Well, my 3 nodes I’ve been running from an RPi3 for 1.25-1.5 years are now effectively full. Only about 500MB free on each that are sized out at 1.73TB, 1.73TB, and 0.86TB. Just ordered up an 8TB CMR drive to migrate the smallest to. Could have gone with a 4TB for a bit less than what I’ve earned (per current crypto price) running my nodes, but getting a good deal on the 8TB so going larger. All of this started with hardware I had around the house, the only upgrade I did was moving from a 1 to 3 bay dock so I could put more of my old HDDs to work. I probably do need to consider upgrading to an RPi4 with more memory. Unfortunately the only spares I have kicking around at the moment are the early 1GB models and in general I don’t see the CPU boost alone as necessary. Would rather jump to a unit that also has more memory.
Maybe I’ll take another spare RPi3 and the soon-to-be-freed 1TB drive to spin up a 4th node…
You’ve probably noticed this already, but that 500MB is a safety margin the software takes into account to ensure the drive doesn’t fill up entirely. It will never fill up.
Congratz on the upgrades! It’s always nice to see SNO’s be able to upgrade with their earnings. That’s how I’ve always done it too! I just recently purchased a 10-bay USB extension for Storj. I will gradually fill that with more HDD’s as needed. But it also allowed me to put some smaller HDD’s I had nowhere to connect to use. Still combining Chia with Storj to make at least some money on the remaining space while Storj is filling up, even though Chia is mostly useless at this point. It’s still more than 0 and the drives are online anyway.
I got the Icy Box IB-3810U3. I’ve been eyeballing that thing since before the Chia craze made it first crazy expensive and then sold out everywhere for almost a year. Most of these devices have bad cooling, so they tend to be noisy and not great for your HDD’s. This one uses a standard 140mm fan. It’s not too bad by itself so I haven’t replaced it yet, but I was originally planning to put a noctua fan in there. The fan isn’t soldered, but uses a standard 3-pin connector. So fan replacement is super simple if needed. I also like the individual per HDD power buttons that let you easily switch bays on and off. It’s not the cheapest out there, but hey… I didn’t use my own money to pay for it anyway. Thanks Storj!
I have it hooked up to my Synology DS3617xs. That should be plenty fast enough to handle all HDD’s. And allows me to manage all nodes on one system.
For me I had started with this Thermaltake BlacX USB 2.0 single drive unit because it is what I had kicking around. Once I wanted to commit more of my spare drives to the project I upgraded to this ORICO three drive USB 3.0 unit so I could expand. Both were pretty cost effective. The Thermaltake was about $40USD originally but technically “free” for using it with Storj since it had already been in my house since 2009, the ORICO I got on a deal for about $53USD. Those were invoice costs, possible I got them with rebates on top of that. My “computer room” is just an open closet in my basement and it stays comfortably cool down there. Currently drives in the ORICO bay are between 33-39°C. (Side note, the ORICO allows access to the drive’s SMART data. A Wavlink dock I’m also using doesn’t seem to.) My drives don’t make much noise and at the moment I’m even sitting next to them running an rsync from the 1TB to the new 8TB drive. If you’re somewhere that the temperature of the environment is warmer maybe active cooling via a fan would be necessary, but for me it seems the passive cooling of a mostly-exposed drive is sufficient.
Man, that’s insane. I’m still running my first node. It’s been online 16 months, but in the dashboard it says it’s 10months old. Is there a particular reason why you don’t go with 2 DX1215 instead of the icy box?
Yep @Roberto got it exactly right. This is solely for Storj (and Chia until Storj fills up the space) and there really is no need for the speed and RAID features that the DX1215 provides. I would have gone with that one if I needed the space for my own uses, but Storj has taken over and is now using more space than I am. I always said that you should be using individual disks for Storj instead of RAID and so I am finally fully putting my money where my mouth is on that. I’m still expanding the internal array on the Synology first, but any HDD I remove to upgrade goes in the IB-3810U3 now and gets a fresh new individual node to run. I have some really small HDD’s in there now as well (2x320GB and 1x160GB). I’m spinning up nodes on those to kind of warm them up and have a node to copy to a larger (4TB and up) disk when the time comes to upgrade. The IB-3810U3 already takes a long time to pay back with additional earnings it will provide, I really couldn’t justify spending more on a DX1215.
I checked out that Icybox, that’s a slick piece of kit. Since I’m going to be freeing up my old 1TB drive by migrating the node to an 8TB drive I’m considering using it to spin up a new node. That means I will have outgrown my 3 drive ORICO bay. I may need to look into finding something like the IB-3810U3 here in the USA.
