I’m looking to build a NAS equivalent box (FlexRAID) that can store 15-20 hard drives. I want to use 5 in 3 HDD cages and was wondering if anyone has any commercial grade recommendations. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot out there. I’ve looked at SuperMicro, Addonics, and iStarUSA. I contacted SuperMicro’s support and they don’t have a SATA III option.
On the consumer side I know there’s IcyDock, Startech, Silverstone, etc. but I’d rather pay more up front and have rock solid enterprise stablity. Any suggestions are appreciated.
Commercial applications don’t use tiny 5 drive desktop docks. They use a rack cases filled with drives and a dedicated machine inside to control them.
In your mind if it’s a consumer product it’s bad?
Chances are that if you didn’t already know how to build your own “enterprise” level equipment , that you most likely aren’t going to take advantage of any “enterprise” level features or stability that comes with it.
I am no expert in this but my NAS runs almost 2 years without problems with an X-case value 24-bay chassis.
They are in UK and a lot of cases are chenbro rebrands.
Also the quality is what you pay for. Just yesterday with a little help of my stupidity i didn’t properly attach a hdd back in and had problems with my zfs pool. The drive cage was hard to put back in. Other than that “incident” the case is awesome can’t complain for the price.
Are you looking to build a tower or rack mount your server? What’s your price range for just the case and cages? I have a bit of experience with a the iStarUSA drive cages and both tower and rack mount scenarios. I’d love to help you choose your hardware.
Thanks Whizdumb, I’m looking to build a tower. I’ve used iStarUSA rackmount cases before, but I don’t have any experience with their HDD drive cages. I honestly hadn’t set a price, but I know I’ve seen 5 in 3 drive cages for close to $140-$150 on the high side. I’d certainly be willing to pay that for ones that are good quality and probably more if necessary. In the past I believe I used StarTech and ended up having one of the drive bays go bad. That’s why I’m willing to pay for something that’s higher quality. I don’t really need any special features. I’ll probably connect 3 HDD cages to something like an LSI SAS 9201-16i HBA. I’ll be going with FlexRAID so I can add the drives 1 at a time as I need them and I can also take the drives out and copy just the data off that drive if necessary.
As PC cases with a lot of external 3.5" bays seem to be in short supply these days, I already ordered a Sharkoon REX8 that’s being shipped from Germany. Since I ordered that though I found the Addonics Storage Tower IX that looks promising. If I use the Sharkoon I will have to modify it to remove the power switch and usb ports in order to use the top drive bay so I can install a total of 3 cages. Any other recommendations are always appreciated.
It was weird when I contacted their support about the CSE-M35T-1B model they said it doesn’t support SATA III and is EOL. They directed me back to their product page which of course lists the CSE-M35T-1B. It seemed like a case of them not knowing what their own product page said.
I understand that’s generally true, but SuperMicro which is enterprise or commercial grade hardware does/used to sell those kinds of cages. I was just looking for any other high quality recommendations.
It’s not about building something with enterprise level features. I don’t need that since I’m going to be using FlexRAID. I’m simply looking to use HDD cages that have that kind of reliability. I used StarTech in the past and had one of the bays go bad. Commercial equals longevity vs. consumer grade.
Thanks alphazero1990, I wasn’t planning on building anything with that many drive bays, but it sure would be nice to have that much storage. How deep is the case from front to back?
I had sent you a PM but I don’t know if you are enough of an established member yet to receive them. Either way, I had a tower NAS setup for about 3 years with the IstarUSA 4x3 bays and never once had an issue with them. I have also had a 5x3 in my main computer for about 5 years now and no issues. I’m pretty impressed by their resilience. That being said, I do want to say that trying t o use 8+tb drives in the 5x3 IstarUSA cages is a no-no. The 5x3’s by design have very snug fitting bays. They work well with 4tb and lower but not newer dense high capacity drives. It really depends on what kind of drives you may want to use but that would start off my recommendations.
Secondly, I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to symmetry and balance. That being said, I like the 4x3 cages for many reasons in a tower setup:
Each cage can pair with a 8087 break-out cable from your HBA. You can’t get more than 4 sata connections out of a single break-out cable so it balances quite nicely. with 5x3 cages, your cages are sharing cables which can make cable management and tracking a nightmare inside of your case.
The additional airflow through the 4x3 cages help with front air intake. As long as you setup a proper exhaust setup inside the case, the fans on the back of the cages work pretty well for front air intake and have a dual selector switch for their speed.
This is more of a personal preference, however, since the 4x3’s mount the HDDs vertically instead of horizontally they look better in a tower setup.
The good IstarUSA cages are completely tool-less hot swap bays. (I hate hard drive sleds.)
If you constantly check NEWEGG, these cages go on sale every once in a while.
That being said, you might find it even more difficult to find a case that would allow you to use enough 4x3s to get over 15 drives (You’d need a 12 front bay case.) As you are very aware even finding cases with 9 front bays is very troublesome these days (although the CMStorm Trooper comes to mind). So this will come down to preference and what you ultimately want to do. Keep in mind that the 5x3 will, in my experience, limit future upgrade-ability for larger size HDD compatibility.
For reference, this was a picture of that setup I described. Case is a Zalman MS800. The case was super cheap when I got it. They are since discontinued but I found one seller on ebay that has one. The Specific model of cage is the iStarUSA BPN-DE430 Black. It served (pun intended) me well for a few years but I’ve since moved on.
“4u 650mm Deep” is the description. Which is from end of the chassis to beginning of the rails. Total is 710mm with the ears included and around 700mm till the drive cages that are in front.
EDIT: Only now I realized that you asked more for an on desk solution not a freaking server xD. Well if you decide for a “homelab” this is perfect. Also, the “Low Noise” is more meant for server environment standards for low noise. I have mine on 5v adapters. Now it’s really low noise.
Thanks Whizdumb, I replied to your PM. That’s good to hear about the iStarUSA cages. I hadn’t considered the difference in airflow between a 5x3 vs 4x3, and if anything I would want to err on the side of caution because of the room it will be stored in. If I use 4x3 cages then I would be hard pressed to find a tower that would hold 15 drives. All things considered it looks like rackmount may be a better option. I looked at what alphazero1990 posted and that looks like it would be viable. Would you have any recommendations for a rackmount option?
That’s ok, after what Whizdumb had to say about the HDD cages I’m thinking a rackmount server is actually a better option for the number of drives I want to be able to use. When I last looked the one you got was out of stock.
Thanks for the suggestion, this company looks to sell pretty cheap empty chassis, am trying hard to resist buying one that I don’t need but definitely WANT
Doesn’t help that I rent a 3rd floor flat, and am due to move in the summer, so more heavy objects would be bad…
