Operation 'Tons of Hard Drives'

thewanted

thewanted

thewanted

Soldato
Joined
27 Jul 2007
Posts
6,519
Hi all,

So in all my time spent here (I spent a good few years lurking), I've never posted a "Spec Me" thread. It seems like everyone gets a chance eventually :)

I'm in the process of ditching my Drobo and I need a case that can hold a lot of hard drives. This build from another forum (linky) has really caught my eye. I don't want a horrible Rackmount case like a Norco. Is the Antec 1200 the best case to get 4 x 5-in-3s into? That gives me 20 x 3.5" drives with the ability to stash a small SSD somewhere to boot Linux.

I've done a search on this forum and I couldn't see any builds where people had a requirement for so many disks. Can anyone offer any insight into what's available on the UK market?

Thanks in advance :)
 
loads of hard drive space is easy

how much is your budget?

if you could find an old unmodded Lian Li V2000 then that would be a great solution
 
Theres been a few guys myself even asking for cases with lots of hdds, sadly there quite rare.

The antec 1200 is a good choice and I belive heres a nice guide/mod for it : http://www.silentpcreview.com/Mid-Tower_File_Server_Configurations

Personaly speaking I didnt want all that aggro and wanted something clean and nice and simple... so managed to get a Fractual R2 case which is great has 8 hdd bays just slip the drives in and sorted really.

that link you sent is pretty amazing but id say is quite pricey, but would be future proof if anything.

Even for myself 8 slots if not enough on my Fractual R2, but you can get lian li enclosures that take upto 4 hdds and load into the top bays of any pc (takes about 3 dvdwriter bays).

If anything fractual are coming out with this soon:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=7&subid=1556

10 hdds, and then id say 4 in the top bay easily....

looks a cheaper route perhaps? Its proberly the route im doing since Antec 1200 is nice but looks squashed especially if one goes to use a highend long graphics card ie 5970 wouldnt fit perhaps 5870 would struggle too...

but as I say all depends how many drives u want and if its for a file server or a highend pc/storage system, such a shame cheap 4tbs arent out ;)
 
rjkoneill said:
loads of hard drive space is easy

how much is your budget?

if you could find an old unmodded Lian Li V2000 then that would be a great solution
Click to expand...

No real budget to be honest. I know it's going to be expensive but in the long run it'll be cheaper than buying a bigger Drobo which will have much less capacity.

That Lian-Li v2000 is incredible! 12 x 3.5" + 7 x 5.25". Could get 22 drives in there if I used 2 x 5-in-3s. Too bad they're not available anymore.


HighlandeR said:
The antec 1200 is a good choice and I belive heres a nice guide/mod for it : http://www.silentpcreview.com/Mid-Tower_File_Server_Configurations

Personaly speaking I didnt want all that aggro and wanted something clean and nice and simple... so managed to get a Fractual R2 case which is great has 8 hdd bays just slip the drives in and sorted really.

that link you sent is pretty amazing but id say is quite pricey, but would be future proof if anything.

Even for myself 8 slots if not enough on my Fractual R2, but you can get lian li enclosures that take upto 4 hdds and load into the top bays of any pc (takes about 3 dvdwriter bays).

If anything fractual are coming out with this soon:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=7&subid=1556

10 hdds, and then id say 4 in the top bay easily....

looks a cheaper route perhaps? Its proberly the route im doing since Antec 1200 is nice but looks squashed especially if one goes to use a highend long graphics card ie 5970 wouldnt fit perhaps 5870 would struggle too...

but as I say all depends how many drives u want and if its for a file server or a highend pc/storage system, such a shame cheap 4tbs arent out ;)
Click to expand...

Even the full tower Fractal case doesn't hold enough drives (future-proofing). 14 drives is quite a lot fewer than what the Antec 1200 can hold. I must admit though, I've seen a Fractal R3 in the flesh and it's a thing of beauty! The Antec 1200 itself isn't that expensive (~£130) but the 5-in-3s are about £100 each and I'd need 4 (eventually). This PC won't be using any fancy gfx as I don't game at all and it'll be running Linux or some form of ZFS (OpenSolaris/FreeBSD) system.

Cheers for the replies guys. Looks like the Antec 1200 might be my only option for ~20 drives? I have to say, that guy in the link I posted did a fantastic job.
 
EniGmA1981 said:
20 drives? That's a potentual 40TB of storage... All I can say to that is a big fat wow!
Click to expand...

that's a LOT of prawns... xD, an alternative you could consider is a Lian Li a70 case, it has 5x5.25 and 10x3.5, meaning you can put a total of 17/16 + optical drive inside. This way you have 2 cases to look out for.
 
shroomz said:
that's a LOT of prawns... xD, an alternative you could consider is a Lian Li a70 case, it has 5x5.25 and 10x3.5, meaning you can put a total of 17/16 + optical drive inside. This way you have 2 cases to look out for.
Click to expand...

I was checking out that case last night. Very pretty! The clearance between the motherboard and the 5.25" slots looks adequate for the 5-in-3s.

It's quite a bit more expensive than the Antec 1200 and holds fewer drives. However, it would work out cheaper in the long-run as I wouldn't need to purchase so many 5-in-3s (1 as opposed to 4 in the Antec). This machine won't have an optical drive. It's a pure storage server as I use my MacBook for everything else.

