How many drives in your P180? 3 or more?

[sygyzy]

I have plent of hard drives (PATA) and will add more (PATA and SATA) and need to figure out the optimal setup. I will be adding a controller card if necessary. I would like some feedback from the community, especially those who have lots (3+) of hard drives in their P180's.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

u have 2 IDEs in the top chamber, and 1 sata in the bottom. If i get more drives they would have to be sata and in the bottom.

 

[DBSX]

I have 3 hard drives. Two SATA one PATA (for the time being). boot drive (SATA Raptor) is in the top and the other two are in the lower portion of the case. Any future drives (the PATA drive will be replaced by one or two SATA drives) will go into the bottom portion, and will be SATA. Routing SATA cables is nice. 🙂

\Dan

 

[sygyzy]

Originally posted by: DBSX
I have 3 hard drives. Two SATA one PATA (for the time being). boot drive (SATA Raptor) is in the top and the other two are in the lower portion of the case. Any future drives (the PATA drive will be replaced by one or two SATA drives) will go into the bottom portion, and will be SATA. Routing SATA cables is nice. 🙂

\Dan

Why didn't you put your PATA on the top, under the SATA raptor? Do standard PATA cables have enough reach to go from the bottom chamber to the ports on the motherboard?

 

[DBSX]

Originally I wanted to use a PATA to SATA adapter, but that didn't work out. There were a couple reasons I guess. I know the Raptor has a reputation for getting a littlw warm (though I haven't really seen that). Also I toyed with the idea of RAID0 striping 2 Raptors, but that didn't work out (could only get one Raptor on the cheap). Also, once I wired everything, the lower cage was easier to remove. Since the PATA drive will be replaced, it was a matter of convenience to put it in the lower cage. I have rounded IDE cables, but all are "standard" length (16-18"). In fact, about half are short (6") mostly for my optical drives. This was more than enough cable to rout through the "forward hatch" of the P180 and to the motherboard connectors. I guess it'll depend on the board layout.

\Dan

 

[sygyzy]

I thought only the power cables go through the trap door. Don't the wires of the bottom drives go up, passing over the fan? The fan seperates the drive compartment from the power supply.

 

[DBSX]

Hard drive wires can (and must) go through the door if you use the bottom cage. Ribbon cable is flatter so it might work better to allow the trap door to close better, that or SATA cables, of course depending on the drive type(s) used. The bottom line is that if you plan on using the bottom drive cage the design does not allow for complete trap door closure regardless. The slight additional space won't make that much difference as far as temps go.

\Dan