Any commercial HDD rack draws about?
- Thread starter Kaiju
- Start date
There are plenty of SCSI ones about but SATA/IDE might be tricky
You could use USB2 caddies but performance isn't going to be great, eSATA is an alternative but not many mobos support it and usually it's only a single port so you're on to add in cards as well.
You could use USB2 caddies but performance isn't going to be great, eSATA is an alternative but not many mobos support it and usually it's only a single port so you're on to add in cards as well.
There's a review of the CalDigit S2VR Duo RAID Enclosure over on Tom's Hardware, it's an external 2 disk SATA unit that comes with a PCIe controller card. It looks like the sort of thing you'd be after but it's only takes a pair of drives and there's no indication of cost.
Do a google for "external SATA enclosure" - there are more out there than I first thought, if you look for RAID ones you'll get some multi disk options but all the ones I've looked at need a separate multi port eSATA card.
Do a google for "external SATA enclosure" - there are more out there than I first thought, if you look for RAID ones you'll get some multi disk options but all the ones I've looked at need a separate multi port eSATA card.
Ah Ha! - it also only needs two molex connectors needed instead of four, one for each drive. WOO!
http://www.icydock.com/product/mb454spf.html
Found it for about £60 in the UK.
Only problem is two of my WD320GB drives are PATA, so i'm gonna have to sell 'em on here and switch them to SATA.
At least they'll be hot-swappable though in case I want to take one in the shower with me.
http://www.icydock.com/product/mb454spf.html
Found it for about £60 in the UK.
Only problem is two of my WD320GB drives are PATA, so i'm gonna have to sell 'em on here and switch them to SATA.
At least they'll be hot-swappable though in case I want to take one in the shower with me.
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Very nice - and a decent price - I would have gone for the Scsi version of that very case but couldn't find one in this country - hence my 'Destroy-it-yourself' job!
The main case was gutted and I pushed the main 5 1/4" cage back about an inch to allow for the top fan, then hung 2*3 1/2" cages off that as seen Here
The main cage can be seen Here with the drives hung and the 3*120mm fans - I had a mix of 80pin and 68pin drives hence the backplates!
You can see the neoprene padding on the base - I've got a sheet at the back and one to cover the near side - dampens out much of the noise - which is nice - big sheets of the stuff like This
The psu is hotwired using the old 14+17 pin trick, but I added a relay in so powering up the main machine switches on the box, and the same at shut-down - really simple little mod, well worth the time!
Total cost:
Case - Free from a mate
Relay - £1.50
Neoprene - Old Junk
£1.50
(Nice thing is that I have space for another 3 drives that are on the way!)
The main case was gutted and I pushed the main 5 1/4" cage back about an inch to allow for the top fan, then hung 2*3 1/2" cages off that as seen Here
The main cage can be seen Here with the drives hung and the 3*120mm fans - I had a mix of 80pin and 68pin drives hence the backplates!
You can see the neoprene padding on the base - I've got a sheet at the back and one to cover the near side - dampens out much of the noise - which is nice - big sheets of the stuff like This
The psu is hotwired using the old 14+17 pin trick, but I added a relay in so powering up the main machine switches on the box, and the same at shut-down - really simple little mod, well worth the time!
Total cost:
Case - Free from a mate
Relay - £1.50
Neoprene - Old Junk
£1.50
(Nice thing is that I have space for another 3 drives that are on the way!)
The mod that I used was very simply explained Here - nice diagrams and easy to follow - he also includes the straight 14-17 pin mod if you can't be bothered with the relay (but I throroughly recommend the relay - get the right one and you can do it without soldering if you CBA'd 
)
Cables: I managed to find 2 1.5m scsi cables, they are excellent I have to say and have loads of heads with a 50cm gap before the 1st one - ideal (I was going to use the external connectors and then use an adapter as the cabling would be a little neater, but that would more than double my budget ) - so will have to save up!
For your build, you can get 1m sata cable that you see you right - (actually I even found a UK supplier of 2m cables so get googling!) - bit of that cable tidy stuff and you could give it a nice professional finish (I like the black stretchy stuff that's like a mesh stocking - works wonders and you could get all the cables into it!)
)Cables: I managed to find 2 1.5m scsi cables, they are excellent I have to say and have loads of heads with a 50cm gap before the 1st one - ideal
(I was going to use the external connectors and then use an adapter as the cabling would be a little neater, but that would more than double my budget ) - so will have to save up!For your build, you can get 1m sata cable that you see you right - (actually I even found a UK supplier of 2m cables so get googling!) - bit of that cable tidy stuff and you could give it a nice professional finish (I like the black stretchy stuff that's like a mesh stocking - works wonders and you could get all the cables into it!)
Wow, sounds definitely do-able. Got a few things to think about before I decide to take the DIY route or not.
Thanks again cavemanoc, great detailed review on your mod. I'm sure it'll help a lot of others suffering from HDD over-expansion, or in my case overheating HDD's.
Thanks again cavemanoc, great detailed review on your mod. I'm sure it'll help a lot of others suffering from HDD over-expansion, or in my case overheating HDD's.