*Official* Norco data storage products thread

I really like those xcase chassis, I'm curious if anyone would buy them here(USA).... We should do a bulk order to save on shipping. I'd buy 10 rm 424 pro cases if I could sell them.
 
Well guys, I owe you an apology. After replacing my motherboard and power supply, exchanging my three M1015's for 1 M1015 and a HP SAS Expander and RMA'ing half of my hard drives, I have discovered the problem with my set up:

c-p1t7b.jpg


That's right, Norco's 1 -> 7 Molex splitter that they recommend to send power to all 6 backplanes is what was causing the drives to drop off when more than 8 were attached. It also was causing the drives to drop off at random and further causing bad sectors and other physical damage to the drives. It was also the likely culprit in blowing up on of the backplanes.

I bypassed the split and I'm using my PSU's multiple MOLEX outputs and everything seems to be running at 100%. I'll slowly replace the last of the 4 old drives that have bad sectors with Samsung DT01ACA300's and I should be fine.



I may look into selling the SAS expander and buying two more 1015's.
 
this might seem strange for a home server but...any recommendations on keeping my norco 4220 dust free on the inside?

i've though about buying some screen door mesh to make an adhoc dust filter to put on the front. Any other suggestions? (and keeping my house dust free...yes, but other than that :p)
 
Mesh screens and everything all just will delay the inevitable. Just buy an air compressor and spray it out every few months.
 
It will just give you more time in between cleaning sessions like Bex said. My norco's are in a rack in the attic and the amount of dust is just *ugh*. Unless you run a datacenter in your house, dust will be present :p.

I'd love to see a short 1U rackmountable from Norco. I think it will fit nicely in with DIY linux firewalls/appliances that dont need massive horsepower CPU and/or memory.
 
@EMM: No offense but maybe that wall of questions/replies deserves its own thread for X-Case products since its got nothing to do with Norco.
 
No worries Odd

That's a very good idea!

After all it's quite hard to find info on the 424 Pro and if it's hidden under Norco it may get missed.

It only started here because the 424 standard is almost identical to the Norco 4224

The Pro is an entirely different beast.

I'll start a thread and move the post when I get home from work.

Cheers
 
Hi all, I need some help. Long time lurker, first time poster.

I am building a media server/HTPC combo. The server will be transcoding and storing 1080p and eventually 4k. Here is what I have decided on so far;

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 operating WMC with Mediabrowser and Plex.
Plex will feed the Roku and IPads, WMC will feed the 360, HDMI to the Denon 4311ci.

Mobo and processor I have a few options, I'll choose soon.

My main issue now is I want to run this tower (chenbro 10769) concurrently with a 24 drive enclosure (Norco 4224) but only want to run one motherboard/processor.

I've never used any commercial enclosures and have always used towers to build my pc's. FLEXRAID will give me the ability to grow my storage "on the run" so to speak. I want to use all SATA 6.0 drives since SAS drives are stupidly expensive.

My initial build will consist of a vertex4 128gb for the OS and a vertex4 256gb for applications. The 10 HDD hotswap bays in the tower will have 3tb 7200rpm drives fully populated and I'll have 10 drives populated in the 4u chassis to start. That's 60TB of total space, but I will be using FLEXRAID and will be backing everything up as well. My assumption is that my total usable space will run in the 20-24TB range after all is said and done, with the ability to add 14 more HDD's as the need arises. I'll be backing up the 2 other desktops, 2 laptops, iPads etc to this box also.

So, my question is - being utterly unfamiliar with the hardware involved in expansion cards or what this Norco 4224 case uses, what cards/cables etc do I need to buy that will be compatible with FLEXRAID? I need to support all 24 HDDs out of the back of the tower to the 4224 enclosure, plus whatever slots are needed for full SATA 6.0 in the tower that isn't on the motherboard natively.

Edit - a Norco DS-24D is also an option. I'm looking for the best long-term expandabilty and throughput I can drive.

