Camera Labs

You might be able to increase that speed by buying a high end switch, if your harddrive allows it.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

Not sure whether anything would help much: With another computer I get to 300MBit/sec max so it may be the network adapter in the MSI Wind that limits the performance.

On another note: I get mixed results when timing the HDD sleep-mode. Even with no other computer in the network active the system-disk wont go to sleep although I set the timer to 3 minutes. Under other circumstances the drive goes to sleep but wakes up after a few minutes.
Does anybody know which services/programs are responsible for keeping the system-drive busy? Can you switch them off?

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

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Windows Search (from the Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services applet) would be a good starting point. Stop and then disable the service.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Currently testing the free* backup software AllwaySync with the task to synchronize all my data on the 1TB drive in my Dekstop and the MSI Wind. AllwaySync is better than DSynchronize in that respect that you can define rules to exclude certain folders or files from synchronization. That is esp. important for Lightroom owners as they have a plethora of preview data in their Lightroom catalog folder which is a real nuisance to sync.
My 1TB HDD is filled with >130,000 files and >720GB of data. Letting AllwaySync analyse the complete drive (w/o LR preview files) to look for new/changed files took a mere 7 minutes and included 100,427 files. Excellent!

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*limited to synchronize no more than 20,000 files per 30-day period

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Java Quick Start (jqs.exe) is another culprit that's keeping the systemdisk from spinning down. To prevent this service from restarting with every reboot go to the Java control panel inside the tab "Advanced" under "miscellaneous" you just uncheck the entry "Java Quick Starter".
Phew, I fear I've already installed too much on the machine to have it peacefully idling until data are requested through the network

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Either that, or network congestion. Have you considered buying a PCI network card that's faster?

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

Well since my new 31,000 RPM SAS Raid 0 setup is reading at over 200MB/s (not Mb/s)

300Mbit isnt good enough


In theory I should need a 1.6Gb connection to get the full speed of my drives.

10Gb NIC sounds like a plan then haha

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

As an addendum to my hack&saw surgery I did on the little machine here is an alternative if you want to keep the built-in 320GB drive and just add one 1TB HDD:
- Keep the 320GB drive in the HDD-bay as it was delivered. I assume it is thermally safe as MSI designed it to be mounted there. A note of caution: I would not mount a 1TB drive in the original HDD-bay as these drives are going to produce more heat than the original 320GB drive.
- Now that the system-drive is taken care of you just need space for one additional HDD which fits nicely in the empty ODD-bay.
- Just make the cut-outs and drill the holes you see on the following image and you can mount the 2nd HDD with rubber-grommets quite easily.



The benefits in comparison to the 2x1TB stacked HDD solution:
- You don't have to take out the ODD-bay completely.
- Both HHDs are securely mounted inside the case.
- The drive-cage can still be secured with two screws to the case
The disadvantage(s):
- You get acoustic decoupling only for the 2nd HDD. The first is still mounted directly touching the sheet metal of the drive bay
- You should not use this setup with 2x1TB drives as you risk shortening the lifespan of the drive inside the original HDD-bay.

Two general "pearls of wisdom" :
- Doing what I did will totally void any guaranty!
- Cutting and drilling sheet metal can result in very sharp edges. Watch your fingers!

Next up: some photos of the final setup. Expect cardboard to play an important role

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Yup, been there, done that. Blood everywhere.

Apologies if it's been mentioned before but cleaning the chassis after drilling and sawing is also a must. With the componentry and interconnects being so small in modern circuit boards it is all too easy for the swarf to create short circuits. All it takes is just one whisker. So cleaning thoroughly and making sure you get into every nook and crevice is essential. And then clean again.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Yes Bob, you're absolutely right about cleaning!
Fortunately the drive cage can be detached from the case completely.
So keep the case in a safe place while the filings fligh high

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Now here's the final breakdown of the finished conversion.

From the outside (top). I added a cordless handset for your comparison:

You see that I mounted the 8cm fan inside of the case, not as a hump on the outside. You'll see soon that this caused some extra work for mounting the fan. If you want to protect your fingers and avoid breaching FCC regulations you'd better put a fan grille over the air intake. A golden one wold certainly look very nice

From the top, with the lid just shoved back as far as it needs for dismounting/lifting (approx. 1cm):

As you can see, the fan does not move, because I could not fix it to the case-lid.

From the top, lid lifted off. You can see the cardboard construct to mount the 8cm fan directly over the CPU. The green line indicates where the cardboard was glued to the chassis. In the area outlined in red the cardboard just lays on the drive-cage (or what remains of it), it is not glued to it. Otherwise it would be impossible to dismount the drive-cage. The 8cm fan just bearly fits between the rear of the chassis and the drive-case. So there is not even 1cm room to maneuver should you try to mount the fan to the lid of the chassis. This way you also avoid unplugging the fan from the mainboard should you take the lid off:

What I didn't mark in this image is the cutout from the drive-cage to the left of the red area. This was just to give the two stacked HDDs some headroom under the drive-cage for better ventilation. Remember the 5cm fan in the back now sucks air into the case and blows it directly across the HDDs for optimum cooling.

Taking off the drive-cage you have a clear view of the stacked drives, wedged between the left wall and the mainboard with some rubber foam and a rubber tube for optimum silencing:


Next up is a clearer view of the drive-bay, made from cardboard (1.5mm thick). It makes sure both HDDs have a defined gap between each other and the case of around 3-5mm to let air flow through and around them:

The distance between the mounting threads of each drive is 3cm.

Now the final image shows you what I "mounted" the new cardboard drive-bay on:

I cut the pieces of rubber tubing in half to reduce the hight. And I must admit that I didn't even glue those pieces to the bottom of the case. That's because I just planned to operate the Nettop in a horizontal position only. And I wanted to avoid drilling another set of holes into the bottom of the case to mount the drive(s) with rubber grommets.That would have been the engineer's favourite, but alas: I was a little tired of hacking and cutting and drilling into this beautiful little machine...

That's it, folks! Cardboard and rubber can turn your measly screaming Nettop into a silent 2TB home server in no time

Btw.: Here is an interesting article about Nettops as the next big thing in data centres.
And here are all the images I took at this conversion.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses