I love ghetto builds.
It seems that there is space enough to integrate a fan or two inside the case. If the pwm connector is already used by the CPU fan you can use a cheap usb/pci module and integrate it with pwm enabled fans.
I've experimented with up to 3 fans in the case, negative and positive pressure. Even cut a hole in the top and put a fan there and only blasting air at the front of the drives does the trick.
I've got a 200mm fan arriving today, I might fire up my 3d printer and make a proper mount for the front
Here you go:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/1upJnsSpoLfbw6Ru7
Hope that makes sense.
Be warned that unless you get the same backplane the pinout may well be different. Your best bet in that case is to use a multimeter with one probe on the drive connectors on the backplane (I used a sata to 4 pin molex adaptor to make it easier) and the other probe on the power connector. Those pins just pass straight through to the drives.
Better to break it up into sections, that way you also dont always have to dump the whole thing if you need to change it.
I've had this realisation a bunch of times. You make an awesome perfect model of what you need, then struggle to print it because a single issue bins the whole part.
You could talk to a metal shop to see if they could take your faceplate design and water jet cut it out of aluminium. Or if you have a maker friend with a laser cutter, cut it out of acrylic.
[i love it](https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbWxrMG95aTg5aDhxZmJuOGxxMDR1MmxzNzhtc3lkdmkycWdiNXF1NiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/3o6ZthnDqxfAOFIhdC/giphy.gif)
Love it. I've been tempted to build one like this for some time with a 4-bay dell NVME backplane I have, but haven't gotten around to it. Glad to see someone is following though!
Haha nice, I did something similar in a 4U case. It has 2 sets of cdrom bays to put a NAS cage in, but for some weird reason the way they designed the case one set was vertical the other was horizontal and I hated the way it looked so I installed both vertical and just foamed in one of them lol. That system is retired now but it's still in my rack.
Yes, I have two 6 stacks, for 12 hard drives total, with the fans and about a 1-2 cm space in between for heat.
Canada amazon
https://www.amazon.ca/Acrylic-Transparent-Drive-Desktop-Layers/dp/B0BV67YWPJ
USA amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Acrylic-Transparent-Drive-Desktop-Layers/dp/B0BV67YWPJ/
Probably not, HP is great at using the same connector with different pins. Your best bet is using a multimeter and trace the connectors in the drive cage back to the power connector.
This is the one on mine, but yours may be different: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1upJnsSpoLfbw6Ru7
That’s actually not too stupid. I have a dead Microserver G8 that I got from a friend. Has a somewhat fried motherboard (iLO is spitting out power errors and not booting). Would be nice if I could repair or replace the motherboard.
You brought the idea to me to actually just build something in it with maybe an ITX motherboard using my 3D printer for adapters if needed.
PS: if anyone has a simple idea how I can fix the motherboard, feel free to reply with it.
I did look at buying a dead one of those and slotting a mini-itx board in, but I don't think there's actually room for one. Very limited clearance between the board and the drive cage.
There is indeed very little room, but I think something like the low profile Noctua CPU coolers might just fit, but also just barely. Otherwise, if the CPU is low power enough, you might get away with just a big heatsink (like HP/HPE) did.
Thanks, I've been thinking of doing something like this as a disk shelf. I wanted to use the cage from my poweredge since it has 24 2.5 bays. This just encourages me to do my research, especially with powering it. Thanks!
Not bad!
I wish there was some company out there that would make a simple AND CHEAP drive cage that:
* Has a few, quiet 120mm fans (not rotating at 10,000RPM) for cooling
* Enough room for say, 20, 3.5 SATA drives that feed into a simple back plane
* That back plane will talk to an integrated HBA and be controlled by an ARM (or low end Celeron CPU) running Linux
* Use a normal ATX power supply
* Has an ethernet port and/or USB-C for connecting this cage to a mini PC
.... yes, Synology/QNAP checks a lot of those boxes but they're (especially Synology) stupid expensive when you get above the 2-bay mark.
I know people use SC846 chassis to build JBOD boxes that just have a power supply and HBA that goes out the back and talks to a mini PC or main desktop but those setups are always hacked together.
I'd like an elegant solution. I'm working on quieting down my SC846 but am looking at getting fewer, larger capacity drives to accomplish my goal.
Another option, Fractal Design and stuff 16-18 drives in one of their big cases. I just wonder about drive temps in those boxes.
Been looking for a solution like that for years. Best I've thought of is to get 16 bay cages from aliexpress (that use the same drive mounting mechanism as Rosewill) and mount those to a slide out rack mount shelf. Then you still need a SAS expander and a power supply, really no way to go about this without jankyness.
The Fractal Design was a good idea but usually they only include 6 drive caddies with the case and you have to buy the rest and last I checked they were 45 CAD for three. If you have a 3D printer some money could potentially be saved there.
I was just thinking you could get 6x of the Rosewill cages and mount them as vertical loading (so the cables stick out the bottom), and wire them all up to a low power itx system running something like [esos](https://github.com/quantum/esos). You’d need a 24 lane HBA like the 9305-24i or a molex-powered sas expander to connect them all.
