Mini ITX for NAS

matsmithphotog · 31 Dec 2010 at 00:31

Last three nights I have fallen asleep reading about Mini ITX cases.

Waking up dreaming about magically inheriting the metalwork skills required to make my own perfect case.

So many forum posts online about Mini ITX cases with 4 drive bays, I need more than that!

This video has been haunting me:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/07/homemade-16tb-nas-dwarfs-the-competition-with-insane-build-quali/

Things I care about:
- Ideally hold 10x 3.5 inch drives internally. 8x fine. 6x okay.
- Run quiet and cool. Fanless Atom CPU?
- Take up as little space as possible: just for the disks and the tiny motherboard. Desktop appliance?
- Low power consumption

Things I don't care about:
- Don't care how fast processor is. It's for data archive only. I run large file transfers overnight. Don't need it for Bittorrent or serving media in realtime.
- Build quality not really important. Just has to be fit for purpose, but I'd rather have something small than large and well-built.

Actually, case size isn't a major problem, but I would really prefer something small and desktop than a beastly floor-standing tower to hold what is essentially a bunch of drives and a tiny motherboard.

Please help!

Guardsmon · 31 Dec 2010 at 01:46

You could mod a PC-Q08 to use a PicoITX PSU and then have a 3rd hard drive caddy where the PSU normally sits. You'd have to get a pretty nice raid card to support 10x hard drives though even if 2 run off the motherboard that'll probably cost you more than the rest put together (minus 10x drives of course

) *edit* aa its not that bad, ~£160 + 2x £30 SAS to 4x SATA cables

Otherwise this might be your answer (you could have 2x

) Fractal Design Array MiniITX Case

matsmithphotog · 31 Dec 2010 at 03:16

Guardsmon said:
You could mod a PC-Q08 to use a PicoITX PSU and then have a 3rd hard drive caddy where the PSU normally sits.

LOVE the sound of this.

So this model has 6x 3.5in bays, correct? I have no need for a big graphics card, so I could use all of these.

And you reckon it would be possible to mod the case to add another caddy where the PSU would be. Do you know if there's a hard drive caddy you can get which would be appropriate / have the correct fixings? Do you think this requires basically drilling holes in the bottom of the case itself? How many bays could you fit into this caddy?

What about the 5.25in bay? Could I use one of these to add to my capacity? (I'm thinking 2x 2.5in old notebook drives I have kicking around somewhere, on which to install the OS)

Sorry for all the questions, I'm quite new to Mini ITX and haven't built a computer since full size ATX was the norm...

Thanks,

Mat

matsmithphotog · 31 Dec 2010 at 04:57

Another Q: anyone come across this non-RAID SATA card?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS-L8i.cfm

Totally happy to go with s/w disk management (e.g. WHS)

matsmithphotog · 31 Dec 2010 at 06:51

Another Q, (Told you this was keeping me awake!)

I have been looking at Pico ITX PSUs. Can I use a single one of these to power the motherboard AND 8 disks?

Presumably I would need to buy more cables to connect up the 8 SATA disks. Can the disks be daisy-chained? Where would you get this kind of cable?

Guardsmon · 31 Dec 2010 at 14:28

matsmithphotog said:
Another Q: anyone come across this non-RAID SATA card?

http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...jhGorj-Qaik6C1Cw&sa=title&ved=0CAkQ8wIwADgA#p

Totally happy to go with s/w disk management (e.g. WHS)

Might want to revise that link to just show the card and not the competitors (band)

Are you really going to put 8-10 drives in and not have any raid? If you're looking for cheap you might want to look at: Highpoint RocketRAID 2680 (£50 and you get full raid functions)

As for all your questions:-
Yes the Q08 has 6x3.5 mounts, you could also put that optical adapter in for an additional drive or 2.
I've never looked at modding the space that a PSU takes up as a drive bay before, but I can't see why it wouldn't be possible. You'd have to do some measuring however most PSUs will have dimensions of: 6 x 3.5 x 5.5" .

