DIY Home NAS/Server Case + other parts suggestion?

[Guest]

Hi

I am trying to put together a home server to run 24/7. It will ideally consume minimal power, but at the same time run Windows 8 rather than a server OS because I want it to have media center to record TV without having to leave a HTPC on 24/7.

My first choice for a case would be one I saw in a news article, the Silverstnoe DS180. It doesn't look like it's out yet and no word on release, so my question is, is there something better? The features I was looking for were a good number of hot-swap drive bays (8+), room for a 2.5" drive to run the OS if possible, and lowish price (<$400, only more than $200 if it really has a lot of bays). Norco server chassis with 16-24 hot swap bays fit into this price range, but I was scared away by bad reviews on newegg of them being cheap and defective in some cases.

My second question is once I get a case, I'll have to find a motherboard and CPU. The case is likely to limit me to mini-ITX or at most micro-ATX. I don't know whether to try to get a server motherboard and/or CPU or use regular ones. This will need to have the power to run Windows 8 and record up to 4 HD shows at a time, and may be accessed by 2-3 computers at a time to transfer data.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[SNA3]

Hi

I am trying to put together a home server to run 24/7. It will ideally consume minimal power, but at the same time run Windows 8 rather than a server OS because I want it to have media center to record TV without having to leave a HTPC on 24/7.

My first choice for a case would be one I saw in a news article, the Silverstnoe DS180. It doesn't look like it's out yet and no word on release, so my question is, is there something better? The features I was looking for were a good number of hot-swap drive bays (8+), room for a 2.5" drive to run the OS if possible, and lowish price (<$400, only more than $200 if it really has a lot of bays). Norco server chassis with 16-24 hot swap bays fit into this price range, but I was scared away by bad reviews on newegg of them being cheap and defective in some cases.

My second question is once I get a case, I'll have to find a motherboard and CPU. The case is likely to limit me to mini-ITX or at most micro-ATX. I don't know whether to try to get a server motherboard and/or CPU or use regular ones. This will need to have the power to run Windows 8 and record up to 4 HD shows at a time, and may be accessed by 2-3 computers at a time to transfer data.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi , can you please make a list of the parts needed ? you stated 400-600$ and I need to know exact parts needed ..

Motherboard , Case , Power , hotswap bay ... anything else ? drives included ? and tell me the exact drive ays you want , and the TOTAL SIZE its very important for calculations .. ie you aim at how many TB ? 10TB ? 20 TB ? 5 TB ?

 

[Guest]

Hi , can you please make a list of the parts needed ? you stated 400-600$ and I need to know exact parts needed ..

Motherboard , Case , Power , hotswap bay ... anything else ? drives included ? and tell me the exact drive ays you want , and the TOTAL SIZE its very important for calculations .. ie you aim at how many TB ? 10TB ? 20 TB ? 5 TB ?

I am really looking for help on picking case, motherboard, and cpu. Drives not included, I have some drives already and would like to wait until I fill those up before purchasing more because of inevitable max size increases.

Instead of total size, I can tell you that I am looking for at least 8 hot-swap bays.

For reference, two options I liked were the Silverstone DS380 case and the NORCO 4U 24-bay chassis. Both had problems, though, with the Silverstone not released yet and the NORCO getting bad reviews for being defective in some cases. I am looking for similar alternatives to either. I understand that other rackmount server cases (e.g. supermicro) are better quality, but they are out of my price range ($1000+ just for case).

I would prefer all hot-swap bays (besides room to internally mount a hard drive for OS) and I would prefer if the case has them built in. I haven't seen cases with 8+ 5.25" drive bays to put in hot swap racks but I have seen ones with that many hot swap bays already built in.

The space I plan to put this in could fit a rackmount server up to 4U or a relatively short tower.

In terms of budget, I would say case alone might cost up to $400 and CPU + Motherboard I would like to spend up to about $600. I have seen server motherboards for like $500 and server processors for $500 as well, and those are pretty steep and likely out of my range unless absolutely necessary.

One basic struggle is deciding whether to go all server (rackmount server case, server motherboard, xeon cpu or something) or regular desktop grade with a motherboard that has lots of sata connections and possibly still a server chassis. This is going to be on 24/7, but not extremely high traffic like an office server since it's just for media.

 

[SNA3]

Hi , can you please make a list of the parts needed ? you stated 400-600$ and I need to know exact parts needed ..

