justinfolco

Looking to buy bays to hold 3.5 inch drives.
Making a custom case but need a way to hold drives. If they hold fans that's even better.

KC_Flip

Possibly an Antec 900 Hard Drive Cage?

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Bonz™

CoolerMaster has a 3x5.25" bay that holds 4 hard drives and has a fan in the front. They are $20 on Newegg. I really like mine. Cheaper alternative to hotswap trays.

Edit: Or the Antec since you have a 900 already.

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Bonz::Asmodian Templar of Zikel

Total Available Storage
Currently: 8,377 GB (useable)

justinfolco

With a bay like the coolmaster will the closer drive location cause the drives to heat up too much?
I have a drive bay holder that basically puts one drive ontop of the other would this be bad to use?

Anyone have any cheaper options? Or an easy and good way to make some?

Bonz™

With the Coolermaster the drives don't heat up at all. The fan pushes enough air through them to keep them cool. I even installed a Scythe Slipstream fan in the front and took out the filter. Now the drives are like ice.

There should be at least a little bit of space between to get some airflow. The smaller the space, the more airflow is needed.

A buddy of mine crafted a 5 drive bay that fits in 3 5.25" bays out of some acrylic. Of course a fan is necessary otherwise they will heat up too much. You can take measurements of the bays and make one up if you want. 5 drives will fit sideways in 3 optical bays.

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Bonz::Asmodian Templar of Zikel

Total Available Storage
Currently: 8,377 GB (useable)

distemper

I built these because I needed drives to fit into a specific space & I wanted the drives on a sled so I didn't have to touch the drive itself. The screws glide (mostly) along the tops of the horizontal rails, and sink into the depressions then push to the back, where a thumbscrew can lock them in place via the center screw hole. The rails are offset from the verticals by a small square of aluminum so the screw head had a channel between the verticals & the rails.

Used were a jigsaw, angle grinder (screws trimmed to length) & a drill, with 1/8" & 1/10" new & repurposed aluminum. A 120x25mm fan will sit just to the right of the rack eventually. All edges were filed smooth or a wetstone (actually dry) was used.

I should note that the channels in the rails were the most difficult - with the poor cuts to prove it. A template was made, taped onto the strips of aluminum, holes were drilled for the turns, then a Hilti (wood) tight radius jigsaw blade needed to be used to maneuver in the tight confines.

Given the opportunity, I would have *gladly* purchased a rack.

Good Luck

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justinfolco

Is it bad to mount a hard drive sideways as apposed to laying flat? i would assume so.


Justin

Bonz™

No I don't think it really matters. They make backplane hotswap bays like this. A buddy of mine has 12 250GB drives sideways in his stacker. He's had them that way for 4+ years. He also does 1-2TB of traffic from the array every week at LANs. Judging by this, I don't see any problem.

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Bonz::Asmodian Templar of Zikel

Total Available Storage
Currently: 8,377 GB (useable)

Isellion

That's exactly something that I was curious about as well. I'm working on designing a server and the only way that I can get enough HDD's in it is to put them on their sides or even on end. I did some searching online to answer this question, but I didn't get very satisfactory answers... Anyone else have any thoughts?

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The Black Mesa Survivors Club