Thanks for the help.
 
Anyone know if Norco went outta business? They won't answer my emails and the DS-24E is discontinued on newegg.
 
cbiggers said:
Anyone know if Norco went outta business? They won't answer my emails and the DS-24E is discontinued on newegg.
Click to expand...

They are still in business as I just purchased a RPC-2008 from Newegg not too long ago.
 
cbiggers said:
Anyone know if Norco went outta business? They won't answer my emails and the DS-24E is discontinued on newegg.
Click to expand...

Norco is still in business there website just sucks but there subsidiary Habey just announced some new products a few days ago. I also think Habey and probably the OEM/ODM business is where the main focus is these days
 
Well I wanted to get a few more DS-24e's off newegg and they are discontinued. I wonder why? They were nice enclosures. I wonder if they will be replacing them.
 
cbiggers said:
Well I wanted to get a few more DS-24e's off newegg and they are discontinued. I wonder why? They were nice enclosures. I wonder if they will be replacing them.
Click to expand...

A couple of other places carry them though they're not as cheap as newegg was... $1,419 + shipping is the cheapest I've seen after newegg and that's on http://www.excaliberpc.com/608788/norco-ds-24e-24bay-hot-swap.html

You could try sending newegg and email and ask since you want to buy more then one
 
Goros said:
Hi all, I need some help. Long time lurker, first time poster.

I am building a media server/HTPC combo. The server will be transcoding and storing 1080p and eventually 4k. Here is what I have decided on so far;

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 operating WMC with Mediabrowser and Plex.
Plex will feed the Roku and IPads, WMC will feed the 360, HDMI to the Denon 4311ci.

Mobo and processor I have a few options, I'll choose soon.

My main issue now is I want to run this tower (chenbro 10769) concurrently with a 24 drive enclosure (Norco 4224) but only want to run one motherboard/processor.

I've never used any commercial enclosures and have always used towers to build my pc's. FLEXRAID will give me the ability to grow my storage "on the run" so to speak. I want to use all SATA 6.0 drives since SAS drives are stupidly expensive.

My initial build will consist of a vertex4 128gb for the OS and a vertex4 256gb for applications. The 10 HDD hotswap bays in the tower will have 3tb 7200rpm drives fully populated and I'll have 10 drives populated in the 4u chassis to start. That's 60TB of total space, but I will be using FLEXRAID and will be backing everything up as well. My assumption is that my total usable space will run in the 20-24TB range after all is said and done, with the ability to add 14 more HDD's as the need arises. I'll be backing up the 2 other desktops, 2 laptops, iPads etc to this box also.

So, my question is - being utterly unfamiliar with the hardware involved in expansion cards or what this Norco 4224 case uses, what cards/cables etc do I need to buy that will be compatible with FLEXRAID? I need to support all 24 HDDs out of the back of the tower to the 4224 enclosure, plus whatever slots are needed for full SATA 6.0 in the tower that isn't on the motherboard natively.

Edit - a Norco DS-24D is also an option. I'm looking for the best long-term expandabilty and throughput I can drive.

Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

So, since no one answered I dug around and came up with the following solution:

In my tower, I will use a LSI 9207-4i4e card with an 8088 cable to a Norco 4224. Inside the 4224 I will use a Chenbro UEK, a Chenbro CK23601 (with a deep cool nbridge 8), and a Cosair HX-850 for the PSU.

I can daisy chain to additional 4224's with identical setups if needed, and all will work with flexraid.
 
cbiggers said:
Well I wanted to get a few more DS-24e's off newegg and they are discontinued. I wonder why? They were nice enclosures. I wonder if they will be replacing them.
Click to expand...

They're currently in stock. I'm looking at purchasing one now to fill with 4TB drives.
Debating between the DS-24E and a supermicro chassis - which ends up more expensive of course.

