Poplar NAS Tower

[charlesshoults]

I'm working on a relatively small wooden computer case, right now to house Windows Home Server components but with Microsoft apparently killing off WHS, that may change, possibly to Amahi or UnRaid.

For now, the thing is up and running:

ECS H55H-I
Intel i3-550
Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600
Coolmax 500W psu

The computer case will have two trayless SATA enclosures for a total of eight drives at the bottom to keep the weight low and attached to two aluminum plates, one above and one below. The motherboard then mounts above the drive enclosures with the power supply at the top.
12.75"W x 11.25"D x 17"H
All of the wooden panels will be connected using dowel pins and glue instead of screws so that it can all be sanded flush.

The center section panels have vertical slots routed on the outside and horizontal slots on the inside, foam filters secured to the inside of each panel.

The case is shown here with motherboard and power supply centered. I'm not sure if they'll stay centered or moved to one side or the other.

 

[charlesshoults]

Right now, I have a fifth drive connected to an eSata port. After I have the PCI-E card for the other four internal drives, I'll fill it with all of my existing drives and changing them out one-by-one with 2TB drives. I want to rotate those drives out to an eSata enclosure but have ye to model it out. I don't want a clunky metal enclosure connected to a wooden tower. I'm not entirely sure how it's internals should be built. I would guess green and ground from the PSU rigged to a switch so that it can be turned on and off, PSU powering five drives and the drives attached to a port multiplier. If I'm going to continue using WHS, I want them to be individual drives, not a RAID array.

 

[charlesshoults]

WHS was/is causing me some initial problems. It seems that by default, Microsoft disables hibernation mode and does not power down drives after inactivity, so even with the Lights Out add-in, I was unable to select either sleep or hibernate. After enabling settings through power options, I can put the computer to sleep on a schedule or on demand, but can't wake the computer up again except by the power button. The most reliable method of bringing the machine back up again is a wake timer in the bios of the H55H-I, but even with wake on lan enabled in the bios, the machine will not wake up on demand, either from the connector software or from pfSense.

The first night I had it up and running, I put it to sleep at 10:30 and found the machine turning itself back on at midnight.

1. Change backup times to 8:00pm-10:00pm.
2. Bios wake event daily at 5:00pm.
3. Sunday - Thursday, sleep at 11:00pm.
4. Friday - Saturday, sleep at 2:00am.

I need to disable the bios wake event and see if I can reliably wake up the system using the Lights Out add-in, then figure out how to get it to wake on demand instead of relying solely on timers.