Motherboard , Case , Power , hotswap bay ... anything else ? drives included ? and tell me the exact drive ays you want , and the TOTAL SIZE its very important for calculations .. ie you aim at how many TB ? 10TB ? 20 TB ? 5 TB ?

I am really looking for help on picking case, motherboard, and cpu. Drives not included, I have some drives already and would like to wait until I fill those up before purchasing more because of inevitable max size increases.

Instead of total size, I can tell you that I am looking for at least 8 hot-swap bays.

For reference, two options I liked were the Silverstone DS380 case and the NORCO 4U 24-bay chassis. Both had problems, though, with the Silverstone not released yet and the NORCO getting bad reviews for being defective in some cases. I am looking for similar alternatives to either. I understand that other rackmount server cases (e.g. supermicro) are better quality, but they are out of my price range ($1000+ just for case).

I would prefer all hot-swap bays (besides room to internally mount a hard drive for OS) and I would prefer if the case has them built in. I haven't seen cases with 8+ 5.25" drive bays to put in hot swap racks but I have seen ones with that many hot swap bays already built in.

The space I plan to put this in could fit a rackmount server up to 4U or a relatively short tower.

In terms of budget, I would say case alone might cost up to $400 and CPU + Motherboard I would like to spend up to about $600. I have seen server motherboards for like $500 and server processors for $500 as well, and those are pretty steep and likely out of my range unless absolutely necessary.

One basic struggle is deciding whether to go all server (rackmount server case, server motherboard, xeon cpu or something) or regular desktop grade with a motherboard that has lots of sata connections and possibly still a server chassis. This is going to be on 24/7, but not extremely high traffic like an office server since it's just for media.

I asked about total size for one reason , I want to calculate how many hotswap bays you need for 2.5 harddisks ...

using 3.5 harddisks today is a waste of space for mothing really, we have the 2,5 veloci raptors 10000RPM 1TB cheap and tiny ... and every DVD bay can take 4x2.5 inch 1.5cm harddisks , an 8 3.5 hotswap space you talked about will take 24x 2.5 hotwap , and given we have the 1TB Raptors 2.5 we dont need expensive SAS drives at all.

3.5 inch harddisk should die in a Server ... a waste of space for nothing ..

this is what I am talking about :

1- the sata3 2.5 hotswap bay : http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=142

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994142&Tpk=MB994SP-4SB-1

we start with 2 , totaling 8 x 2.5 bays , and when you need more you add more 4 and so on

2- the 2.5 1TB raptors http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W10CHTZ&c=CJ

3- this can be very compact size for even 24 harddisks , and can be installed in a Mini tower.

4- or you can go for this secured tower like this one :

and fill those bays as we wish

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the input.

I hadn't even considered 2.5", thank you. The case in the image you sent me looks great because I could conceivably put either 3.5" or 2.5" hot swap bays in manually instead of having them built in. Is that something you can give me a name or a link for or is it just an image?

I am a bit concerned with the lowered maximum capacity of 2.5" drives. I currently use one 4tb 3.5" hard drive for my media collection and have it full to about 2tb. I am not really excited about splitting the collection up among multiple hard drives, but is that something I would have to do? I think I heard somewhere that there is a way to get the computer to treat multiple hard drives as logically a single volume, is that worth looking into? Alternatively I could just designate one drive for "video" one for "music" etc. and subdivide that way to spread it out. I am more a fan of backup than RAID and don't think I'd be using RAID if that is a factor.

I want to make the system as future-ready as possible. I want to have plenty of room for size expansion with the addition of new drives, but I only plan to buy the drives as I go along as the $/gb of storage presumably goes down over time. What you said about 2.5" drives being the future of server storage got me thinking that it might be a good idea to switch for that reason alone. If I buy a case with built-in 3.5" hot swap bays and 2 years from now when I want to buy new drives, the best ones for servers are all 2.5", that would certainly be an issue. I guess no one can really predict the future but do you think maybe with the increasing popularity of 2.5" SSDs and such that 2.5" drives will be the better way to go in the coming years?

I need some advice on what kind of hard drives to get. As I touched on above, I won't be buying enough to fill the thing, but maybe a couple for now and the rest as my need increases. I definitely want reliability and as much storage per drive as possible.
First question - should I go all enterprise grade?

For example this drive I found: http://

low power sounds nice, not the best transfer rate or cache by a long shot but this is mainly for long-term storage anyway since if I wanted for example to watch a video I could download it to the computer I am going to watch it on rather than stream it. 15mm height is bigger than normal but you said 1.5cm for the hot swap thing you showed me so I assume it would fit. Or is that stupid?

I guess what I'm saying is I looked up the 1tb raptor drive you were talking about and if I got it right it looks like its $300+? What exactly am I getting for that much more money (about 6-8x the $/gb of 4tb hgst 3.5" drive)? Is it reliability? I definitely want drives that won't fail quickly. You said I can avoid SAS that way, but is SAS's lower error rate (read that online) worth it if I have the option?

Anyway thanks for your continued help. The 4-bay hot swap 2.5" thing is brand new to me and looks sweet. I didn't know they sold cases with a bunch of 5.25" trays for you to customize. For example I found this http://

it had the most 5.25" bays I could find and was reasonably priced, iStarUSA in general has some inexpensive cases like that which are similar, but what you showed me looked completely different so I'm wondering whether I'm on the right track or not. I am a little wary about cases that only have USB 2.0 not necessarily because I can't wait when transferring data from an external drive but because it makes me wonder when it was made and whether there is a newer model I should be looking for. Anyway, as I said above if you have any case links or other parts suggestions I'd be very excited to know.

 

[SNA3]

Thanks for the input.

I hadn't even considered 2.5", thank you. The case in the image you sent me looks great because I could conceivably put either 3.5" or 2.5" hot swap bays in manually instead of having them built in. Is that something you can give me a name or a link for or is it just an image?

I am a bit concerned with the lowered maximum capacity of 2.5" drives. I currently use one 4tb 3.5" hard drive for my media collection and have it full to about 2tb. I am not really excited about splitting the collection up among multiple hard drives, but is that something I would have to do? I think I heard somewhere that there is a way to get the computer to treat multiple hard drives as logically a single volume, is that worth looking into? Alternatively I could just designate one drive for "video" one for "music" etc. and subdivide that way to spread it out. I am more a fan of backup than RAID and don't think I'd be using RAID if that is a factor.

I want to make the system as future-ready as possible. I want to have plenty of room for size expansion with the addition of new drives, but I only plan to buy the drives as I go along as the $/gb of storage presumably goes down over time. What you said about 2.5" drives being the future of server storage got me thinking that it might be a good idea to switch for that reason alone. If I buy a case with built-in 3.5" hot swap bays and 2 years from now when I want to buy new drives, the best ones for servers are all 2.5", that would certainly be an issue. I guess no one can really predict the future but do you think maybe with the increasing popularity of 2.5" SSDs and such that 2.5" drives will be the better way to go in the coming years?

I need some advice on what kind of hard drives to get. As I touched on above, I won't be buying enough to fill the thing, but maybe a couple for now and the rest as my need increases. I definitely want reliability and as much storage per drive as possible.
First question - should I go all enterprise grade?

For example this drive I found: http://

low power sounds nice, not the best transfer rate or cache by a long shot but this is mainly for long-term storage anyway since if I wanted for example to watch a video I could download it to the computer I am going to watch it on rather than stream it. 15mm height is bigger than normal but you said 1.5cm for the hot swap thing you showed me so I assume it would fit. Or is that stupid?

I guess what I'm saying is I looked up the 1tb raptor drive you were talking about and if I got it right it looks like its $300+? What exactly am I getting for that much more money (about 6-8x the $/gb of 4tb hgst 3.5" drive)? Is it reliability? I definitely want drives that won't fail quickly. You said I can avoid SAS that way, but is SAS's lower error rate (read that online) worth it if I have the option?

Anyway thanks for your continued help. The 4-bay hot swap 2.5" thing is brand new to me and looks sweet. I didn't know they sold cases with a bunch of 5.25" trays for you to customize. For example I found this http://

it had the most 5.25" bays I could find and was reasonably priced, iStarUSA in general has some inexpensive cases like that which are similar, but what you showed me looked completely different so I'm wondering whether I'm on the right track or not. I am a little wary about cases that only have USB 2.0 not necessarily because I can't wait when transferring data from an external drive but because it makes me wonder when it was made and whether there is a newer model I should be looking for. Anyway, as I said above if you have any case links or other parts suggestions I'd be very excited to know.

