[vox-tech] Computer case for lots of drives...

[Mike Simons]

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On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 02:05:40AM -0700, Bill Broadley wrote:
> On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 05:20:57PM -0400, Mike Simons wrote:
> > I'm looking for a computer case that can hold a lot of hard drives=20
> > (say 20 or so)... and a motherboard.
>=20
> Er, scsi or ide?

ide.  pre-existing drives.

> IDE is a poor choice for this, spinning up 20 drives simultaneously
> is not something normal power supplies are designed for.

  This is a good point, I had the impression that spin up of IDE
drives could be controlled by the IDE controller, and if you get=20
a fancy IDE controller it would allow you to control spin up times.

  If not I imagine a case that size would hold multiple power
supplies...=20

  I'll keep this in mind.

> >   The case should be able to hold a motherboard and power supply and
> > needs one or two 5.25" external bays...
>=20
> Rack mount or not?

  Does not matter, which ever is cheaper.

> > - Favorite sites to look at cases online, for this sort of thing?
>=20
> www.rackmountpro.com (they sell rackmount and non).
>=20
> BTW www.apple.com has 2.5TB raids for $10-$11k, not bad for turnkey,

  I'll check those out.

> Oh btw hooking up 20 eide drives is non-trivial, the eide cables are great
> at blocking airflow, I've seen serious problems with designs this large.

  I was thinking I could just route the cables to the nearest case side,
rotate them 90 degrees, and tape them to the case to run them along the=20
metal... if the case doesn't provide a solution.
  I've also noticed a large number of P-ATA cables that morph the
standard parallel cable into a small round cord, which should help air
flow greatly.

> Did you have a target price? target filesize? raid level?

  Well I would like to hook up a bunch of random hard drives that are
lying around, to start playing with modern Linux software RAID,
LVM, and fancy filesystems (reiser, xfs)... the idea is not to sell
someone a solution based on this.

  The lowest price case that can hold a bunch of drives and provide
cooling is best.

--=20
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