xeon-fans-rear.jpg - file: xeon-heatsinks.jpg title: Two Xeons caption: The heatsinks and their fans. Each cooling assembly bolts through to the case, because it is too heavy for the motherboard alone. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/xeon-heatsinks.jpg - file: over-the-board.jpg title: A part over the board caption: A hand and a wired part, held above the memory slots and the Xeons. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/over-the-board.jpg - file: wired-up.jpg title: Wired up caption: The side off and the cabling in. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/wired-up.jpg - file: the-chassis.jpg title: The finished tower caption: The door open on the hot-swap bays, one carrier partly out. It lived in the laundry room. date: "2004" source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/artifacts/the-chassis.jpg page: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/terabyte-server/ --- # Terabyte Server The home server Jamie built in 2004 with 1.4 terabytes of RAID storage. It held the family’s music, ripped from nearly 1,000 CDs plus the vinyl, and for a while it also served thingelstad.com. The Terabyte Server, which Jamie also called Teraserver, was the home server he built in early 2004. He [announced it](https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/02/13/got-gig.html) at the end of a post about putting gigabit networking in the house: “The next Geek Fest will be the installation of over a terabyte of disk in the home server.” [The build post](https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/04/02/project-terabyte.html) gives three reasons: the music collection, five years of digital photos, and the third, which he called the most important: “it seems that it’s relatively easy now and I wanted to try it. (This is where I was wrong.)” The plan was a 3ware Escalade 8506-8 RAID card and six Western Digital 200GB SATA drives. Four numbered “minor hiccups” followed. The card did not fit his motherboard, so he bought an Asus PU-DL server board, 1GB of ECC RAM and two 2.4 GHz Xeons. The Xeons did not clear the drive bays of his Antec case, so he bought a SuperMicro SC742T-550 chassis. The power connectors then came up six inches short, and the first extension cable he ordered was not a straight-through. With the right one, “the server roared (literally! 4 fans and 7 hard drives!) to life.” It held 1.4 terabytes of disk, about one terabyte usable. His verdict: “a terabyte isn’t reasonable yet for the average home user.” Then came the music. By [June 26, 2004](https://www.thingelstad.com/2004/06/26/music-nirvana-achieved.html) he had ripped and tagged nearly 1,000 CDs, then ripped, split and tagged his records too, and he called the project complete. It also hosted thingelstad.com. Jamie [rebuilt it](https://www.thingelstad.com/2005/01/30/thingelstadcom-server-rebuilt.html) over a weekend in January 2005, which took the site down, and filled all eight ports on the card: a RAID1 mirror for the system, about 800GB of RAID5, and a hot spare. The carrier only held seven drives, so the eighth was mounted in the case. Then it went back to the laundry room. “Man is this thing loud!” By [December 2007](https://www.thingelstad.com/2007/12/30/western-digital-tb.html) he could buy one terabyte on a single disk at the Apple Store. He looked back on the build, which “cost a little over $3,000 and was painful,” and on the new drive: “Surely a lot easier than building a horrific box with 8 SATA drives. Ugh!”