Help with SATA Tower Enclusure Build.

[kraegor]

Hey guys,

My friend is looking into buying one of these:

http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsata12t.asp

And I am almost 100% sure that there is a way to build this yourself for a fraction of this cost.

Does anyone have any good links, ideas, products, or advice if one was to build something like this himself? Or make a better alternative?

He is making it to be at least 10 drives, 1 TB each, so 10 TB total. He says he wants raid 10, 50 and 6, options also. *the raid configs are a must* and would prefer it be hot swappable.

any ideas?

 

[sabregen]

I'm thinking triple 4 in 3x 5.25" drive carriers (with sleds) that have an attached SATA backplane, and using a 12port SATA controller with fanout connections. Probably run you about $1500-2000 for the entire setup (disk setup + controller. Put it into something like a full tower CoolerMaster or something. Take a look at the galleries for the Galaxy projects. That will give you some ideas (of Ockie's budget )

 

[Dangman]

IWell this is rackmount but for the price it's an awesome deal for 20(!) hot swappable drives:
NORCO RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case - $290

Not a fraction of the cost once you factor in PSU, mobo, RAM, CPU, etc, but a better value for your money. But definitely check out the Worklogs subforum in the Cases and Modding forum. You should see 4 worklogs with the above case: (Plutonium, Repositorium, Galaxy 4.75, and Phoenix)

 

[Old Hippie]

Hey guys,

My friend is looking into buying one of these:

http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsata12t.asp

And I am almost 100% sure that there is a way to build this yourself for a fraction of this cost.

Does anyone have any good links, ideas, products, or advice if one was to build something like this himself? Or make a better alternative?

He is making it to be at least 10 drives, 1 TB each, so 10 TB total. He says he wants raid 10, 50 and 6, options also. *the raid configs are a must* and would prefer it be hot swappable.

any ideas?

What's the price range?

 

[geiger]

The Norco is a great solution for his current plan. The external enclosure requires a separate PC with an e-sata raid card that supports at least 12 drives, look at the suggested controllers for a guesstimate on price range.

If he's hurting for space, he could go the cm stacker/antec 1200 route with 5-3 bays.

With 20 hd channels to work with he could get 1 12 and add a 8 port card in the future, or use onboard mb sata ports depending on the target volume size. He's looking at $700+ for a 12 channel raid card.

 

[kraegor]

What's the price range?

The price range is anything under what that beast costs.

Basically he is looking for raid storage system that can hold up to 10 1TB drives, but that is all in one that doesn't require a lot of maintenence. He sees this as that, but I think that he can do the same thing better and cheaper.

This is to only be used for storage through a network though.

 

[Ockie]

Find yourself a used MD1000 or MD3000 on ebay and then you dont' need to waste your time with multi port or expensive controllers (The MD's have built in SAS expanders). And it can hold 15 drives.