Portable case for hard-drive array

[assaultducky]

Hi! I am looking to build my own portable eSATA hard drive array and am looking for a simple chassis that just has at 2 or 4 5.25" external bays and mounts for a power supply. I see a lot of companies selling towers that 8-bay drive sleds for 3.5" drives but I want to outfit my case with 8x 2.5" hot-swap bays that fit in 2 5.25" bays.

does anyone know where I can get such a case? I've looked at mini-itx cases but they all seem to have some front panel I/O that gets in the way of 2 external 5.25" bays. Some cases even have a divider between the two 5.25" bays, which is what i don't want.

 

[Bookmage]

heh, i looked into doing something similar and ended up w/the Morex Venus 668 solely for the 2 x 5.25 bays. I couldn't find any esata solution so I ended up throwing linux on an atom mobo.
IT sounds like you're looking for something liek http://www.caloptic.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_42_43&products_id=47
Cooldrives and other places used to have nice aluminum versions that were light.
Essentially 2 x 5.25 external enclosure that were used for SCSI stuff back in the day. Ebay used to have a bunch of these a couple years ago. i think i found them under dual bay or 2 bay enclosure.

 

[Nivram]

I might suggest an old Shuttle case. Once the motherboard fries, the case is still good, though usually only has one 5.25" bay. They usually do have one internal and one external 3.5" bay, though, so you could put your other two drives there, with adapters.

The Shuttle power supplies are small, but are rated at 250 or 300 watts, so should handle the power requirements of that many 2.5" hard drives, plus your controller.

If the Shuttle case is too small for your tastes, you could always upgrade to something like an X-Qpack (2x 5.25" bays plus plenty of room), or similar.