VIDEO: User Crams 16 TB into SFF Case

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mr_tuel

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If he could fabricate some steel heatsinks and weld them onto the HDD cages, that might help the HDD's last longer. Can't one just buy a DROBO with 8 drive bays? I know that takes the fun out of it, but there is a manufactured solution to his problem.
 

dlpatague

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Yeah I agree with that running the hard drives at that angle is a bad thing. Those hard drives would have short life spans.
 

spoofedpacket

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[citation][nom]mr_tuel[/nom]If he could fabricate some steel heatsinks and weld them onto the HDD cages, that might help the HDD's last longer. Can't one just buy a DROBO with 8 drive bays? I know that takes the fun out of it, but there is a manufactured solution to his problem.[/citation]

Yeah, hot swap with iSCSI support out of the box is nice.
 

aodknifer

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Yeah...I thought it was bad to have hard drives at an angle...something with putting more stress on the bearing or something?
 

archange

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Man, my heart stopped when i saw him machine-tooling and welding around those drives. xD I mean wtf?!? Then, in Part 2 he went on and exchanged the drives with 8 brand new ones :)

The guys sure loves his machines. In the end, were all those man-hours worth it? Definitely maybe...

If I needed all that space, i would have picked up a nice ready made SFF aluminum case, then refitted it for my purpose. The result would have been probably better looking, better cooled and less time consuming. Then again, it wouldn't have gotten such nice publicity. :)

Anyway, kudos to the guy for his dedication.
 

dreadllokz

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they are too close one to another!its a nice job, but it could be better, like being instaled on horizontal, with space between each one of them!
 

raybob95

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[citation][nom]Spanky Deluxe[/nom]I hope he's using a decent raid setup because those disks may fail a little early what with all the metal dust and sparks he blew at them while cutting metal etc for the case! I'm also not convinced that the cooling of the hard drives is ideal.Edit: Just realised after getting towards the end of the second video that the original hard drives there were old scrap ones for sizing reasons so the sparks and dust doesn't matter. Great build![/citation]

Yeah, I was kinda wondering that myself . . . Blowing sparks and dust at a new hard drive just doesn't seem like a good idea.

 

raybob95

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If I had this case I certainly would not have data striped across each disk. I would be happy with 14GB, if I could do a Raid 4 thus get tons of storage, insane speed, and data protection.
 

MattPenner

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Awesome work! Probably took as long to produce the video as it did to build it. :)

This is a version 1.0 design and the nitpicking (while valid comments) should take into account that this is a first effort. I think it's an incredible feat. There are only 2 things I would change for v2.0 that would make this even better:
1) Accessibility: I would mount each drive into a removable tray. Changing the drives out is going to be a bear. Having removable trays would not only make this a snap but also allow for hot swapping, a real help when dealing with RAID failures. If you can get a tray with built-in heatsinks for the drive that will lead nicely into my next recommendation.
2) Heat: The heat issue should easily be solved by putting heat-sinks on the drives (or heat-sink trays as mentioned above). Then simply seal the box, put vents on the front left side and channel the air through the front left, across the drives to the right and through the back. The drives will need more spacing to accommodate the trays and airflow but maybe you could switch to 2.5 drives. This will definitely take some engineering, especially to work around removable drive trays, but proper sealing and a good fan in the back would give a good airflow. May need to increase fan speed or add additional fans to the front intake.

You're definitely up to the task.

Awesome job!
 

MattPenner

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Another thing I love is he probably built the rigs for his cameras. You can tell that they are on some sort of rail system. Maybe someone is pushing them manually but with the stop action I think some of the sequences are over several minutes. I bet he has some type of mounted rig suspended from the ceiling that is motorized so it glides over the work area at a slow pace.

I'd love to see a video on his video setup. :)

He obviously has a ton of cameras. I love how he has a camera taking footage of a camera taking footage of him. :)
 

SAL-e

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[citation][nom]MattPenner[/nom]Another thing I love is he probably built the rigs for his cameras. You can tell that they are on some sort of rail system. Maybe someone is pushing them manually but with the stop action I think some of the sequences are over several minutes. I bet he has some type of mounted rig suspended from the ceiling that is motorized so it glides over the work area at a slow pace. I'd love to see a video on his video setup. He obviously has a ton of cameras. I love how he has a camera taking footage of a camera taking footage of him.[/citation]

Enjoy! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEkqjS7QPTw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Sn__i4tCI
 
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