Smallest 3-bay (or just 3 HDD) case for home NAS

[non-serviam]

I am trying to find the smallest case in which I can fit 3x 3.5 HDDs for my new FreeNAS build (RAID-Z), but everything I can find is 2 or 4 bay cases. I do not need for the case to have HDD bays (even thought it would be great). Even a 3 internal support could do it, or even a case with 2x 5.25 trays would be could (to add an icy box cage there). I just want it small!
Can you suggest anything?

Worst case scenario: Can you suggest the smallest 4-bay case if there is not any good one in regard to the above?

 

[Lutfij]

Coolermaster N200
Corsair 250D
...?

Well at least the former supports 3x3.5" HDD's out of the box.

I think we could tailor the suggestion a little bit more if we knew the sort of hardware you'd like to populate the case with(outside of HDD's).

 

[USAFRet]

I have this 4 bay USB connected box:
https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4

Zero problems, except for the brightness of the front LED's.


Or were you looking for some other functionality?

 

[non-serviam]

Thank you guys for your quick replies.

Coolermaster N200
Corsair 250D
...?

Well at least the former supports 3x3.5" HDD's out of the box.

I think we could tailor the suggestion a little bit more if we knew the sort of hardware you'd like to populate the case with(outside of HDD's).

I want to see first which is the smallest case that I can get my hands on, and then I will decide the hardware. I generally do not have any high requirements. Even a simple ARM cpu will suffice (in terms of power).

I have this 4 bay USB connected box:
https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4

Zero problems, except for the brightness of the front LED's.


Or were you looking for some other functionality?

This is more of a DAS, I want a NAS. Even though I could possibly make it work, I am not quite sure if I can use FreeNAS with this.

 

[USAFRet]

So you're looking for an actual 2 bay NAS, and not just a case?

There are multitudes of them. Qnap, Synology, etc, etc.


Or are you looking to build an actual PC based NAS, with 2 drive bays in a little case?
CPU, motherboard, RAM, etc, etc....

 

[non-serviam]

I want a 3 bay (or internal) case to build a NAS, not any of the prebuild NASes. I do not know yet if it would be ARM based or x86 based. This would depend on how small the case will be.

 

[non-serviam]

I found probably the perfect one for my job: iStarUSA - S-35-3DE1RD.
But I have not found anyone selling it in Europe (and I do not want to pay more in shipping than the price of the case itself).
My next best would be the U-NAS NS-400 (4 bay) but there the same problem with this one too (apart from the fact that it would cost me an arm and a leg).

So I finally decided to go with ether the CoolerMaster Elite 110 or with the Fractal Design Node 304 Black (with this one I could add another 3 disks if I wanted to upgrade in the future), that are small and can fit 3 3.5 HDDs.