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Hard Drive Mini-Case

P

powerman

Gawd
Joined
May 21, 2002
Messages
562
I'm working on an external "mini-case" specifically for my 6 hard drives. All these hard drives were making my case incredibly hot so I need to find a better way. I made a case a 120 mm fan on the front door. The back is still open till I decide exactly what to do with it. Here are the things that I have questions about:

1) Do they make IDE "extension cables"? Since the hard drives will be outside the main case, I'm looking for a quick way to connect and disconnect them. In a magazine, I seen a kit that will transform a internal hard drive into an external hard drive by plugging the IDE cable into the custom hardware in the kit. I have the same kind of thing in mind but something even simpler would do. What would be perfect if they made a special peice like the plastic part at the end of the IDE cable that has pins on both ends. Then I can have one IDE cable in my "mini-case" and use another cable to connect to the motherboard. The advantage of this would be a lot more slack in the IDE cable. The "mini-case" has to be rigtht up against my main case.

2) I'm using the "rails" that will allow a hard drive to fit into a 5.25" bay in my "mini-case". This is because the "mini-case" is made of wood which is a good insulator so I don't want the drive right up against the side. What is the # and threading for the screws that go into these rails? I need to get longer screws than the ones that come with the rails since the screws have to go through the side of the "mini-case".

3) Where can I find a good selection of fan guards for a 120 mm fan? I used google but the results weren't that great. Is there not much of a selection for 120 mm fan guards? Even ebay had less than 10 results. Most of them were the generic "wire style" guards. They aren't what I'm looking for since the fan guard will be in the dead center in the front of the case.
 
My father does something like this using SCSI drives, maybe that's an option? I think you'd only need a single SCSI cable and be able to chain them together somehow. I'm not much of a SCSI user though so I can't give you more advice.
 
I think what you should do is find a cheap-ass case, a cheap-ass mobo and processor, and just make a file server and connect them by network.

That, or if you only access the hard drives once in a while just get a removable hard drive rack or two and make your life easier.

A networked file server might not be as fast, but if you pick up a ~1GHz proc. you won't have to worry about it getting hot. Not only that, but you won't need to put it RIGHT NEXT to your computer.

One more alternative is to get a new case with LOTS of drive bays, put the hard drives in the top most bays and get some top blowhole action and some intakes on the bezels. Since heat rises, you will not have to worry about the heat affecting the processor/vid card temps unless you are getting really pathetic exhaust.

Extending the location of hard drives by IDE is a bad idea, from what I've heard. It's something like a cable over 24 inches is likely to not be able to get the data to its destination fast enough or some deal like that...
 
IDE specifications do not allow for external drives. SCSI certainly does, and this exact thing is done a lot with SCSI drives, but SCSI does a lot more than IDE. I suggest a USB2 or firewire to IDE bridge. This will also give you a few more feet to work with. 6 hard drives might require a few bridges, though.
 
Check on Ebay, there are a lot of two and four drive cases that take IDE hard drives and convert them to a firewire interface.

Now before I'm flammed to death, hear me out. There are currently NO IDE drives on the market that will need the 100MB or 133MB transfer rates of UDMA. Even at peak data transfer levels of IDE drives, firewire will be able to handle it quite well. I recommend firewire over USB as the latency is generally better and handles multiple commands (read and write) better than USB. That and I have yet to see a USB encloser that supported more than one drive. :D
 
Well I don't need a longer cable since I have a mass storage controller that my "mini-case" is right next to. I am using the standard length cables and everything connects nicely. I am interested in the adapter so I can put a back on my "mini-case" and have everything look smooth instead of there being wires all over. Local computer stores can cut shorter cables and I do have a few very short cables I can use for inside the case. I just was wondering if there was a good way for me to hide all of the wires out of the back of the "mini-case". I don't think I should run into any problems if I use the standard IDE cables. It shouldn't matter if the drive is physically inside the case or not.

Actually, I can use a much shorter cable with my hard drive case than I would have to use if I use the 5.25" bays in my full tower. This is because of where the PCI slots are located - the furtherest point from the 5.25" bays. I made my hard drive case so it is at the same height as the PCI cards so there is plenty of room.

My hard drive case is pretty much built and working but I just want to make it look a little cleaner. The 120 mm fan seems to be doing a much better cooling job than the inside of a case. I had four case fans in my full tower but there were too many things blocking the air flow such as the IDE cables, power wires, and PCI cards. Six IDE cables in one case can become very messy. I'm thinking about adding in a second power supply to my full tower since there is a lot of space and I'm sure that I'm close to the limit of my 480 watt power supply. A 300 watt power supply could barely handle three hard drives.
 
powerman said:
Well I don't need a longer cable since I have a mass storage controller that my "mini-case" is right next to. I am using the standard length cables and everything connects nicely. I am interested in the adapter so I can put a back on my "mini-case" and have everything look smooth instead of there being wires all over. Local computer stores can cut shorter cables and I do have a few very short cables I can use for inside the case. I just was wondering if there was a good way for me to hide all of the wires out of the back of the "mini-case". I don't think I should run into any problems if I use the standard IDE cables. It shouldn't matter if the drive is physically inside the case or not.
Click to expand...
It isn't simply a matter of cable length. Adding a coupler could degrade signal quality. Running an ide cable outside a case will make it more succeptible to interference. It shouldn't matter if the drive is inside the case or not, but according to the IDE specifications, it does.
 
your best bet is to get some Firewire/USB adapters... there are some USB2 > IDE adapters on ebay for cheap that plug right into the back of the drive and turn them into USB2... put a USB2 hub in the case hook them all together and there you go :)

or build another machine and make it a file server, thats what i ended up doin :D
 
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