• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Good NAS case - suggestions?

S

sphinx99

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 23, 2006
Messages
1,191
I'm looking to build a NAS unit. I don't expect this case to exist, but I am hoping I am wrong and one of you has seenone:

1. Small. mini-ITX.

2. Many 3.5" drive bays... perhaps 8.

3. Enough space for two adapters. SATA ports, Wifi adapter.

I have not seen an elegant design and suspect either the market just is not there for such a unit, or the packaging would be too difficult. Eight WD GP drives don't need a ton of active cooling, and a mini-ITX running an efficient CPU is going to be enough to run WHS or FreeNAS or OpenSolaris without difficulty. One PCI or PCIe slot for flexibility (say, a wireless adapter) and one PCI or PCIe for a controller.

Basically, I'm trying to see what it would take to replicate a Drobo Pro for personal use in a somewhat similar form factor.

I know exactly how I'd do it if size were not a constraint. What I have not seen is an enclosure tailor made to this application, e.g. not much empty space, tight drive packing, no 5.25" drive bay nonsense, etc.

Suggestions?
 
Last edited:
well first things first...mini itx will limit your expansion. I am almost certain the spec only allows room for one expansion slot. With that said you can still buy an 8port SATA controller and manage your desired # of drives.

The problem is with the cases. Cases designed for mini-itx boards tend to limit the expansion slots. You can throw it in a larger case as the form factor will allow for proper mounting but now you have lots of wasted space.

I think the Via NSD-7800 is as close as you are going to get without actually buying a drobo
 
That is a pretty cool NAS. If you have loads of cash you could buy 5.25" to four 2.5" hard drive adapters and find a case that has a regular sized 5.25" bay or two. That'll be more expensive though, and you'll cut down on your storage space some.
 
Thanks everyone for the tips. I agree, some good suggestions, sadly there don't seem to be many higher count drive bay NAS enclosures out there.
 
not sure about the size difference but I plan on using a panzerbox and my AMS 5in3 sata backplane. That will get me 5 and it also has 4 more internal. Perfect for my 8 channel hw raid and one boot drive. It also has plenty of room even though it's shortened due to the position of the p/s. it's gonna be a little tricky finding a mini-itx case that holds ton of drives. If you get a case with 6 x 5.25" you can use 2 x 5in3's and whatever internal drives it has space for.
 
Last edited:
Panzerbox is just as big as an Antec Super Lanboy. But twice the weight.
I wish it was smaller in size as I would actually consider moving into something smaller to hold 8-9 hdds.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top