Roland Roland wrote: > Hello all, > > am considering setting up centos as a file storage/ backup destination > for Mac's TimeMachine. > > all my users would get synced directly to specific folders on this > machine.. > needless to say space is of importance. where every user has an > average 200 GB of data to b synced (entire system)... > I have 27 users hence 27 *200 equals to almost 6 TB so I was > considering getting either 4 * 1.5 TB or 6 * 1 TB to be used on one > PIV with a 1 GB ethernet. I would think you should use raid for this, at least raid 5, which requires N+1 for N drives worth of storage. and you probably want a hotspare in case a drive fails. > > but the thing is, I'm an expert with this! so I'm seeking your help.. > is there any other way to do so ? is there any limitation > hardware/centos wise for the amount of drives available on a system? > is Motherboard available sata/ide slots is the only limitation? how > about using a USB hub and plugging them as such? > USB drives are quite slow, you want to use SATA for this. you can get PCI-E sata expansion cards, ideally on PCI-E x4 slots which have sufficient bandwidth (pci-e x1 would be a bottleneck for more than a couple drives) I'd suggest getting a 'storage server' with sufficient drive bays and channels for what you're doing. a server like http://www.asaservers.com/config.asp?config_id=ASA4002-X2Q-S2-S holds 8 hotswap drive bays and is quite customizable.