Home Server Case and RAID card

hellarda

hellarda

hellarda

Soldato
Joined
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Hi all,

I have a server at home which is in a tiny desktop case which cannot fit all the harddrives in (they're currently in a separate caddy outside the case). My Perc 6 has also just decided to give up and die on me :(

Do cheap cases that can hold lots of harddrives exist? I had a look at the norco ones but they are so expensive.

Also I need a RAID card for 8 drives that supports up to 3TB, any recommendations?

Cheers
 
hellarda said:
Hi all,

I have a server at home which is in a tiny desktop case which cannot fit all the harddrives in (they're currently in a separate caddy outside the case). My Perc 6 has also just decided to give up and die on me :(

Do cheap cases that can hold lots of harddrives exist? I had a look at the norco ones but they are so expensive.

Also I need a RAID card for 8 drives that supports up to 3TB, any recommendations?

Cheers
Click to expand...

How many drives are we talking, the only one I've found so far that fits my criteria of silence, 8 3.5" drives and reasonably priced is a Fractal Design Define R4

The Dell PERC H700 seems to be suggested quite a bit as far as controllers that support 3TB drives
 
I'm in a similar situation, currently my server sits inside a lian-li mAtx case which whilst looking awesome can only hold 6 or 7 disks (and close together at that).

Have you considered a rackmount solution as these are available with many, many HDD bays. I think this is the route I will end up taking when the time comes.
 
Frozennova said:
How many drives are we talking, the only one I've found so far that fits my criteria of silence, 8 3.5" drives and reasonably priced is a Fractal Design Define R4

The Dell PERC H700 seems to be suggested quite a bit as far as controllers that support 3TB drives
Click to expand...

Thanks I will have a look at the H700. Are there not LSI cards that support 3TB drives that may be cheaper?

I'm not too fussed on silence, but I do need probably space for 8 harddrives now with room to expand so that may not be enough.

Flying_Hellfish said:
I'm in a similar situation, currently my server sits inside a lian-li mAtx case which whilst looking awesome can only hold 6 or 7 disks (and close together at that).

Have you considered a rackmount solution as these are available with many, many HDD bays. I think this is the route I will end up taking when the time comes.
Click to expand...

Yeah I had looked at some rackmount options but they all seem to be extortionately expensive :(
 
The Dell cards use LSI chipsets. From looking in the past I have always found a Dell or HP branded card to be cheaper.

As I didn't need RAID or support for 3TB drives I bought a Dell SAS 6/ir for less than £15 on ebay
 
I have the Fractal Define XL - it can hold 10 hard drives, and its solid (19KG without anything in it!).
 
Fractal Design is a good way forward to hold a lot of drive,

I currently have x8 2TB drives on an adaptec 6805 with maxcache battery, Writes have increased by 20% when enabling write back cache on the array.

Can't fault the adaptec cards, not cheap but well worth it
 
I'm looking at getting the H700, however I am reading around that it does not support non-dell branded drives? Is this true?

sadly the adaptec cards are a bit out of my budget
 
hellarda said:
I'm looking at getting the H700, however I am reading around that it does not support non-dell branded drives? Is this true?

sadly the adaptec cards are a bit out of my budget
Click to expand...

Never come across such information myself, but if it is the case then it will only be firmware based which is where the following comes in

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...-(Dell-H700-LSI-9260-IBM-M5015-Intel-RS2BL080)

I flashed my SAS 6/ir from Dells own firmware to LSIs IT firmware as I didn't want/need hardware RAID and a plain jane HBA is better for Software RAID/ZFS
 
I'm using an Antec nine hundred case for my home server. Got 8 hotswap bays in the front with 2TB drives connected back to a Perc 6i. Plenty of space to squeeze more drives in if I wanted, ATM theres just a couple of SSD's in RAID1 loose in the bottom for the OS/VM storage.
 
I have a Fractal XL R2. It can house 8 drives in it's stock configuration but there's room for another HDD cage* if you remove the floor fan. That'd take the total up to 12 drives. Then you've still got 4x 5.25" bays that can be populated.

The case is well built and rather heavy for it's size. The noise dampening seems to do a good job (but I can't compare apples to apples when it comes to components used in the XL R2 and my old case, so take that with a grain of salt). The exterior design is very muted and minimal but I think it's internal layout and design, whilst solid is a little dated and it's lack of the R4's SSD mounts is rather odd but I'm very picky when it comes to cases. Overall it's a very solid case and should be ideal for a home server with more than 8 drives but there are small annoyances (as with every case) that I hope are addressed with the next revision.

*The HDD cages can be purchased through Fractal's official website for about £5 but as far as I'm aware, that doesn't include shipping. You should also know that the top and the bottom HDD cage in the XL R2 are different, so make sure you get the bottom one and Fractal (the cheeky buggers) sell the metal drive sleds separately.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the replies guys,

Went for a 16 hotswap bay 4u rackmount case, which I managed to get for £149 from a certain rainforest.

Also went with a Perc H700 which is working well :)
 
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