Hello again,

1- 2.5 inch is already taken over 3.5 inch drives , it is not the future it is today , they are small and short as well and very thin and can reach 2TB at low speed and 1 TB at high speed ... the also consume less power and run cooler and less noisy.

2- you can join all drives as a single big volume , this is called JBOD , they work at same speed no advantage in speed here.

3-in Raid system for fast data transfer, more drives is important , so having a 2x2TB 2.5 , or 4X1TB 2.5 is better than a single 4T in terms of speed .. it will be 2-4x the speed .

4- in Raid you aim at Speed , there are many kinds but for low budget the most common are Raid 0 , Raid 5 , and Raid 6 , and the Mirroring Raid 1 .

-Raid 0 is the fastest eah drive you add doubles the speed of the single drive speed , it splits the data between the drives and write them at the same time and Read them at the same time increasing the speed , but this is not reliable , if one drive fails you will loose all the data. this Raid is easy on the CPU and software raid is enough no need for a raid card , unless you want more ports then you need a SAS Raid Card for large numbers of drives.

-Raid 5 , this Raid sacrifices one drive to save Data , if one drive fails , you stop everything at once , and replace the failed drive , and the Raid software will reconstruct the Data again .. if 2 drives fail at the same time however you will loose all the data .. this raid needs a dedicated CPU to be effective and give you good performance like Raid 0 minus one drive (n-1) performance. the dangerous thing in raid 5 , is that while you are reconstructing the failed drive another drive fails before the reconstructing is finished .. here again you loose all data.

-Raod 6 uses 2 Disks for it .. it is safer and more reliable even if one drive fails , it can handle another drive failing while reconstructing.

-this is in short , you can learn more here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_6#RAID_6

- Raid 1 is mirroring , it mirrors the drive .. here you dont loose the data in your harddisks and have an automatic backup real time without you feeling it , if one drive fails you will be safe , get another drive and the copy mirrored drive to it. even if by hard chance the drive and its mirrored drive fail at same time , you will just loose the data on that particular driver forever , but the other drives will be safe , there is no split files here to worry about ..
-----------------

now do you need Raid or not? depends on the people accessing the drive at the same time.. and this is very important THE SAME TIME , not number of users ... if the total bandwidth requested is more than the drive bandwidth , it will slow down ...

The best solution to avoid Raid is picking very fast drives .. like the Raptors I mentioned which can handle 200MB/s , that is like if you raid 0 2x normal slow drive ...

to put you in the picture , here is the comparison betaeen the 10KRPM Raptor drive and regular drives :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5729/western-digital-velociraptor-1tb-wd1000dhtz-review/2

keep in mind once you use more than 2 drives in raid you will outperform the raptor ...

Now about which drives to use ? better get drives with 3 or even better 5 years warranty and avoid one year warranty drives.. the enterprise ones are aimed at 24/7 raid system , they are a must if your server will work all the time ...

and thats why I like the Raptor , it is a heavy duty class. 10K RPM were only SCSI/SAS drives , actually 15K rpm exist as well (very expensive) when WD brought this 10K rpm to the consumers they made a huge success.. and now they are offering it in 1TB , they are offering fast storage drives for movies without needing Raid 0 for alot of people ... and they pack 5 years warranty as well .

-----------

5- 2.5 drives are not the future they are today and the best seagate SAS drives are 2.5 drives the 15K rpm ones.

6- If you have the cash , get only VelociRaptors 1TB ... if NOT you can go for lower ones but they will be at half speed ... and they have only 2 years warranty vs 5 years on raptors , and small cache 8MB vs 64 MB on the raptors. they are not as reliable , and are slow . and they are the same hight 15mm .

7- Be sure to pick only Sata 3 6Gb/s drives , avoid Sata2 , true both wont exceed the Sata 2 bandwidth , BUT the 64MB cache is a super fast memory , if your file is transfered from the Cache it will transfer at full SATA 3 speed.

8- 2.5 inch drives come in 7mm , 9mm, 12 mm , and 15 mm thickness .. if you use 12 mm drives , you can fit 6 of them in single DVD bay .. thats a crazy number of drives in small space ... but you wont find more than 1.5TB 12mm at lower speed.

the 15mm (can take 12mm, 9mm,7mm as well)

the 12mm (can take 9mm and 7mm as well)

9- be sure when you choose those bays that they support SATA 3 , NOT SATA 2 !!! Avoid SATA 2 models... and be sure they support hotswap.

