[fional]

Pretty much, yes. I used a few old IDE drives as patterns and the fact that I was using 10x10mm aluminum angle for the rails that the drives sit on naturally gave me approx 10mm spacing between each drive.
There is a fair bit of metal in those drive rails and a hell of a lot of holes! I had some difficultly getting the drive mounting holes to align. With hindsight I think I would have sliced the side of one of the old IDE drives and used that as a pattern. As it was I made a pattern from "eye" and some of the holes turned out not to align correctly. Not a big deal, I just opened them up a little to ensure I could screw in all four screws for each drive.

Probably took about a day to make the drive cages, few hours to cut all the metal, few more to mark and drill all the holes and another few to fire all the rivets in.

Ok, that's a good idea too. I'll take some pictures of my attempt and if it's 1/2 as good as yours, I'll be pleased.

[fional]

I cut the motherboard tray out of another "donor" case. You'll just need to make sure that the one you use has the mounting holes for the form factor motherboard that you want to use.
Mine came from a full size ATX case but size I only wanted to support a MATX board I needed only 4 slots worth of tray. I actually cut it on the fifth slot to give myself a little elbow room.

I knew I wanted a bare minimum of 22 drives and the space I had for the server decreed that it had to be short'n'fat as opposed to long and skiny. After a little bit of thought I hit on the idea of mounting the drives in twin side by side stacks at the front. Once I had built the drive cages (the real fiddly bit) the rest of the case pretty much fell into place. The only part that was a headache was working out how to "fix" the drive cages in the machine, since I needed them to be removable, so I could add/remove drives. The clamp type arrangement I came up with seems to do the job and fits in with my space constraints.

Quick question, as I've embarked on this project this weekend. I've doing it out of steel that I'll have hot galvinised. Going to be heavy, but that's what we have.

Did you do anything or buy anything in the lines of vibration protection for your hard drives? I've been looking around and some people do, though the actual suggestions of what they bought is lacking.

Would these suffice, or would they be lacking?
http://www.frozencpu.com/cat/l3/g7/c113/...Page1.html

or these, which may be a bit more RoI/UK friendly:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/hard-drive-screw...sher-98844

[drewy]

No I didn't.
My reasoning could be flawed but here goes:

• the majority of pcs don't have any
  
• I'm not using any high speed (7200, 10000 rpm) drives
  
• I think they are a gimmick
  

But saying that the screws and washers from Maplin don't seem a bad compromise. You'll just have to ensure that you drill the cage mount holes a little larger than the screw diameter so the washers make contact with the cage rather than the screws.

[fional]

No I didn't.
My reasoning could be flawed but here goes:

• the majority of pcs don't have any
  
• I'm not using any high speed (7200, 10000 rpm) drives
  
• I think they are a gimmick
  

But saying that the screws and washers from Maplin don't seem a bad compromise. You'll just have to ensure that you drill the cage mount holes a little larger than the screw diameter so the washers make contact with the cage rather than the screws.

Ah, yes, I never used them before either, but the backblaze creation had something so I thought maybe it was a necessity.

I just ordered my parity drives this morning. I'm thinking for the actual OS, since it won't be protected by flexraid, I'll get an SSD and just velcro it to the bottom of the case

[fional]

No I didn't.
My reasoning could be flawed but here goes:

• the majority of pcs don't have any
  
• I'm not using any high speed (7200, 10000 rpm) drives
  
• I think they are a gimmick
  

But saying that the screws and washers from Maplin don't seem a bad compromise. You'll just have to ensure that you drill the cage mount holes a little larger than the screw diameter so the washers make contact with the cage rather than the screws.

Another question Drewy, how did you decide to handle the PSU? My friend in the states is advising I get 2 PSUs, if I'm going to have over 25 drives, but I'm not certain exactly how that would work - how both would turn on without being connected to the motherboard and so forth.

I've seen 24 drive builds in other forums claim to work off of a single 650(I think) PSU. Someone on Toms Hardware recommended this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6817139006

I'm not really sure what to think. The way I'm doing it, is similar to yours, in that I think I'll be able to do 33 drives, including the OS drive on an ATX mboard.

[drewy]

My current psu is way too small, it's ok with the 10 drives that are fitted at the moment but will need replacing before I add anymore.

Your choice of motherboard and cpu is going to affect would you should go for. I am currently running a ASUS E35M1 which sups about 35w at most.

I was looking for a "decent" 650W supply with a single 12v rail, something that will deliver 50A+ on that one rail. The one you link to provides 60A on the one rail, which should be great.

I haven't decided exactly which model to go for but am in the process of choosing one, along with some more sata cards.
I've been waiting for http://www.scan.co.uk/products/650w-psu-...et-fan-atx to appear on today only...

Don't buy a cheap psu.

[fional]

My current psu is way too small, it's ok with the 10 drives that are fitted at the moment but will need replacing before I add anymore.

