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What case do you guys use for your RAID arrays

Almost any Stacker type case can hold plenty of HDDs with optional drive cages that I reviewed here: http://www.techimo.com. Almost any mid-tower case can do 8 or 9 drives with the addition of one cage. There are at least 48 cases on the Egg with seven 5" bays and up. The rosewill R5600 series case I'm using now can take up to 9 HDDs with one of the 4-in-3 cages

Generally those cases that have lots of pre-existing HDD bays cost a LOT more than adding a cage or two to a normal or Stacker type case - the Xion Stacker is probably the cheapest at $45. after rebate. It actually has up to nine 5" bays if you do away with whatever it is that occupies the top bay as delivered... The coolermaster Device Modules cost about $20. each +sh from places like http://www.jab-tech.com

Or you could use individual mobile racks for each drive in the Stacker type cases to have an inexpensive and convenient hot-swap setup.

.bh.
 
Man, I want a PC343, but you cant get em in New Zealand, obviously. Thats a sweet case, would be PERFECT for my next computer.
 
Previous machine and it's specs.

Current machine and it's specs.

Current plans are in the works (and the wife has already approved it) for a 8-core Xeon machine for file serving & crunching. It is going to have four 5-bay SATA enclosures as seen in the above pics, and those will be filled with 320gb hard drives. And it will all fit in the 23-bay Enermax case I have.
 
Why 320GB drives? I'll admit that I only track the Seagate 7200.10s but the sweet spot for price is up at 500GB on those, I'd expect a similar situation with other lines.
 
Originally posted by: alaricljs
Why 320GB drives? I'll admit that I only track the Seagate 7200.10s but the sweet spot for price is up at 500GB on those, I'd expect a similar situation with other lines.
Click to expand...

I keep a regularly updated excel file that has hard drives (Western Digital branded) listed by size and price. Then a formula to figure out their ratio of $ per gb. That's how I determine what hd will be used. I'm sure it will change to larger drives here pretty soon, but last time I updated it, 320's were the ones to get.
 
Ah... well, do yourself a favor, add in annual electricity and do a cost of ownership analysis. I do the Seagate because of the warranty and feature set. On the 7200.10s COO is best on 500GB out to 5 years, then it switches to 750GBs because of power savings. This is for a 1.5TB RAID 5 set. The 320GB costs only 1 cent/GB more but the extra 2 drives (compared to 500GB) to hit 1.5TB eats up the electricity.
 
Tyler, you are seriously one scary ass person. You know that? 😀

and your absolutely right, that is one hell of a beautiful hard drive array case you have there. Im actually jealous. 😛
 
Damn tyler where did you get those 5 bay backplanes? Those are sick. I just upgraded my super old Lian Li PC70 (6+3 3.5" & 6 5.25") to a V2000 (12 3.5" & 7 5.25") its an extremely nice case and even has tool less hard drive mounts. Now i just have to order longer cables. I'll prob be done this weekend, will post some pics!
 
Originally posted by: WT
Old School .... Chieftec Dragon full tower.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm currently using. I figured it out, I was thinking of going with a XION Stacker, but I realized that I could fit one more HD into the Chieftec than the XION. I further figured out that I could fit even more HDs (18!) into a ThermalTake Armor case, so that's what I've most recently ordered.

I only have 4x320GB HDs right now, but I wanted room for future expansion. I'm going to add 4x500GB soon enough, when they drop to $100 a drive for a seagate or a good WD.

Probably going to just use PCI SI3114 SATA RAID controllers, using one of my older boards with 4+ PCI slots, just for the RAID.

link to drive bay hardware
 
The case is built by Lian Li on someone else's design (Microplex in Norway - I'm sure you know that L-L couldn't come up with such a nice design on their own...) - Lian Li doesn't even have a presence in the US. So you can get it where you can get it... Search for it with Froogle or other price search engine PC-343B Modular Cube Case. There is a video review of it on http://www.3DGameMan.com (no. 738) and other reviews elsewhere. Too bad it's so danged expensive - I can't even allow myself to lust after one. I have to settle for the YeongYang Cube Server cases... http://www.yycase.com

.bh.
 
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