Tower Storage Chassis

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wreedps

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Can anyone recommend a tower chassis that will hold 12+ 3.5" drives?
 

DrKK

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Can anyone recommend a tower chassis that will hold 12+ 3.5" drives?
With, or without, buying additional 3.5" cages to swap into 5.25" bays?
 

DrKK

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Can anyone recommend a tower chassis that will hold 12+ 3.5" drives?
The Cooler Master Cosmos 2 will hold, I believe, one dozen drives, internally, in three spots. 2 in one place, 4 or 5 in another, and 5 or 6 in another. For a total of like 12.

Also, there is an Antec 1900. This holds 12, straight up, on the inside. But it is fucking huge.
 

wreedps

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I will check out the Antec case, thanks!
 

wreedps

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I dont mind adding a enclosure.
 

DrKK

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I dont mind adding a enclosure.
There are quite a few cases that have 6 or 8 internal drives, and then space enough to hold 4-6 more if you convert the external 5.25" bays to 3.5" cages. But by the time you do that, you'll be spending as much, or more, than if you just bought the Antec. The Antec looks like it's in stock at Newegg.
 

wreedps

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I have used Antec stuff for years and its always been really good to me. I might go with the 1900.
 

DrKK

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Jailer

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I've got an Antec 1200 with drives 6 in it and soon 6 more. Just add an additional cage and you're gtg. You'll have to go with an aftermarket cage though as the 1200 cages seem to be unobtanium.
 

philiplu

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I've got a Fractal Design Define XL R2. It holds 8 drives right now, plus another 5 using a 5-in-3 hot swap bay I dropped into the external 5.25" slots. You can install an enclosure to add space for an extra 4 drives, so room for 17 3.5" drives in all. Take a look at my old comment here, which links to a couple pics of the inside of my tower. I don't have the extra enclosure added yet (that'll happen when I need to add a second 6-disk RAIDZ2 vdev), but I did buy the enclosure already, ordered from here.
 

ChiknNutz

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I've got a Fractal Design Define XL R2. ...

How do you like having all the connections and such on the top like that? Do you have your USB boot drive(s) there? My concern about this case and others like it is if you have a USB drive in there long term, even the low profile ones. I am not looking at that one exactly, perhaps the R4 which shares the same design or the Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 Mini Tower.
 

philiplu

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How do you like having all the connections and such on the top like that? Do you have your USB boot drive(s) there?
This is a headless server that sits in a closet, so I don't really use the front/top panel ports. The boot drives are a pair of low profile Cruzer Fits. One sits in the on-board port of the X10SL7-F, the other in a back port. I'm not sure I've ever used the front ports. Anytime I would normally need to use a USB drive for something else, like flashing the on-board HBA, I just use the virtual USB drive function of IPMI.

For a desktop/workstation, I'd probably go for something with ports on the front side instead of top. But then, I also wouldn't go for something that can fit 17 drives like my server!
 

ChiknNutz

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Thanks for the reply. My current server sits beside my desk, kinda out in the open. Every tower PC I've had, the USB ports have been in the traditional front which makes more sense to me, so not sure about these on the top. Other than that, I really like these two cases.
 

Ericloewe

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Have a look at my setup. You can easily double the number of hotswap bays to arrive at 12 drives. You could even do 14 drives with three 3x 3.5" to 2x 5.25" bays plus one 4x 3.5" to 3x 5.25". 15 drives if you hack the case a bit and use a 5x 3.5" to 3x 5.25" hotswap bay.
 

Fuganater

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I used a Raidmax Seiran with 3x Rosewill 3x 5.25 to 4x 3.25 bay enclosures. They cooled great.

 

boyett

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Just like philiplu I also use Fractal Design Define XL R2 with extra cage, total of 16 HDD's capacity.

Update: Just realized, mine is Fractal Design ARC XL not Define XL R2...



DSC_0166_DCE_zpsuixjlpjw.jpg
 
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philiplu

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Just like philiplu I also use Fractal Design Define XL R2 with extra cage, total of 16 HDD's capacity.

Nice - I haven't actually installed the rear drive cage in mine yet. How do the drive temps compare between the front 8 and back 4 drives?
 

boyett

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Nice - I haven't actually installed the rear drive cage in mine yet. How do the drive temps compare between the front 8 and back 4 drives?

Around 2 deg. difference.
 

daeric

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@boyett That's a great looking setup. I see you have a mATX board in there. Do you think with the additional internal drive cage that a full ATX board would fit? I'm trying to decide between that case and the Define XL R2 that @philiplu mentioned but I have an ATX board I plan to use.
 
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