Are the Areca expanders in the DS-24E hooked up to the LED headers on the backplanes for Fail LEDs?

Sold out now at NE.
 
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Anyone have issues with the drive indicator lights on the 4224? I I have about 8 pairs that don't light up when drives are connected. Even though the LEDs don't light up, the drives still work.

Has anyone attempted to repair them? I'm well outside of my return period and don't want to buy several backplanes at $60 a pop just for indicator lights.
 
mears said:
Anyone have issues with the drive indicator lights on the 4224? I I have about 8 pairs that don't light up when drives are connected. Even though the LEDs don't light up, the drives still work.

Has anyone attempted to repair them? I'm well outside of my return period and don't want to buy several backplanes at $60 a pop just for indicator lights.
Click to expand...

Just contact Norco Tech Support, and see what they can do for you (they may not charge you). Also, try to PM or look up "mike at norcotek dot com" here in the forums to see what he can do.

Keith
 
I've had this system (Norco 4220) for a while (3/29/2010 - 3 years!?!), but wanted to upgrade from WHS 1 to 2, so I needed to move beyond DE and decided to jump into RAID. Since RAID is what I do a bunch at work, I don't have any hesitations there. So, I was looking at the Adaptec 51645 cards on Ebay, but they were a bit higher than I wanted to pay. I stumbled on a listing for the 52445's (28 Ports) there, for $130 cheaper, with battery, so I picked one up.

Here are some of the particulars:
- Norco 4220 (2nd revision)
- 120mm "Firewall" Fan Bracket (cavediver's, not Norco's)
- 3 x 120mm Thermaltake ISGC Fan 12
- 2 x Cooler Master SAF-B82-E1 80mm Case Cooling Fan
- Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H
- Intel i3-540 (3.2GHz)
- G.SKILL RipjawsX (8GB of 1600MHz DDR3)
- Adaptec RAID 52445 w/Battery
- Antec Cyclone Blower (dropped RAID card temp 45°F)
- US Robotics 56K Fax PCI Modem (talk about old-school)
- Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter
- ~12.5 TB of Storage


- YouTube Video link

Keith
 
I have a product suggestion...

See this:

http://www.servethehome.com/startech-satsas425bk-hot-swap-ssd-4in1-25-525-review/

this, but for 3.5" drives. My attraction to this is only TWO connectors! :) I have searched far & wide, high & low, there seems to be no 3.5" hotswap cage that has what that startech cage has - all 3.5" cages have at least one power (some more) & 4x SATA data connectors. It would be sooooo nice just to have one power (either 4-pin molex or 15-pin SATA) & one SFF-8087 data connector! :)

please please please make one! :D
 
We bought a DS 24D enclosure for a lab environment. We have a Dell PE R420 with a PERC H800 card. I connect the cable to the enclosure and the card and it only show 4 drive on the system. Would anyone know why?

Thanks,
Eliud
 
That's because it's only connected to 4 drives. Take the top off the chassis and you'll see how the cabels are run. You need to buy the DS-24E if you want to connect all the disks off one cable because it has a SAS expander.
 
You could put one of the 36 port Chenbro ones in. Would require purchasing 1-3 more internal cables and coming up with a way to mount it. Shouldn't be too hard.
 
Blue Fox said:
You could put one of the 36 port Chenbro ones in. Would require purchasing 1-3 more internal cables and coming up with a way to mount it. Shouldn't be too hard.
Click to expand...

Or the Intel 36-port. Same diff - they both use the LSISAS2x36 expander chip.
 
Does anyone know if the PA-DS25B2 is good ?
Seems interesting for adding some SSD into rackmount server chassis. (2*2.5" >1*slot)
 
are the backplane issues on the Norco 4220/4224 sorted out? I'd like to order one soon, what should I check for?
 
I haven't had any issues with mine - but at this point my 4224 is half full. Been running for just shy of a year.
 