10- If you pick the 15mm 4x ones , they support all drives thickness below 15mm so dont worry about that . and keep in mind Raptors are 15mm , and 2TB 2.5 are 15 mm as well ... 1.5 TB are 12 mm

11- you pay more for Raptors for 2 reasons , one they are enterprise level with 5 years warranty , and b- they are fast VERY fast .. and they have 64M cache and work on SATA3 , be careful , get only SATA 3 drives ... even the lower ones have SATA 3 .

12- if you are on budget , get lower priced ones .. but expect slow performance . get it 7200 RPM and 32MB cache , you can check the Travelstar 7K1000 , has 32MB cache and works on SATA 3 with 7200 rpm .. for cheap price per 1TB , has 3 years warranty. but is consumer level still. oh and its 9.5mm you can fit 6 of these in one DVD bay

http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/mobile-drives/9.5mm-mobile-hard-drives/travelstar-7k1000

13- you can go all 3.5 inch if you wish ... if you dont want the Speed and dont want to save space ...but get the enterprise edition with 5 years warranty models only .. the point behind 2,5 beside the small size, is the more harddisks you put in raid the more speed you will get , and using 3.5 inch drives are huge for that .. can you put 6 of them in one DVD bay ? actually you can pick up any tiny case and make it a small server with like 12x2.5 drives .. and in mini towers you can put like 32 of them ... but again it is your choice .

14- the case I posted is a real one , and there are many like it , the idea is the door and lock so no one pulls the hotswap drives when you are not around and mess with your server. even the power button is behind the door. and that case is 5U also , you can mount it in a rack.

it is a German made case , Inter-Tech IPC-9008 5U

http://www.inter-tech.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=712%3Aipc-9008-5u&catid=59%3Aipc-19-zoll&Itemid=627&lang=en

15- if you want the 3.5 route , here is an alternative :

here is a 5x3.5 harddisks in a 3 DVD bays , as you see the comparison to 2,5 bay , in 3 DVD bays you can mount 12x2.5 or 18x2.5 VS only 5x3.5 this is what I meant by saving space ...

for 10 of 3.5 you will need 6 DVD bays ... two of those

http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=163

I would never go 3.5 after seeing this lol

for 10 3,5 drives you need full huge tower with 6xDVD bays ...

for 12 drives 2.5 you need only 2xDVD bays found on ANY tiny mini tower..


My advice ? Veloci Raptors and 2.5 bays even at more cost.


here is what 2.5 can give you 32 of them in a DELL server .. as you see t is today not the future

Edit : if you want to make Raid , we talk about Raid cards , but good raid cards are expensive. they start at $300

 

[SNA3]

oh one more thing

see this tiny case ?

using the 2xDVD you can out 8x2.5 or 12x2.5 hotswapp there !!! and in the 3.5 low cn add andothe 2x2.5 for total of 14 drives 2.5

here is the 3.5 inch bay to 2x2.5

using that tiny case !!!

 

[Guest]

oh one more thing

see this tiny case ?

using the 2xDVD you can out 8x2.5 or 12x2.5 hotswapp there !!! and in the 3.5 low cn add andothe 2x2.5 for total of 14 drives 2.5

here is the 3.5 inch bay to 2x2.5

using that tiny case !!!

Thanks for all your help you're tremendous. I am definitely sold on 2.5", and more importantly on the 5.25" bays which give me the option of 4 x 15mm 2.5", 6 x 12mm 2.5", or 1 x 3.5" mix and match.

I am still not certain about the case. Size for me is not a big issue, and in fact I'd prefer large if it offers the most 5.25" bays I can get. Any opinion on the I listed above (istarusa d410)? If not I might see if I can get my hands on the one you used as an example (inter tech) or really anything with a good number of 5.25" slots. Are there any other cases with 8-10 5.25" slots that you can recommend specifically?

I get what you're saying about speed and I actually didn't know that RAID increased speed. I will need a some sort of RAID card or at least SATA card to plug in the hard drives and I'd appreciate your thoughts. Maybe like one option if I wanted no RAID in particular just tons of extra SATA3 ports and one option if I wanted some extra SATA3 ports and good RAID, probably I'd get one of each.

