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DIY NAS cases?

X

XFalconX

Junior Member
Hello

Looking for some help in finding a DIY nas case . Basically looking for something similiar in design like a synology 4-6 swappable case. Wouk like to build a mini itx with xenon e3 chip with 4-6 red WD drives. Would appreciate any help or direction

Thanks
 
Very hard to find soemthing useful and most of them are rather expensive. Does size matter,eg. you need it to be small?

- Fractal Design Array
- Lian Li PC-Q08B
- Lian Li PC-Q25B
- Chenbro ES34069


But all of them except the Chenbro are a lot bigger than those NAS cases.
 
Also:

- Chenbro SR30169T2-250
- CFI A7879

Or you could find a non-functional one of these NASes. They have standard mITX mounts and I/O Shield. Just make sure it's the motherboard that's dead, and not the storage backplane.

- Acer AH340 or AH342
- Sans Digital AccuNAS
- Acer Revo Center RC-111
- Lenovo IdeaCentre D400
 
I don't think you're going to be able to find a case that has the features you want. PCTC2 posted a couple good ones but you'll be hard pressed to find one with 4+ drive bays.


  1. You can look for a used HP home server or another type of NAS and then mod it.
  2. You can find a blank storage enclosure with 3-6 5 1/4" bays and mod that to fit a itx mother board.
  3. If you don't need hotswap there are a few options from Lian-Li for itx cases with a decent number of internal hard drive bays.
  4. If you want hot swap but can go larger then Rosewill has a rackmount enclosure for $200 that has 12 hotswap bays.


If it were me and I didn't absolutely need hotswap capability and the smallest footprint possible I'd look at some of the smaller matx cases that might come with 4-6 3.5" bays and 2-3 51/4" bays for expansion. Those can still look good, have the capacity you want, leave you room for growth and give you a flexibility in components so you wouldn't have to pay a premium for itx.



EDIT:

Just wanted to add this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Computer-Cases may fit your needs.
 
Last edited:
Here's a few more:

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=55508&vpn=RPC-4116&manufacture=Norco Technologies Inc.

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=55462&vpn=RPC-4224&manufacture=Norco Technologies Inc.

More robust:
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=58309&vpn=CSE-846E26-R1200B&manufacture=SuperMicro

Sure it's not cheap, but a typical 4 bay NAS is over 500 bucks and uses sub par closed architecture hardware, this is 24 bays and rackmount and you can install your own OS to setup whatever kind of raid you want. WHS, ZFS, Mdraid etc... The hard part is finding a controller with enough ports. I'm not familiar enough in that dept to offer advice but there seems to be special connectors that are 4 sata in 1 so you get a card with like 4 of those connectors and one with 2 and you're good to go.
 
The case I used for my NAS doesn't support hot swap bays, but hopefully I won't need to do much drive swapping. If I modded the case a little bit it could hold 8x3.5" drives, then another 4x2.5" drives in the 5.25" bay. I'd have to add in an 8-port controller card, but that would be it. Best case I could find that would hold that many drives without going to a rack-mount form factor.
 
Thanks guys for all the input. I think I would go with the Lian li case Sviscusi recommended but is there one with a slot load optical drive??

I should say what I wanted to have this unit for. I wanted to replace my Sony ES Bluray 400 disc changer . Although a great player it takes forever to get a disc loaded an played . I rather rip all my discs and have them available to all tv's, laptops, iPad's through out my house. I was looking at a product called LiivNas from vidabox but noticed the hardware to be bit weak and was looking to see if I can build one. I love the feature that LiivNas has regarding "drop & rip" . I then looked at the synology ds1512+ and although the features are nice I wish they would make the units with more CPU power..

So now looking into building one. This will be my first DIY but feel confident in the task. Looking for advise on parts and os help. Does WHS or any software have a drop and rip feature?

Thanks
 
XFalconX said:
Thanks guys for all the input. I think I would go with the Lian li case Sviscusi recommended but is there one with a slot load optical drive??

I should say what I wanted to have this unit for. I wanted to replace my Sony ES Bluray 400 disc changer . Although a great player it takes forever to get a disc loaded an played . I rather rip all my discs and have them available to all tv's, laptops, iPad's through out my house. I was looking at a product called LiivNas from vidabox but noticed the hardware to be bit weak and was looking to see if I can build one. I love the feature that LiivNas has regarding "drop & rip" . I then looked at the synology ds1512+ and although the features are nice I wish they would make the units with more CPU power..

So now looking into building one. This will be my first DIY but feel confident in the task. Looking for advise on parts and os help. Does WHS or any software have a drop and rip feature?

Thanks
Click to expand...

IMHO you would do the ripping and possibly encoding on a real pc and not he NAS itself. If it is just for home use those NAS boxes IMHO are fine. sure less hassle to get up and running. 🙂 But if you like building new sytem or actual want ti to perform other task than just being a NAS then go DIY.

EDIT:

and yes if space doesn't matter just go with a normal case. they are in general a lot cheaper.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Here's a few more:

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=55508&vpn=RPC-4116&manufacture=Norco Technologies Inc.

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=55462&vpn=RPC-4224&manufacture=Norco Technologies Inc.

More robust:
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=58309&vpn=CSE-846E26-R1200B&manufacture=SuperMicro

Sure it's not cheap, but a typical 4 bay NAS is over 500 bucks and uses sub par closed architecture hardware, this is 24 bays and rackmount and you can install your own OS to setup whatever kind of raid you want. WHS, ZFS, Mdraid etc... The hard part is finding a controller with enough ports. I'm not familiar enough in that dept to offer advice but there seems to be special connectors that are 4 sata in 1 so you get a card with like 4 of those connectors and one with 2 and you're good to go.
Click to expand...

I'm not especially a person that cares much about optics but those things really are fugly. 😀
 
fatpat268 said:
Unless size is an issue, just buy a tower case with a bunch of 5.25 bays, and throw in hot swap cages.
Click to expand...

This. I've had good luck with the Icy Dock cages, which come in a variety of configurations (3 hot swap bays in 2 5.25" bays, 4 in 3, 5 in 3, etc). They're available on Newegg and are pretty cheap. I've been running two of the "3 in 2" cages 24/7 for the last 5+ years and never had an issue.
 
After doing some more research I think I will be switching to the fractal design r4 case. I can use a regular atx board and though it is not hot swappable it has awesome cooling and has option for water cooling. More room for cable management and at $109 it seems like a good price
 
XFalconX said:
After doing some more research I think I will be switching to the fractal design r4 case. I can use a regular atx board and though it is not hot swappable it has awesome cooling and has option for water cooling. More room for cable management and at $109 it seems like a good price
Click to expand...

You can add hot-swap cages.
 
DLeRium said:
How come no one mentioned the Lian Li V354?
Click to expand...

Wow, that is one trick case ! I'm still rocking a WHS v1 MSS server, but it may be finally ready to die on me. I plugged in an eSATA enclosure to it last night and it shut down .. twice.

If I have to build a WHS, this case moves near the top of my list.
 
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