Re: where to buy very very large cases

["Rev. Jeffrey Paul" <sneak@datavibe.net>]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, mjstumpf wrote:

> I need to expand an x86-based fileserver that's already stacked with 11
> drives.  Where have you folks found reasonably-priced very very large ATX
> cases?  I need to go to 20 or so drives, but I'd like to hear the upper
> limit you have all found..
>
> Are there other means of packing more drives into a small space -- IE, has
> anyone actually fabricated a bracket that would take multiple vertical
> 5.25" form factor spaces, and let you mount 3.5" drives sideways
> [vertically] to pack 4 drives into the space of 3.. etc..
>
> May have to resort to home depot PVC + jigsaw + zipties.. !!

While I'm all for the home depot engineering (i just made ten sets of rack
rails for $11 each whereas OEM ones for our ibm servers were >$200 each),
i don't think that's your best bet in this case.

What type of interface do the drives have?  If they're LVD SCSI, you might
be better off with an external drive enclosure (they're designed to fit
many drives in small spaces, with proper cooling and power to boot)
connected to a VHDCI external connector on your scsi or raid card.

Someone (3ware?) should make an IDE drive cage with a custom backplane and
an integrated IDE RAID card... and a VHDCI plug for an uplink to the host.
That would be cool.

-j

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 Rev. Jeffrey Paul    -datavibe-     sneak@datavibe.net
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