Any ideas on how I could fit 6 more hard drives into my Fractal R4 case?

A

Axsuul

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 15, 2003
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Hey guys. Looking to add another array of 6x8 TB into my NAS setup, bringing the total to 12. Unfortunately, I'm in a little jam.

My HDD cages have room for 2 so far and perhaps I could fit two into the 5.25" drive bays but is there a better way to do this? Perhaps, fitting a HDD cage in between the PSU and other HDD cages? It would be a tight fit however.

Apologies in advance for the grime and dirt in the photos. This machine has been up and running for 4 years =p

https://imgur.com/a/EhLBV

Thanks for offering to take a look!
 
I know you're probably in love with it, but did you ever consider just upgrading to a larger case that fits your needs?

There are many RAID cages that you can buy to convert your 2 optical bays to support 3 3.5" drives, but that adds an additional cost of at least $50 and still leaves you a drive short. I prefer ICY DOCK bays myself, which go for at least double that from a quick Google search.

I can understand wanting to keep costs to a minimum by utilizing what you have for as long as possible, but this is like asking how to fit my gf into a Ferrari...

fat-bird-on-car.jpg
 
Xinmosni said:
I know you're probably in love with it, but did you ever consider just upgrading to a larger case that fits your needs?

There are many RAID cages that you can buy to convert your 2 optical bays to support 3 3.5" drives, but that adds an additional cost of at least $50 and still leaves you a drive short. I prefer ICY DOCK bays myself, which go for at least double that from a quick Google search.

I can understand wanting to keep costs to a minimum by utilizing what you have for as long as possible, but this is like asking how to fit my gf into a Ferrari...

fat-bird-on-car.jpg
Click to expand...

LOL

I was considering upgrading the case but if I could fit 3 HDDs into the 5.25" bays then (didn't realize there were these adapters, nice!), another 2 into the HDD cages, I could probably just zip-tie the last sucker somewhere and make it ghetto fabulous. Well okay, if I were to upgrade to another case, any suggestions? :)

So there is the Thermaltake W100 but my god is that thing expensive. But at least it would future proof me for another 10 years.
 
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My old hyper-v server only had 3 hard drive slots, I shoved 4 more drives in there in various places, not even mounted. Ran like that for years and years with no issues. Looked ghetto as crap, but it got the job done!
 
I don't know how you stand the noise of that many hard drives.

Why not just put them all in an external NAS an hide it aware somewhere so I don't have to imagine how ungodly loud and annoying it is?
 
compcons said:
It looks like there are 2 open PCI expansion slots in the case. Maybe use those with one of these things to get the fourth drive?

https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-KW-PCI2H25-Mounting-Bracket-Specifications/dp/B00IB6I43K

I have been rocking a 17 year old Super Micro SC-760A case with a pair of 5 drive cages that fit into the 6x 5.25" bays. I had it painted at the body shop in 2008 just to make it look better. I freaking love it.
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this is a good option. or if there is enough cable slack and depth you might be able to mount them like so:
upload_2018-2-3_2-59-54.png
 
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We stripped a Dell shelf 5 years ago and stuffed it with Sandisk ssd's.
I took a bunch of the drives home and ended up with 10 spinny drives in my Fractal R4 with an old Dell host card to cover what my mobo didn't.

This was back when my desktop was my Vmware 5.5 home lab.

2 ssd's behind the motherboard, 3 drives in the bottom cage, 2 drives in the 5.25 bays in converters, 5 drives in the main bay.

You can rig up a couple in the floor using fan holes if you really wanted.

Define cases are quiet, it wasn't like I was firing up a R720 at home.

I ended up getting a bunch of Intel 320 and 520 ssd's a year later.

It's been a great case, but it's going to go to my buddy with the rest of the build in my sig, less the 1080ti and PSU.
 
Only slightly off-topic, but what's the use case for ~100TB of simultaneously-accessible drive space? Is it "cuz I can?" (which I totally get), or something less esoteric?
 
spugm1r3 said:
Only slightly off-topic, but what's the use case for ~100TB of simultaneously-accessible drive space? Is it "cuz I can?" (which I totally get), or something less esoteric?
Click to expand...

Direct traffic away from an application by sending read replicas to a dedicated volume. Reduce resource contention on application box/cluster + it's associated storage + bandwidth.

Tag the read replicas as appropriate to job function so only relevant data is presented.

You can further reduce application contention by forcing serverside high level visualization to the client side with dedicated networked volumes....bc your company pays for all of it so store it somewhere.
 
DoubleTap said:
I don't know how you stand the noise of that many hard drives.

Why not just put them all in an external NAS an hide it aware somewhere so I don't have to imagine how ungodly loud and annoying it is?
Click to expand...

It looks like that is his NAS. Just time for a new case.

I wouldn't zip tie any hard drive. Make sure it's properly secure man.
 
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