I've done a very quick comparison for you putting using my V354 which is pretty much the same case. The 4 bay hard drive caddy provided could fit where the PSU sits, but is a little wider and would require some modding around where the PCI backplate sits. This would give you rubber gromits for the sound and allow 4 drives. The other option would be to get a 3 bay one as this would fit more easily. However with both of these you're going to have to think of some backplate to mout it.

Also I'm not sure how a PicoPSU will hold up with 10x hard drives + other componets (pretty sure it wouldn't). You might get away with 2x picoPSUs

matsmithphotog · 1 Jan 2011 at 15:24

Guardsmon said:
Might want to revise that link

Noted- done!

Guardsmon said:
Are you really going to put 8-10 drives in and not have any raid?

I was planning to use software RAID to save a few bucks. On reflection it's really not worth it in the long run. So yes, good point!

Guardsmon said:
Highpoint RocketRAID 2680 (£50 and you get full raid functions)

Cheapest I have seen it is £160. Hrm.

Guardsmon said:
I've done a very quick comparison for you putting using my V354 which is pretty much the same case <...> However with both of these you're going to have to think of some backplate to mout it.

Thanks for trying that, I think I really need to see the case and try it out.

Guardsmon said:
Also I'm not sure how a PicoPSU will hold up with 10x hard drives + other componets (pretty sure it wouldn't). You might get away with 2x picoPSUs

Got it. I think I may take the project slowly, try to get something up and running at first with 6 drives. Problem is, there's no way of knowing exactly what maximum power the drives will use at spin-up as drive specs are often vague (and often incorrect too...)

I'm tempted to just get a bigger case instead of modding a smaller one. Keep changing my mind. I just wish there were some long and thin case similar to the form factor of the Black Dwarf. (Stupid name, brilliant form factor)

If anyone has any more to add, I'd love to hear it!

Happy New Year!

Bry · 1 Jan 2011 at 16:59

My recommendation as this is what I have assembled over the last week:

Lian Li PC v354B case - Holds 8 3.5 HDD, 1 5.2 Inch bay and 2 2.5 HDD for a total of 11 hard drives
Supermicro Atom D525 Motherboard -
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPE-HF-D525.cfm
Has 6 onboard sata ports which is more than any other atom motherboard, most only have 2. Motherboard also has IPMI which is basically KVM over ethernet which is fantastic for a headless server. Had to get mine from the bay as they are not generally sold here but came fine and works fine.

Extremely happy with this build. Small case, 11 possible hard drives, latest atom processor with lots of sata ports.

matsmithphotog · 1 Jan 2011 at 17:21

Bry said:
Lian Li PC v354B case <...> total of 11 hard drives

Love this case. I think I'm going for this. I had a really good experience with Lian Li cases a few years ago.

Bry said:
Supermicro Atom D525 Motherboard

Looks like a very nice bit of kit. 6 onboard SATA, very impressive. Although would probably still need to add a SATA Raid card as ideally want 1 drive for OS plus 8 for data.

The website you linked said it has 6x SATA (3.0Gbps) Ports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 (Windows Only). What does the "Windows Only" bit mean? Surely RAID always presents logical volumes to the OS? Or does it mean there is some management software that only runs under Win?

I may actually stick to a cheaper Mobo (much as I love the look of your D525, I only really need NAS functions... Love that headless KVM but can use RDP or web interface depending on which OS I go for) and spend instead on RAID card, fanless PSU, etc.

I'm still a little confused about PSU. I think with this Lian Li case which is larger than the Q08, I don't need the teeny tiny PSU, but I am really concerned about power consumption.

Ideally my PSU would be fanless, have a ridiculous amount of SATA connectors, and draw the least current possible.

Does anyone have any tips on building a NAS that draws as little power as possible? I know the factors are drive spin-down, drive spec choice (I'm going for 5200RPM Eco drives), and PSU... but that's where my knowledge ends!

Thanks again

Hairy · 6 Jan 2011 at 12:41

I have the Lian Li PC-Q08B, which is slightly smaller,

But they are fantastic cases, well built and definitely worth the money!

Azaniah01 · 7 Jan 2011 at 13:13

Bry,

What are you running for software - I've been toying between a prebuilt QNAP NAS - and building my own server...