I've been running mine (4220) for 3 years now, not a single issue. Also, from others here, if you do have a back-plane issue, they are pretty good at getting you a replacement.

Keith
 
EnderW said:
are the backplane issues on the Norco 4220/4224 sorted out? I'd like to order one soon, what should I check for?
Click to expand...

Answer i had from xcase about the backplanes:
Any Norco backplane (Green) from 2011 and before are not great, the later 2011 Yellow ones that are used still now are much better
Click to expand...
 
mears said:
Anyone have issues with the drive indicator lights on the 4224? I I have about 8 pairs that don't light up when drives are connected. Even though the LEDs don't light up, the drives still work.

Has anyone attempted to repair them? I'm well outside of my return period and don't want to buy several backplanes at $60 a pop just for indicator lights.
Click to expand...

I have this issue on my 4224, but not my DS-24E (same basic setup, up front). The issue on the 4224 became a real problem when I had to determine which disk(s) had recently failed. Please let us know if you get it resolved. My 4224 is a couple years old, and I would hope they've fixed it by now. My DS-24E is only a couple weeks old, and the difference is night and day.
 
Hi guys, hoping you can help.

Bought a Norco 4224 little while back and had a major "fun" time getting it going. Almost 15 SAS drives seemed to refuse to work in the system, chalked it up to the drives as they were used from Ebay (should've known better that all 15 couldn't be bad).

This system has been mostly offline while I waited for new drives to come in for an Open Indiana installation. They came, the system was setup and went off without a hitch with 7 3TB seagates, 3 2TB drives and a few others (also 4 1TB WD blacks for an rpool).

These past few days the OS has been marking random drives as degraded with errors, but the drives pass all tests if I run diagnostic software. Today the system finally crashed. Several attempts to bring it back online were met with failure, until I bypassed the backplane and used cables.Instant success.

So I pulled the first two backplanes out, backplane 0 and then 1. They both look 'ok' (nothing overly burnt, just a few soldering iron marks), but I noticed they say Ver1.3 - 201246. I see mentions of much later versions and I am wondering if Newegg could have sent a really old unit.

I'm already in talks with Norco, but I just wanted the communities thoughts on this as any help would be appreciated (this is a demo/test server for ZFS demonstration for a client).
 
I just bought an RPC-4216 case from amazon. Mine came with new style yellow backplanes labeled "Fuhe BP-001C" and they have a date of 2011-12-22. They appear to be pretty nice backplanes. Everything worked right out of the box too. All drive lights are very bright (too bright IMHO).

The RPC-4216 I got also appears to be a redesigned version with removable 5.25" vented drive covers! I'll try to post some links of the build tonight when I finish.

So far, I wish I'd started with the RPC-4216. I would have spent more initially, but would have saved money overall.

I did have to use some electricians duct putty (available at home depot) to seal the front of the enclosure up. I have no idea why there are so many large holes, but this can only hurt cooling the hard drives. I also used some HVAC metal tape on the outside of the front half to cover the rest of the holes.

The duct putty and tape brought hard drive temperatures down 7* C (with only 8 drives going)! I'd assume the improvement would be even greater with 16 drives.
 
Help!

What do you guys do when rack mounting the RPC-4216? It seems the handle is plastic so it is wider than needed and this prevents one from using the second hole?

What a disappointment on what appeared to be a pretty nice case otherwise...

PS: Don't worry, you can't see them but I put a few middle atlantic lacing bars to hold the weight of the unit. The screws are just to hold it from sliding out. Although I'd really like to either order a new front or a thinner handles so I can put a screw in the empty hole.

IMG_20130517_195035.jpg


IMG_20130517_195705.jpg
 
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Are you mounting it just using the rack wings? The case is designed for 4-post rail mount. It would sag terribly if just mounted off the wings.

In any case, you are right. Proper alignment in a standard rack is a pretty well documented problem with this case. It is just a couple mm wider than spec. Enough to make it not work at all in some racks.
 
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