PC Case That Supports Many Hard Drives?

[PeteCress]

My mobo has six SATA receptacles on it and it's drive bays are about maxed out with five hard drives (one system, 4 data).

I assume that if I add one or more SATA cards, I can double, triple, or even quadruple the number of SATA drives.

That would allow me to either/or/and

• Move up to some serious storage capacity
• Move to a fault-tolerant WHS drive config where, if one drive bites the big one, I can swap it out without data loss.
• Bring some old sub-TB drives that are just laying around unused into the storage pool

Problem is that the current case won't support any more physical drives and I would rather not add to the mess in the wiring closet with a bunch of external drives.

Has anybody found a case that:

• Doesn't cost an arm and a leg
• Supports a dozen or more drives?

Lacking such a PC case, a single secondary case dedicated to drives that somehow connects to the PC case would also fit the bill.

[PiX64]

for my NAS i use the following case which works quite well and has a ton of space:

Case: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...620&CatId=1510

link didnt' work try this one

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...620&CatId=1510

[HelenWeathers]

This case doesn't hold 12 drives - only 9. But I use it and love it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811133058

My drives are mounted in these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817998020

The only 12 bay units I've seen are for duplicators and are fairly expensive.

EDIT: The ULTRA mentioned above by PiX64 looks good too.

[mtyme]

I use this for my NAS, the ports and such at the top are modular and removable so you can put drives there as well.

http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/cases/...cker/index.htm

That being said though, I use this in combination with the above case.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817121405

It houses 5 drives, has active cooling, supports hot swapping and only takes up 3 of your 5 1/4 bays. With the two products above you could have 20 drives in that combination.

[PiX64]

Please click one of the Quick Reply icons in the posts above to activate Quick Reply.

[PiX64]

The reason i like that case so much is it has screwless drive rails, as well as 3 bay modular sections that come out of the case. so you slide the 3 bay section out (which is screwless) and then you have the HDD or whatever you want mounted screwless inside of that bay. On top of that the front of each modular 3 bay section has spot for an (120 i think maybe 80 mm) fan with filter.

~Mike

[stanger89]

You want drive bays, go for the norco 4220, 20 hot-swap SATA trays
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1149005

Throw a 3ware 9690SA-4I and Chenbro SAS expander in and you're good to go

[Paul H]

JMTCW:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...076&CatId=1510

[kevine]

Here is the case I am eyeing:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811160026

6 more 3.5 drives can be utilized with these:
http://www.provantage.com/cooler-mas...p~7COOL051.htm

Total of (14) 3.5 drives. for under $200. Now let's talk power supplies to support such a thing.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You want drive bays, go for the norco 4220, 20 hot-swap SATA trays
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1149005

Throw a 3ware 9690SA-4I and Chenbro SAS expander in and you're good to go

When you browse that thread, do you see the photos?

I registered, but still cannot see them.

UserCP | Edit Options | Visible Post Elements | Show Images = True, but no joy.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

Bring some old sub-TB drives that are just laying around unused into the storage pool

Originally Posted by kevine

Now let's talk power supplies to support such a thing.

Kevine makes an excellent point here. Trying to reuse those old drives may be a false economy if it means buying a larger, more expensive case & PSU to house them and paying more per month in electricity to keep them spinning. You might be better off in the long run selling the old drives on Ebay and building your storage system around a smaller number of new, high-capacity drives.

[trini0]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You want drive bays, go for the norco 4220, 20 hot-swap SATA trays
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1149005

Throw a 3ware 9690SA-4I and Chenbro SAS expander in and you're good to go

+1, except, I have an Areca 24 port card...

[Paul H]

Just one Power Supply Calculator:
http://www.antec.outervision.com/

[mayamaniac]

A bit pricy for your price range, but this Thermaltake Armor case has serviced me well over the last 4 years I've own it. I have the one without the side panel fan, but it works well as long as you use these harddrive cages for all your drives. The case can hold up to 12 drives and well ventilated.

[SWKerr]

Antec Three Hundred $55 shipped.

