Smallest quiet case to hold 4-5 drives?

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 2:25 pm

Hi folks...

I've gotten tired of shelling out money for dedicated NAS devices; besides them always seeming to require starting from blank discs that they format and manage for me, and using the cheapest components the NAS companies could find, they also are just limited in their abilities.

So I've decided to build a server that I'll use for JUST storage (samba mounts, etc.). Probably put a full Linux distro on it rather than FreeNAS, since I won't be building a RAID or doing anything very sophisticated.

So I'm trying to find the smallest possible case there is that will still be able to take 4 or 5 3.5" drives, which I intend to live in a hot-swappable storage array mounted in the front. Most people I've talked to said the only thing I can really do that with is at least a mid-sized tower, if not a full tower.

What I'd like is a Mini-ATX case that can take a front-mounted storage array of that size, as described, and also that can take a power supply big enough to drive all those disks.

What would you folks recommend for such a beast? I've looked at all my favorite companies (Silverstone, Lian Li, Antec, etc.), and most seem to be just regular towers, nothing special.

Have you got a favorite that you think would fit this bill perfectly? Hopefully it would be quite a bit smaller than my Antec P182, which is my main desktop machine.

PS. I *could* probably use 2.5" drives instead, except I'm hoping for a max of speed, reliability, with a minimum of cost. Do you think - if this is going to be a primarily networked storage device - I'd lose much in the way of speed by using 2.5" drives?

- Tim

lm · Post by lm » Sat Sep 12, 2009 4:10 pm

You need 3x the number of drives if you use 2.5" instead of 3.5" and target for some capacity that actually needs 4x3.5" like you said in the first place. Then you start to get limited by the number of SATA ports on your mobo. And I don't think it will be any quieter with that many drives.

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 5:30 pm

lm wrote:You need 3x the number of drives if you use 2.5" instead of 3.5" and target for some capacity that actually needs 4x3.5" like you said in the first place. Then you start to get limited by the number of SATA ports on your mobo. And I don't think it will be any quieter with that many drives.

Probably right - right now I've got 4 1TB 3.5" drives separated into 2 NAS's, and I wanted to put them all into a single storage server box. Or, better yet, fill it with 2TB drives and transfer all the current storage onto it, so I'll have a total of 8TB (or even 10TB with that 4th drive). Reasonably future-proof. I'm putting my whole DVD collection on it; not sure about the Blu-Rays, since they take up so much freekin' space.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion. Looks like I'll go for a smallish tower.

- Tim

incorrect · Post by **incorrect** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:57 pm

well it's not exactly what you want, but rosewill makes a microatx case that takes 4 internal 3.5" drives (i believe you can fit a 5th/6th one in the external bays), uses a full-atx psu, uses 120mm fans, and only costs $25.

see here

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 8:11 pm

incorrect wrote:well it's not exactly what you want, but rosewill makes a microatx case that takes 4 internal 3.5" drives (i believe you can fit a 5th/6th one in the external bays), uses a full-atx psu, uses 120mm fans, and only costs $25.

see here

Thanks for the suggestion! Good tiny little case, tho' I'm a little partial to having all the drives accessible via hot-swap bays in the front. No need to ever open the thing up. I'm looking at this kind of unit to put in a case:

http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_s ... s35nsa.asp

- Tim

incorrect · Post by **incorrect** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:13 pm

looks quite expensive.. how often do you plan on swapping drives?

i have a tendency myself to over-engineer things; those hot-swappable bays alone might cost as much as another 2-3 terabytes of storage

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:42 pm

incorrect wrote:looks quite expensive.. how often do you plan on swapping drives?

i have a tendency myself to over-engineer things; those hot-swappable bays alone might cost as much as another 2-3 terabytes of storage

Probably not that often, honestly... but I like the *idea* of it.

And you're right, almost - the drives I'd buy would be about $100 per TB. But I like Neat Stuff - Addonics has some really good "add on" gear (thus the name, I'm guessing). Good company.

With the swappable drives, though, if I ever run out of space, I can pull out one drive and put in another without opening up the case, and at the rate we find ourselves using up drive space for media, this could be sooner than I expect.

- Tim

AznJason · Post by **AznJason** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:36 pm

You've missed what might be your ideal case.

What is 10.24" x 5.51" x 10.24", takes a mini-ITX board, supports a slimline CD drive (if you so desire), and has four hot-swappable 3.5" bays + an internal 2.5" bay?

Chenbro ES34069

Not sure if it's too expensive for you though (maybe not given a 5-bay hotswap looks to cost $100)... I'm looking to build something similar but I want to do hardware raid, so I might end up going with some really expensive cabling and build a WHS machine and a separate set of HDD bays. Also, a very expensive build (but really neat). See here

AznJason · Post by **AznJason** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:38 pm

Oh yeah, and if you have the patience to wait forever and a day...

This would be a really cool case. They just never update their site (and don't seem to respond much...)

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:48 pm

I have the chenbro case, it's not a bad little case, although it isn't really quiet out of the box. The hard drives are cooled by dual 70mm fans in the back, they can be replaced by the nexus 70mm fans, although it's a tight fit. The harder problem is cooling the board itself. Many mini-itx boards come with whiny little 40mm or 50mm fans, and there isn't a fan in the case that hits the motherboard. I modded my case and stuck a 120mm on the panel over the motherboard, it blows straight down onto the motherboard and keeps things nice and cool. So yeah, it's usable, but be prepared for some work if you want it quiet.

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:23 pm

AznJason wrote:You've missed what might be your ideal case.

What is 10.24" x 5.51" x 10.24", takes a mini-ITX board, supports a slimline CD drive (if you so desire), and has four hot-swappable 3.5" bays + an internal 2.5" bay?

Chenbro ES34069

Not sure if it's too expensive for you though (maybe not given a 5-bay hotswap looks to cost $100)... I'm looking to build something similar but I want to do hardware raid, so I might end up going with some really expensive cabling and build a WHS machine and a separate set of HDD bays. Also, a very expensive build (but really neat). See here

Huh - that's pretty much just the kind of thing I'd been looking for, so thanks! It *does* seem like it'd be a bit of work to get just the way I'd want it; plus, getting a good quality hardware RAID card in there (should I decide to do that, which I probably won't anyway) would be tough. I'm tending towards a smallish tower/ATX or mATX case; at least it would be easier to mix and match parts with it, though it would be clunkier.

I already ordered the 4-bay SATA unit for such a case, though, so I've already started down the ATX tower route. Shame I hadn't seen that before!

The noise problems might dissuade me, since as it is, it would be sitting right next to my TV and maybe make too much noise if I wanted to watch movies off of it.

If only I had a server room and cabling and... and... If I was a rich man! Dooba-dooba-dooba-dooba-dooba-dooba-dooba-dooba-doo!

- Tim

Maccer · Post by **Maccer** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 12:01 am

This maybe a good budget choice, if available in the US. Its a mid tower with 9x5.25" bays ideal for installing hot swap bays

http://www.sharkoon.com/html/produkte/p ... ex_en.html

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:55 pm

Thanks for all your suggestions, folks!

In the end, I settled for a small tower. Best I could find that met my specs, that was available relatively easily, was this:

http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/pr ... s_index=63

The Lian-li PC-A06F. Hopefully this will fit the bill. I hope my drive-bay unit fits in it! 8-O!

Smallest quiet case to hold 4-5 drives?

Smallest quiet case to hold 4-5 drives?

I have that