Project Understated

I've been umming and ahhing about how to migrate my storage to the Fractal.

As you can see above, I trashed the 3.5in drivebays, which left me with just the two optical bays.

I've always tried to use RAID to protect my data after spending the early part of my working life repairing servers and dealing with backups. So I was after a minimum of 3 drives.

I decided to get three tiny 2.5in 750GB Samsungs
P1020445.jpg


To mount them I took a startech hot swap drivebay out of the old machine and after a bit of screwdriver work...
P1020446.jpg

Which looks like this once in the Fractal
P1020443.jpg

But... it really doesnt leave much room to work with inside...
P1020444.jpg

I actually used the radiator to push the sata cables into the sockets! Just glad I found 4 right angle ones. I'll now need to go source some black ones...

Took a few attempts to get everything connected and working - had an issue with the caddies and one of the bays which meant I had to completely strip it down and rebuild it. But its all working now, and the PC is copying across the C: drive to an array across those three disks.

I've also been testing the SSD acceleration provided by the Z68 chipset - and as far as I can tell - it works really well. So I'll have 1.4TB of storage, with a 64GB SSD cache.

Once I've got some black cables instead of the ones I found, I'll tidy them up.
 
skyripper said:
I've been umming and ahhing about how to migrate my storage to the Fractal.

As you can see above, I trashed the 3.5in drivebays, which left me with just the two optical bays.

I've always tried to use RAID to protect my data after spending the early part of my working life repairing servers and dealing with backups. So I was after a minimum of 3 drives.

I decided to get three tiny 2.5in 750GB Samsungs

To mount them I took a startech hot swap drivebay out of the old machine and after a bit of screwdriver work...

But... it really doesnt leave much room to work with inside...

I actually used the radiator to push the sata cables into the sockets! Just glad I found 4 right angle ones. I'll now need to go source some black ones...

Took a few attempts to get everything connected and working - had an issue with the caddies and one of the bays which meant I had to completely strip it down and rebuild it. But its all working now, and the PC is copying across the C: drive to an array across those three disks.

I've also been testing the SSD acceleration provided by the Z68 chipset - and as far as I can tell - it works really well. So I'll have 1.4TB of storage, with a 64GB SSD cache.

Once I've got some black cables instead of the ones I found, I'll tidy them up.
Click to expand...

What drive unit is that? I likes the look of it and want one myself now. I might actually put that IBM ServeRAID SAS controller to use.
 
Well it's made by Startech, who seem to make a bazillion different adaptors, widgets and drivebay thingummies. I cant link where I got it, so you'll just have to google startech 4 bay 2.5in. I've had it for ages in my last build where all it did was hold my SSD (I had a mad plan to buy more SSDs and never did). To connect it up you need 4 SATA / SAS cables, and one molex. It has a jumper to set the fans for high/low/off as well. I like the ability to just pop the SSD out if I wanted to play with overclocking or mess about with a different windows install.

Mine had a fault with the sheet metal inside which meant one of the drives wouldnt engage until it was disassembled reassembled - so just give all 4 bays a test if you buy to avoid surprises.

EDIT: Despite the fault, I think the unit is very well made and sturdy.
 
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Been bouncing an idea back and forth with DirtyJester and he asked for some measurements off the 2.5in drives. I figured 2.5in drives were all the same, but mygoogle-fu let me down so I got the ruler and terrible camera out and came up with...
Measured_25HD.jpg


Measurements are from outside edges and to centre of holes.
 
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Cheers :)

On another matter I take you wish to mount one caddy per drive bay rather than trying to squeeze 2 caddies into one drive bay? Oh and that brings me to the hole spacing on the drive bay for mounting, I notice the lower bay appears to have an extra hole ? Any chance you could take a few measurements of the pitch of the holes, any will do as long as they far enough apart to support the caddy plus H/D's failing that I will use the standard pitch for say a dvd drive (79.5mm). Hope some if this makes sense :D
 
I was thinking of two caddies per drive bay with a spacer between. So a similar physical layout to the startech thing above, but hidden behind the blanking plate.

I wasnt thinking of screwing them into place, with the weight of those two radiators in there, that rig isnt going to be moved around a lot. I guess it depends on the thickness of the material as to whether there is room enough to fit sidewalls to it - basically replicating a CDrom drive size and shape. Heh, its just ideas anyway.

A couple of 40mm fans in there should provide enough airflow, although I may need to get a vented drivebay cover rather than the solid ones supplied.

I'll measure up the holes in the 5.25in bays anyhow and do a similar pic as above.
 
Hi sky ripper...jus a thught,you could mount the stand of the front side Rad on the side with the fans so that you have the rad sitting on the xact front of the case.....n have space..for mounting the lower harddrive mount next to it...it will involve abit of modding but i thnk will be worth it.
 
skyripper said:
I was thinking of two caddies per drive bay with a spacer between. So a similar physical layout to the startech thing above, but hidden behind the blanking plate.

I wasnt thinking of screwing them into place, with the weight of those two radiators in there, that rig isnt going to be moved around a lot. I guess it depends on the thickness of the material as to whether there is room enough to fit sidewalls to it - basically replicating a CDrom drive size and shape. Heh, its just ideas anyway.

A couple of 40mm fans in there should provide enough airflow, although I may need to get a vented drivebay cover rather than the solid ones supplied.

I'll measure up the holes in the 5.25in bays anyhow and do a similar pic as above.
Click to expand...



2 SSD's per drive bay won't be a problem mate, I was worried incase you wanted to fit both caddies into one bay then as you mentioned the thickness of material would become an issue. Why the fans (40mm) ? Cooling isnt an issue with SSD's.
 
kibet85 said:
Hi sky ripper...jus a thught,you could mount the stand of the front side Rad on the side with the fans so that you have the rad sitting on the xact front of the case.....n have space..for mounting the lower harddrive mount next to it...it will involve abit of modding but i thnk will be worth it.
Click to expand...

I think I'll give this a try when I drain and redo the loop at the weekend. Haven't eliminated the trickling water sound yet. Looking at another Fractal Midi build in here, I realised how much room my radiator was hogging.
 
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