Just so you have a better sense of my usage, this is a home server and dvr-like system which will almost constantly be recording TV on up to 4 channels. In addition, it could be streaming HD videos to 2-3 computers in the house, at max. I plan to access it remotely to transfer large recordings from it to a laptop when I'm away from home as streaming won't be sufficient. Does that count as high usage? Would that affect any of your recommendations?

The next step in this will be finding a motherboard and cpu. Not to get ahead of myself (case is most important in my opinion), but I will need to choose these eventually and would like your opinion on server vs. desktop grade. Does my usage warrant purchasing a server mobo/cpu?

Thanks again for all the responses

 

[SNA3]

oh one more thing

see this tiny case ?

using the 2xDVD you can out 8x2.5 or 12x2.5 hotswapp there !!! and in the 3.5 low cn add andothe 2x2.5 for total of 14 drives 2.5

here is the 3.5 inch bay to 2x2.5

using that tiny case !!!

Thanks for all your help you're tremendous. I am definitely sold on 2.5", and more importantly on the 5.25" bays which give me the option of 4 x 15mm 2.5", 6 x 12mm 2.5", or 1 x 3.5" mix and match.

I am still not certain about the case. Size for me is not a big issue, and in fact I'd prefer large if it offers the most 5.25" bays I can get. Any opinion on the I listed above (istarusa d410)? If not I might see if I can get my hands on the one you used as an example (inter tech) or really anything with a good number of 5.25" slots. Are there any other cases with 8-10 5.25" slots that you can recommend specifically?

I get what you're saying about speed and I actually didn't know that RAID increased speed. I will need a some sort of RAID card or at least SATA card to plug in the hard drives and I'd appreciate your thoughts. Maybe like one option if I wanted no RAID in particular just tons of extra SATA3 ports and one option if I wanted some extra SATA3 ports and good RAID, probably I'd get one of each.

Just so you have a better sense of my usage, this is a home server and dvr-like system which will almost constantly be recording TV on up to 4 channels. In addition, it could be streaming HD videos to 2-3 computers in the house, at max. I plan to access it remotely to transfer large recordings from it to a laptop when I'm away from home as streaming won't be sufficient. Does that count as high usage? Would that affect any of your recommendations?

The next step in this will be finding a motherboard and cpu. Not to get ahead of myself (case is most important in my opinion), but I will need to choose these eventually and would like your opinion on server vs. desktop grade. Does my usage warrant purchasing a server mobo/cpu?

Thanks again for all the responses

You dont need server board for that .. but for more than 6 HDD you will need a Raid CARD or a mobo with SAS on it .. there are cheap ones ..

as for the case well there are cases with many DVD bays , but things are getting out of hand here , you talked 400$ only .. that wont do in your price range .. each of those 4x2.5 bays are $50-70 depending on the store , the case also around $100 minimum for full tower .. the Raid card minimum $200 ...

as for the Speed , dont worry , you are talking about 8+ Drives and for that you will have to buy a Raid SAS 6 card , each SAS 6.port can be used for 4 Sata3 Drives , and more if you use SAS drives and expanders , but they are VERY expensive so we will Avoid SAS drives in your case. for 8 Drives you will need 2 ports SAS raid card ... that will be enough I think for you ... unless you want more.

you said that you will be recording TV channels all the time , well if this is the case , your drive wont stop spinning and you will need enterprise level harddisks Avoid the green and blue WD drives ... look at 5 years warranty enterprise drives that are tested to work 24/7 ...

you will also need LANs the number of the users will add cheap LAN cards for that. , is cheaper than buying expensive switch ...

and for cheap , you should buy a full modular power supple , so in case it fails , will be replaced in no time just unplug the cables , and switch the power supply and plug the cables again , no need to route the cables to the mobo and HDD again ...

more expensive is the redundant power supply , but you dont need that at all.

 

[SNA3]

update : here are cases to look at

1- the case from iInter-Tech IPC-9008 5U , has 8 DVD bays.

2- Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 , is a nice compact case and has 9xDVD bays.

http://store.antec.com/Product/enclosure-gear_for_gamers/Nine-Hundred-Two-V3/0-761345-15924-1.aspx

3- Antec Twelve Hundred V3 , has 12x DVD bays

http://store.antec.com/Product/enclosure-gear_for_gamers/0-761345-15118-4/Twelve-Hundred-V3%20%20.aspx

4- AeroCool VS-92 has 8 DVD bays

http://www.aerocool.com.tw/pgs/pgs-v/821.html

5- Cooler Master CM Storm Stryker and Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper both have 9 DVD bays

http://www.cmstorm.com/en/products/chassis/Stryker/

http://www.cmstorm.com/en/products/chassis/Trooperwindow/

http://www.cmstorm.com/en/products/chassis/Trooper/

6- Xigmatek Elysium has 12 DVD bays

http://www.xigmatek.com/product.php?productid=122&type=specification

7- Lian Li PC-P80 Armorsuit has 12 with a locking doo with fans blowing , bit is very expensive

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/armorsuit-pc-p80/

8- Lian li PC-A77 , 12 DV bays

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-a77/

9- Lian Li PC-A17 , has 9 DVD

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-a17/

10- silver stone SilverStone Raven RV02 , has 8 DVD bays

http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/products/index.php?model=RV02&area=en

11- NZXT Tempest EVO has 9 DVD bays

http://store.nzxt.com/mid-tower-cases-p/rf-temest-evo.htm


12- AeroCool ZeroDegree has 10 DVD bays

http://www.aerocool.us/case/zerodegree/zerodegree-spec.htm

13- Lian Li ARMORSUIT PC-P50 , has 9x 5.25" DVD bays

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/armorsuit-pc-p50/

 

[Guest]

update : here are cases to look at

Thanks for the amazing list.

In particular I am liking the Antec Twelve Hundred V3 and Xigmaek Elysium since size is not so much a priority I figure why not have 12 bays. I couldn't find any other of the 12 bay ones available for sale.

As I see it,

The Antec Twelve Hundred is appealing because it has a spot for an internal 2.5" drive/SSD which I'd use for the OS. However, I am worried that in 5.25" drive bays it says "default 3, up to 12" would I have to do anything when I order to make sure I get all 12 5.25" bays? Does that just mean unscrewing a rack when I get it? Also, comaptibility, I don't have a clear answer as to whether it has ridges for tool-less installation. If it does have ridges, I won't be able to put in any 5-in-3 3.5" cages.

http://

The Xigmatek Elysium is appealing because it is bigger which maybe means putting it together is easier. It doesn't seem to have a 2.5" internal drive bay unless you make one, but it does have a 3.5" or 2.5" hot swap bay right on the top for quick backups. It comes in a server version without flaps on the bays, but that is not available! Does this just mean I'd have to open flaps when I access the hot swap drives (not an issue) or will this create more serious limitations? Also, this one says it has ridges for tool-less installation so I would be limited to 4-in-3 and definitely not 5-in-3 3.5" cages (again, only one of these most likely for the ones I already bought then moving on to 2.5" like you said.)

http://

Also I was wondering if I get a case without an installed place for an operating system hard drive, would I get a PCIe SSD holder (saw one online) or something?

Any opinion on these three, or if there is a clearly better option that I am missing? Possibly one without the tool-less ridges? Are the tool-less ridges actually a good thing if I go all 2.5"?

I'm not extremely concerned about the price of this because I figure if I get something with a lot of 5.25" drive bays I would be okay with not buying all of the cages to go into them at the same time to spread the price out and more importantly see how my needs evolve. I am mostly concerned about quality and quantity at this point.

p.s. When the hot swap bays you showed me advertise things like "2tb support" "1tb support" "4tb support" etc. do they really mean that or do they just mean that's the highest capacity drive of that size at the moment? If say in a few years they make a 5tb 2.5" hard drive would there be anything preventing it from working in one of those 4-in-1 or 6-in-1 bays?

 

[SNA3]

update : here are cases to look at

Thanks for the amazing list.

In particular I am liking the Antec Twelve Hundred V3 and Xigmaek Elysium since size is not so much a priority I figure why not have 12 bays. I couldn't find any other of the 12 bay ones available for sale.