Your choice of motherboard and cpu is going to affect would you should go for. I am currently running a ASUS E35M1 which sups about 35w at most.

I was looking for a "decent" 650W supply with a single 12v rail, something that will deliver 50A+ on that one rail. The one you link to provides 60A on the one rail, which should be great.

I haven't decided exactly which model to go for but am in the process of choosing one, along with some more sata cards.
I've been waiting for http://www.scan.co.uk/products/650w-psu-...et-fan-atx to appear on today only...

Don't buy a cheap psu.

Definitely going to splash out on the PSU

I'm thinking of an ATX motherboard that has 5xPCI slots and a PCIx and PCIe slots as well. Onboard video, wireless, and nic.

With the PCI slots, I found on amazon a couple cards. One had 4 Sata ports another had 3 and 1 external. I think they are about 9 pounds for the latter. So, assuming I got the latter, that's 15 SATA ports.

Onboard motherboard is 6 sata ports.

Then in the x and e, I could find an 8 and 6 port card. So that is 35 drives. It may be 1 or 2 less, depending on the cards on the PCIx and PCIe slots, haven't decided on those yet. If I did 35 drives, I'd do 4 parity and 1 for OS. Or maybe 6 parity. Haven't got that part sorted yet.

I won't have an optical drive on this yoke, cause I think I'll just install the OS via USB.

This is fun

[poofyhairguy]

Perfect large build PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6817371031

Seasonic build quality.

[fional]

Perfect large build PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6817371031

Seasonic build quality.

Cool

Would I need one or in tandem? I find this worry of watts and amps quite confusing. More so as to how to get it to work in tandem.

[poofyhairguy]

Would I need one or in tandem?

I would trust one up until you get beyond 20 7200RPM drives or 24 green drives. Beyond that get two.

[fional]

I would trust one up until you get beyond 20 7200RPM drives or 24 green drives. Beyond that get two.

Two it will be then! Reading up on getting them to work in tandem. So far, most of the stuff I've seen on two PSUs has been dodgy -involving cutting a green and grey wire, which looks like something that'll burn the house down hehe.

[poofyhairguy]

Two it will be then! Reading up on getting them to work in tandem. So far, most of the stuff I've seen on two PSUs has been dodgy -involving cutting a green and grey wire, which looks like something that'll burn the house down hehe.

I would go with an adaptor:

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/5637/c...Cable.html

[fional]

I would go with an adaptor:

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/5637/c...Cable.html

I think I shall That seems much more sensible! I wasn't really keen on splicing wires...especially in the dodgy way it was being done on a dozen youtube videos

[waldo22]

Two it will be then! Reading up on getting them to work in tandem. So far, most of the stuff I've seen on two PSUs has been dodgy -involving cutting a green and grey wire, which looks like something that'll burn the house down hehe.

Here's how I did it:

I have my main computer w/ 3Ware RAID card in it, and another tower beside it with nothing but 20 HDDs and 2 400W PSUs in it.

I bought 2 ATX "extension" cables for the 20-pin ATX connectors in the HDD tower, so that I didn't have to actually cut the PSU harnesses at all, and it gave me some room to mess-up

Getting the PSUs to turn on just requires you to connect the green wire to ground (called "earth" for you English/Aussie/NZ types - any black wire on the harness).

I bought an automotive horn relay that is "normally open". It was about $5 USD.

That means that unless 12V is applied to the relay's control terminal, the circuit is not connected, and the PSUs will remain off.

I connected the green wires from both auxiliary PSUs to one of the relay terminals, and ground wires from both PSUs to the other.

Then I connected the 12V line (yellow) from one of the Molex connectors in my main computer to the relay's positive "control" terminal, and the relay's negative control terminal to ground.

Now when my main computer comes on, it puts 12V on the relay's positive control terminal, which closes the circuit between the green wires and the black wires and turns on both of the auxiliary HDD PSUs.

If you're doing the same thing in a single case, you would only need to buy one of those ATX extension cables for the 2nd PSU and an automotive relay, then just cut green and black from the extension and put it across the relay, then put 12V from the yellow line on a Molex connector from your main PSU to the control terminal and Earth (Ground) from the Molex connector to the other control terminal.

Very safe, no fires necessary

Hope this is useful and/or interesting.

-Wes

PS when I say "green" wire, I'm talking about pin 14 on an ATX connector or pin 16 on an ATX V2 24-pin connector These should be green - no need to mess with the gray wire.

[fional]

I've got a question - because I'm in the process of assembling this.

Since I'm building a custom case, including the shell - what should I do regarding the wires that normally go from the motherboard to the front button on the case to power on/off?

I'm planning on using this yoke to handle two power supplies...but I'm concerned that I won't be able to switch it on from the back without those wires from the motherboard to the PSU.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/5637/c...Cable.html