I use this for one of my HTPCs and another one for my WHS. It has six 3.5" slots that are well spaced and Three 5.25" slots. The 5.25" need an adapter to fit a 3.5 hard drive. It is very well ventilated with big 120mm fans so it runs quite. I have 8 hard drives and a 45w AMD X2 with 2GB of RAM (No DVD drive). All on a 400w power supply. I added a $30 SATA PCI card to expand the 6 built into the motherboard. I hook up an external eSATA drive occasionally to backup the pictures, music etc that I would really miss and keep it at the office.

I agree that buying new 1TB or 1.5TB makes the most sense. (2TB still too expensive) I used a bunch of old drives on my trail WHS setup and replaced them all with one 1.5tb drive when I built the real server. Just a lot easier and will use less power.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

When you browse that thread, do you see the photos?

I registered, but still cannot see them.

UserCP | Edit Options | Visible Post Elements | Show Images = True, but no joy.

Yeah, you shouldn't even need to register, looks like they're hosted on imageshack. But regardless, it's this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...nc.-_-11219033

I'm kind of eyeing it for when/if I rebuild my server.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Kevine makes an excellent point here. Trying to reuse those old drives may be a false economy if it means buying a larger, more expensive case & PSU to house them and paying more per month in electricity to keep them spinning. You might be better off in the long run selling the old drives on Ebay and building your storage system around a smaller number of new, high-capacity drives.

First saying I'm definitely for more large drives than many small ones. I don't think you'll ever break even trying to "pay for" new larger drives in electricity savings. I ran the numbers once when I was looking at upgrading. I was thinking replacing 8x250GB, ~8W 7200rpm drives with like 3x1TB, 4W WD Green drives would save me "significantly" on electricity bills, but it's not the case. It would take many years to recoup the cost.

Though it does make PSU selection easier. As well as case selection.

[tmiranda]

+1 on the Thermaltake Armor. I have two and they are very good.

Also +1 on the Antec 300. I have one of those but it only holds 6 drives.

AND also +1 on the false economy of reusing many small, old, drives. I just "retired" one of my servers by replacing 11 old drives with 2 1.5GB SATA drives. As a result I have one unused Thermaltake Armor!

Tom

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You want drive bays, go for the norco 4220, 20 hot-swap SATA trays
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1149005

Throw a 3ware 9690SA-4I and Chenbro SAS expander in and you're good to go

I'll take gKusnick's point about old small drives being false economy.

Right now I'm running four 1-TB "Green" drives.


Would I be correct in thinking that the Norco does not have a bay for my 3.5" non-SATA system drive? If so, I'd call that a show-stopper in the context of what's below.


With the ThermaLake Armor case, it looks like I'm getting just a case and mobo/power supply/drives could just be bolted over. The mobo could care less.

With either case where I'd be going initially is a simple bolt-over: mobo, system drive, and the four 1TB drives.

In neither case would I be doing RAID. Maybe duplicated WHS files... maybe not....

For Norco, I'd hang the existing 4 1-TB drives outside the case or wherever I could park them.

For ThermaLake, I'd put them into their final homes in the drive bays.


In both cases, the 1TB drives would be cabled into the same Mobo SATA receptacles that they are are now.

At this point, I would have a fully-functional server - although a uniquely-ugly/messy one with Norco.


With Norco, I'd then install whatever driver is needed to access the backplane.

With ThermaLake, I'd put in one or more SATA cards as needed to handle a full house of drives.


In both cases, I'd then add 3 1.5-gig SATA drives - plugged into a SATA card on ThermaLake, and on the backplane with Norco.


For ThermaLake, that would be it.

For Norco, I'd remove each of the 1-gig drives from WHS's pool and then re-install it on to the backplane - allowing WSH to de-populate/re-populate the data automagically.


Am I on the right track both Norco and ThermaLake-wise?

[Bigb]

I like this one:

http://www.wiredzone.com/itemdesc.as...CSE-933E1-R760

Not cheap, but great server case.

Thanks

[cord]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Also +1 on the Antec 300. I have one of those but it only holds 6 drives.

Why d'you say that? I just built a system in one, and I have 6 1TB drives, 2 1.5TB, and a DVD-RW. It has 6 internal 3.5" bays and 3 5.25" external ones. I put hot swappable bays in two of the 5.25" bays and went all the way to 8 hard drives, as you can see.

Finding a relatively affordable motherboard with 8 SATA ports was the more difficult quest.