As I see it,

The Antec Twelve Hundred is appealing because it has a spot for an internal 2.5" drive/SSD which I'd use for the OS. However, I am worried that in 5.25" drive bays it says "default 3, up to 12" would I have to do anything when I order to make sure I get all 12 5.25" bays? Does that just mean unscrewing a rack when I get it? Also, comaptibility, I don't have a clear answer as to whether it has ridges for tool-less installation. If it does have ridges, I won't be able to put in any 5-in-3 3.5" cages.

http://

The Xigmatek Elysium is appealing because it is bigger which maybe means putting it together is easier. It doesn't seem to have a 2.5" internal drive bay unless you make one, but it does have a 3.5" or 2.5" hot swap bay right on the top for quick backups. It comes in a server version without flaps on the bays, but that is not available! Does this just mean I'd have to open flaps when I access the hot swap drives (not an issue) or will this create more serious limitations? Also, this one says it has ridges for tool-less installation so I would be limited to 4-in-3 and definitely not 5-in-3 3.5" cages (again, only one of these most likely for the ones I already bought then moving on to 2.5" like you said.)

http://

Also I was wondering if I get a case without an installed place for an operating system hard drive, would I get a PCIe SSD holder (saw one online) or something?

Any opinion on these three, or if there is a clearly better option that I am missing? Possibly one without the tool-less ridges? Are the tool-less ridges actually a good thing if I go all 2.5"?

I'm not extremely concerned about the price of this because I figure if I get something with a lot of 5.25" drive bays I would be okay with not buying all of the cages to go into them at the same time to spread the price out and more importantly see how my needs evolve. I am mostly concerned about quality and quantity at this point.

p.s. When the hot swap bays you showed me advertise things like "2tb support" "1tb support" "4tb support" etc. do they really mean that or do they just mean that's the highest capacity drive of that size at the moment? If say in a few years they make a 5tb 2.5" hard drive would there be anything preventing it from working in one of those 4-in-1 or 6-in-1 bays?

Hello again ,

1- you will allways have the bays , the :upto means if you install hard disks in those bays , like you said , install 2.5 or 3.5 in them , they are placed inside the bays .. if you look carefull the bays are taking all the fron of the case , so anything you will install will be inside them .

If you want to install 2.5 , and not loose space the optimal solution is to add the 2.5x6 or 2.5x4 front bay , so instead of one in the bay using braket , you will install six or four. if you fo this direction put any harddisk you get in Front bays ...

That is, order it and order the 6x2.5 or 4.2.5 with it , and the same if you want to use 3.5 ... make it easy for your self , no need to open cage and mess with cables and so .. so I suggest for the beginning , 4x2.5 take s a bay , and 5x3.5 takes 3 bays you are ready to go , this will use up 1+3=4 bays , and you will have 8 DVD bays left.

2- The hot swap up is no big deal if you buy front bays .. they are hot swaps

3- I see no reason for higher capacities Harddisk not to work .. The Sata 3 port has nothing to do with the size of the harddisk .

I will continue in a minute ..

 

[SNA3]

I forgot about this case :

http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001788

This comes ready with 5 x 3.5 hotswap bays , and are locked by a key as well

in addition , it has 4 total DVD 5.25 bays ...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005F7794S/?tag=pcpapi-20

watch about it here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFBl3YkmONs


Edit : I want to know one more thing , you will be recording all the time , is this encoded recording or raw recording ?

this is very important to know because it will need a fast CPU if you want to record and compress at the same time.

 

[Guest]

I forgot about this case :

http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001788

This comes ready with 5 x 3.5 hotswap bays , and are locked by a key as well

in addition , it has 4 total DVD 5.25 bays ...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005F7794S/?tag=pcpapi-20

watch about it here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFBl3YkmONs


Edit : I want to know one more thing , you will be recording all the time , is this encoded recording or raw recording ?

this is very important to know because it will need a fast CPU if you want to record and compress at the same time.

I think I've pretty much settled on the Antec Nine Hundred Two V3, it's small and fits nine which should be good enough for me.

I am going to be recording with Windows Media Center, mostly uncompressed. Once the HDHomerun 4 comes out, it'll be able to compress the recordings to h.264, but I think the box itself does that not the computer.

I have also been thinking that the best for me might be the 4-bay 2.5" SAS/SATA hot swaps from IcyDock. It just happens that they take two molex power and four SAS/SATA data cables, while the RAID cards I have been looking at connect using 4-in-1 fanout cables and molex 2-in-1 splitters so I figure cable management will be easier.

Still looking for ways to connect all these hard drives (hadn't thought of this problem before but the motherboard only has 8 data connections). I opened up a new thread since I figure it might be a different topic but I'm not sure. http://

Any thoughts?