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How to wire 5 HDDs closely together

I

irishBoiler

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 29, 2008
Messages
85
I have a Silverstone FT02. The FT02 has five vertical HDD bays right next to each other in the bottom left corner of the case. Originally I had three HDDs and spread them out between slots 1, 3, and 5. The door panel barely closed after they were cabled and when I opened it up two months later all of the sound dampening on the door panel was indented like the spots furniture makes in carpet.

Fast forward to now and I'm trying to add two HDDs. Now I can't get the HDD power cables and the satas plugged into all five HDDs without the cables bowing out a lot. This will prevent the door panel from going back on. Any ideas or examples of wiring 5 HDDs right on top of each other? Can I buy a different power cable with the plugs a lot closer to each other than normal? They are barely farther away than right on top of each other. I'd love one where I could move the plugs along the cable, but I doubt that exists.

Help!
 
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You can remove the connectors off the wires and relocate them on the same wires or replace the wires with new ones so you don't have to shrinkwrap the areas left by the previous locations.
 
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How would I remove the connectors and relocate them? I assume you'd have to stip the wires in just one spot, which i have no idea how you'd do that.

@archmage: those are pretty interesting. I might try that if I can't find a diy solution
 
PS-RagE did something remarkable with his stack o' drives that's right up your alley: link. He used a bunch of right-angle molex connectors, attached at the right spacing. I can't imagine it protruded more than three eighths of an inch from the back of the drives.
 
irishBoiler said:
Are these reliable? Is this company any good? If so, I'd just buy this and call it a day?
Click to expand...
I've made several custom cables with similar connectors, never had any problems
just take your time and be careful - especially that you don't cross wires
 
I made this last year. Works great. I had an old Corsair TX750 that I salvaged the connectors off of, and simply spliced them into my XFX 850's modular sata cable. With 5 drives running off one cable, I've had zero issues. All told, took about 30 minutes to fab this up...and most of that time was needed to psych myself up enough to cut-up my old corsair (don't worry, it was already dead :().
Midway through
IMG_0632.jpg

All done :)
IMG_0656-1.jpg
 
irishBoiler said:
Are these reliable? Is this company any good? If so, I'd just buy this and call it a day?
Click to expand...

Nils at MDPC-X sells the highest quality stuff you can find anywhere. He is the nicest guy I've found to work with, period. He is crazy about quality.
Yes, those connectors are top quality.
I use them myself, they are simple to use and he will instruct you as to their use if you ask him.

The sleeving and heatshrink from MDPC-X has no rival. If you enjoy sleeving, buy some from him during your purchase.:p
 
Ok, I got some pieces from MDPC-X. Mainly the SATA connectors. So can I take an existing power cable that came with my Corsair 750X and add the connectors to power all 5 HDDs with one power cable? I have no idea how to calculate that the power cable can take the power load of five drives on at the same time. (3 WD Green and 2 WD Black)

Here is that I got and some end caps: http://en.mdpc-x.com/mdpc-cable-assemblies/sata-power-connector-through.htm
 
That guy is me, and those are my pictures just a few posts above :)
Assuming nice quality cables on a good PSU, you should have no problems powering at least 5 drives off a single cable...if not many more. Peak sustained usage for 5 modern 7200rpm drives should be around 50w at the high end...most likely 30w or so. The peak power usage will occur during startup, but it still shouldn't be an issue. Most modern boards support staggered startups anyways.
The biggest question would be with a multi-rail PSU and whether or not a particular rail could handle that many drives running off it. However even then, I don't foresee a problem as we aren't talking about that much power with just a handful of hard drives.

I've seen server setups with upwards of 20 drives running off just a couple of power cables. So honestly, I wouldn't worry about it.
I'm currently running 5 drives off a single cable, and have not had any issues for the year or so its been this way.
 
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