Interesting...
 
20 drives.... yeah in that case even a fractual wont be enough.

Could always buy 2 cases perhaps working out cheaper, but yeah if u want one case then antec 1200 is a good option and the high end Lian Lis are something to check out also.

Its a shame they aint made one giant case just designed for lots of hdds, the racks and others arent really all that if you want a bit of power/performance or flexibility also.
 
Lian Li A70/71F offer 11 hdd bays as standard, then you can add more drives in the 5.25 bays.
 
I'd probably go for one of the big 4u supermicro chassis with 24 hot swap bays or similar. They are around a grand including the backplane and redundant PSU's. Seems expensive at first glance, but with 5 in 3 bays costing over £100 each, It's not as bad as it seems. Especially as the backplane presents as a single 8087 connection so you don't need an ultra expensive 24 port RAID controller.
 
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Zarf said:
I'd probably go for one of the big 4u supermicro chassis with 24 hot swap bays or similar. They are around a grand including the backplane and redundant PSU's. Seems expensive at first glance, but with 5 in 3 bays costing over £100 each, It's not as bad as it seems. Especially as the backplane presents as a single 8087 connection so you don't need an ultra expensive 24 port RAID controller.
Click to expand...

I've been trying to avoid the rackmount cases as I don't really have the space (can you stand them upright?) and they weigh a ton. The only Supermicro 4U case that a large UK competitor sells is £878 and weighs 34kg, however it does include redundant 900w PSUs (:eek:). I wasn't planning on getting a RAID controller, but rather 2-3 of the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-port non-RAID controllers and using Linux software RAID + LVM. Those cards are only ~£100 each.

Antec 1200 (£130) + 4 x 5-in-3s (£400) + 2 non-RAID controllers (£200) + Corsair 750w PSU (£120) = £850. I guess it doesn't end up being a whole lot cheaper than the 4U case (I think I'd also need a controller that supports the SFF-8087 connector?) but I would have a purpose-designed case and 4 extra 3.5" slots. My gut tells me I'd need to replace the fans in the Supermicro case as they'd be really noisy.

This isn't easy.
 
thewanted said:
Yikes. That's even bigger than the 4U rackmount case I don't have space for! Looks the shizzle though. Will check out the review later... thanks :)

Rome isn't going to sightsee itself you know ;)
Click to expand...

Well it's 46cm x 46cm x 46cm. So yeah quite big.

Though by using something like these you could fit up to 24 HDD's in the front as well as 3 HDD's at the rear!

27 HDD's!
 
Reldar said:
Well it's 46cm x 46cm x 46cm. So yeah quite big.

Though by using something like these you could fit up to 24 HDD's in the front as well as 3 HDD's at the rear!

27 HDD's!
Click to expand...

It's not as big as all that, just two mid towers side by side. It fits very nicely under the corner of my desks :D

You can fit an insane number of drive in there, 24 in the front and another 6 in the back if you get all the right adapters etc (and are willing to pay for them all). But that's where the size starts becoming a problem, there isn't that much space inside once you've fully populated it so getting 30 drives worth of cables in there isn't easy. I've got 11 drives (plus a DVD) in mine at the moment and it's a bit of a rat's nest, I wouldn't fancy trying many more than that.
 
TBH if you are going to the trouble of installing over 16 hdds then bespoke cabling is the only way to go.

Remember SAS/SATA backplanes are your friend.
 
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Just a suggestion, but why not build a sort of chimney thing out of the top of a normal case, and screw the drives into it? Maybe £30 of aluminium, with fans every so often?

then put it in a corner!

Buy/make drive bays too.


And i know how dubious that sounds, but making your own is always the way to imo :D
 
thewanted said:
(I think I'd also need a controller that supports the SFF-8087 connector?) but I would have a purpose-designed case and 4 extra 3.5" slots. My gut tells me I'd need to replace the fans in the Supermicro case as they'd be really noisy.

This isn't easy.
Click to expand...

It depends on the motherboard, If your motherboard supports SAS, you can use a reverse breakout cable which takes the 8087 connector and turns it into 4 SATA/SAS connectors which you can plug straight in. The SuperMicro X8ST3-F motherboard is a good choice if you plan on this.

What other components were you planning on using? For a 20+drive setup I'd advise you look into using ZFS on OpenIndiana (OpenSolaris). If you plan on a parity based RAID and Using features like Deduplication you'll need a beefy processor.
 
Zarf said:
What other components were you planning on using? For a 20+drive setup I'd advise you look into using ZFS on OpenIndiana (OpenSolaris). If you plan on a parity based RAID and Using features like Deduplication you'll need a beefy processor.
Click to expand...

I've not made a firm choice yet, but was leaning towards the Supermicro Supermicro X8SIL-F motherboard, Intel Core i3-530 CPU and 4GB of RAM. The i3-530 has an idle wattage value very, very close to a dual-core Atom but lots of extra grunt so it's a better choice. As the machine will be mostly storing HD-video and music, I don't think deduplication will be any good to me unless it can miraculously de-dupe x264 which would be slightly awesome.

My only issue with ZFS is that you have to add disks in groups which means you lose 1-2 disks to parity (RAID-Z or RAID-Z2) every time you expand the pool. Whereas with Linux you can add 1 disk at a time.
 
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