What have you got this attached to, Windows or Linux? I’m assuming with those 3 small drives you mentioned you’ve got them somehow grouped as a single JBOD drive? Since each on their own they aren’t large enough to meet the 500GB minimum for Storj.
At the moment, small and not yet worth it. I have 2TB, 3TB and 3 small ones 2x320GB and 1x160GB. The small ones I use to start up nodes that I can move to larger HDD’s when I move them out of my NAS.
The NAS itself has a mix of HDD’s between 4TB and 16TB for a total of 59TB of usable dual disk redundant storage. That storage is expanded as needed for mixed use between my own use and Storj. At which point the smaller drives I remove will move to the Icy Box.
My Synology DS3617xs. So DSM, which is the Linux based NAS OS from Synology.
Nope, individual nodes per HDD. These won’t be profitable, the idea is simply to have nodes that are fully vetted and out of the held back period once I have larger disks to move them to. I’ll probably use one for my testnet node as well, not sure yet. All of this is still future plans as for now I’m still waiting for the first 2 nodes to get vetted before I spin up more. As with everything Storj, it’s a long term thing.
This minimum can be overruled in settings, the reason it’s there is mostly to prevent people from spinning up nodes that won’t be profitable. Storj doesn’t really care if you still do it. For them the space you do provide is perfectly usable.
Shouldn’t be a problem really, that can still handle 5gbps…(I realize this is a theoretical limit and you won’t get close due to usb overhead) but the bottleneck will be my 1gbps internet connection either way. However, I do limit the amount of small traffic to these drives by moving all the db’s for these nodes to my internal SSD accelerated array. So the HDD’s really only ever have to deal with actual data pieces. The only thing I’m slightly concerned about is the file walker process and garbage collection. I still don’t think it will be a problem though, especially now that docker nodes don’t all update at the same time anymore. The file walker process doesn’t transfer a lot of data and the HDD’s themselves are most likely the bottleneck for those many small reads.
Man, now I really want one of these Icy Boxes. Did some poking around and haven’t found anything quite like it in the states. I spotted a Syba brand unit that seemed close, but it was only 8 drives and I wasn’t particularly pleased with the fan arrangement. 2x 80mm fans, probably would make more noise than the 140mm in the Icy Box. And if I did get one of the actual Icy Boxes I’d probably need to replace the PSU. While one picture I saw did show a 120v/240v switch on the back most all others did not, and the specs only state 240v operation. Swapping a PSU and building up a new wire harness (although probably would be minimal, just to connect to a backplane) is well within my skillset. I’d just hate to have to do it to a brand new unit.
Yeah, mine came with a warning sticker that it doesn’t support 120v. Swapping the PSU will add to the cost though and it would be a little annoying to have to bridge the power pins for it to even turn on. I’m not sure if that’s going to be worth it.
While I was looking for this (for about a year from time to time), I did also consider some devices from Orico or Raidsonic. None of them had a similar cooling solution though. There are other options and also slightly cheaper options, though often 8-bay instead of 10 as well. There is a reason I waited for this one.
It only came back in stock very recently here though, it just may take a little longer for the US version to get back in stock. If you’re not in a hurry you could give it a bit more time. Did you also come across the IB-3810-c31? That’s the USB-c version with support for USB3.1 gen2 speeds. It’s more expensive here atm and not really needed, but I imagine the price will go down. Maybe that one is available in the US?
I spotted the IB-3810-C31, also listed as 240v only. Icy Box also doesn’t have any US vendors in their “where to buy” list.
I did just find the SABRENT DS-UCTB that looks comparable, and has dual 120mm fans for cooling. At about $599USD I think that is probably around the same cost of the Icy Box. Unfortunately the only vendor I’ve found selling the unit is Amazon and for personal reasons I’m not keen on buying from them. It only came out a couple months ago so maybe it just needs more time before getting to other resellers. I’ll have to keep my eyes open.
Oh yeah, that one looks nice. I prefer not to buy from Amazon either, but these things are hard to find apparently. If you don’t find anything else, I think this may be a good option. Though it does look more expensive than the Icy Box.
Might have found an option. The smaller Sabrent 5-bay DS-SC5B is less than half the price of the 10-bay model. Cons, the single fan is smaller at only 90mm. Pros besides the price, has an additional USB plug to daisy-chain additional units. So I could start with a 5-bay, and when I decide to expand further get another 5-bay and attach it.
Don’t have the need to buy it just yet, but if I do I’ll definitely share my experience here in the forums.
Thanks Storj!