The Black Dwarf 16TB NAS

May 10, 2010 | 10:20

Tags: #atom #custom-case #intel-atom #modder #nas #network-attached-storage #raid #raid-5

Companies: #will-urbina

A veteran of the modding scene has unveiled his latest creation - a stunning-looking NAS dubbed the Black Dwarf, which holds an incredible 12.7TB of data.

Created by video editing and modding whiz Will Urbina and showcased over on his site - via Engadget - the Black Dwarf is a stunning-looking build constructed from aluminium, steel, and a Lexan transparent lid - and entirely made by hand, with nary a mass-produced part in sight.

The NAS - which is powered by a 1.66GHz Atom N270 processor, which helps keep the power draw and heat as low as possible while still providing the grunt to keep the data travelling at top speed - holds eight 2TB hard drives in a RAID 5 setup, providing 12.7TB of usable space while allowing any single drive to fail without losing data. A 320GB drive is included for a boot drive, and a 30GB SSD allows certain data to be cached for rapid access.

While the processor is a little on the slow side, the overall performance is pretty nice: an 88MB per second write speed is dwarfed by the units incredible 266MB per second read speed.

Urbina has posted a pair of videos detailing his work, along with an impressive time-lapse video which compresses over 100 hours of work into just six minutes.

Are you impressed at the amount of storage Urbina has put into the world's most stylish looking shoebox, or are you aghast that he hasn't spread his risk by using drives from differing manufacturers - or at least batches - for his array? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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