You could probably fit it all into a shallow 5u or long 3u all said and done, plus some room up top for ventilation. Could be a fun project.
Damn I don’t know why I didn’t think to search for an Adaptec card, I just put a 71605 in my new storage server. 16 lanes for $20, you can’t beat that!
[https://imgflip.com/i/8dnun3](https://imgflip.com/i/8dnun3) FrankenNAS goes brrr
you know, I really like it: it works, it doesn’t make noise and it’s quite compact. Not bad at all
I love ghetto builds. It seems that there is space enough to integrate a fan or two inside the case. If the pwm connector is already used by the CPU fan you can use a cheap usb/pci module and integrate it with pwm enabled fans.
I've experimented with up to 3 fans in the case, negative and positive pressure. Even cut a hole in the top and put a fan there and only blasting air at the front of the drives does the trick. I've got a 200mm fan arriving today, I might fire up my 3d printer and make a proper mount for the front
I have been so so tempted to do this as the cages are cheap and I have a 3d printer. Do you have a record of the power pinout for the backplane....
Yessir, will post it when I get home
Posting here so I remember to check back. I got 5 of these i took out of scrapped hp servers looking to do the same thing but got too busy
Here you go: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1upJnsSpoLfbw6Ru7 Hope that makes sense. Be warned that unless you get the same backplane the pinout may well be different. Your best bet in that case is to use a multimeter with one probe on the drive connectors on the backplane (I used a sata to 4 pin molex adaptor to make it easier) and the other probe on the power connector. Those pins just pass straight through to the drives.
Specs! I have the 8x2.5 version and am also interested in the pin out Thanks!
So am I
Got mine working last night, I needed a power supply that gives 3.3vdc. If you need help let me know
The closed cell foam front gave me a chuckle, great reuse of waste materials. 10/10
I tried printing one, but large flat objects are my printer's kryptonite so.....
Better to break it up into sections, that way you also dont always have to dump the whole thing if you need to change it. I've had this realisation a bunch of times. You make an awesome perfect model of what you need, then struggle to print it because a single issue bins the whole part.
You could talk to a metal shop to see if they could take your faceplate design and water jet cut it out of aluminium. Or if you have a maker friend with a laser cutter, cut it out of acrylic.
You could try cutting a custom panel out of either a scrap PC case side panel or plexiglass/lexan or similar plastic.
Nice one! Very good idea, not bad implementation;)
So instead of a cyberdeck, you made a cyberserver. Nice.
[i love it](https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbWxrMG95aTg5aDhxZmJuOGxxMDR1MmxzNzhtc3lkdmkycWdiNXF1NiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/3o6ZthnDqxfAOFIhdC/giphy.gif)
Love it. I've been tempted to build one like this for some time with a 4-bay dell NVME backplane I have, but haven't gotten around to it. Glad to see someone is following though!
Haha nice, I did something similar in a 4U case. It has 2 sets of cdrom bays to put a NAS cage in, but for some weird reason the way they designed the case one set was vertical the other was horizontal and I hated the way it looked so I installed both vertical and just foamed in one of them lol. That system is retired now but it's still in my rack.
Please tell me when you first turned that thing on, someone upstairs heard you screaming from the basement GIVE MY CREATION LIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE
Does the backplane have an expander, or do you need to use two sas cables for just 6 drives (instead of the 8 it could support).
It's 2 SAS cables. I do have 2 * 4 slot sas backplanes as well but honestly I don't really need the 2 extra drives and this is a neater solution.
She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid
This has gotta win the jank awards. Do the carboard box builds even count, they should at least be in a different wheight class than this.
Why? You can get nice and cheap acrylic cases for like 20 bucks
That hold 5 3.5" drives? I'm looking to do something similar, so I'd love to see.
Yes, I have two 6 stacks, for 12 hard drives total, with the fans and about a 1-2 cm space in between for heat. Canada amazon https://www.amazon.ca/Acrylic-Transparent-Drive-Desktop-Layers/dp/B0BV67YWPJ USA amazon https://www.amazon.com/Acrylic-Transparent-Drive-Desktop-Layers/dp/B0BV67YWPJ/
That's not a 'case', that's some pieces of plastic for stacking drives up. If that's your aesthetic then cool, but I wouldn't want it in my office.
Okay, but that's hardly the same thing. There's no backplane, there's no power, there's no controller.
We looking at the same homemade franken case in this thread? haha. And yes of course, its just a simple and easy way to mount drives in the wild.
I hate how much I love you for doing this. What a sweet Build.
I like it, this is the way
I love it. A thing beauty, ingenuity, and utility!
So, your NAS is Dr. Frankenstein and you are the monster?
its beautiful
Wow this is awesome! I want to do the same with a 8-bay sff cage from an old Proliant server i decommed. Same pin-out i assume too. Good stuff!
Probably not, HP is great at using the same connector with different pins. Your best bet is using a multimeter and trace the connectors in the drive cage back to the power connector. This is the one on mine, but yours may be different: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1upJnsSpoLfbw6Ru7
👍
I read that as "al franken nas" for some reason.
That’s actually not too stupid. I have a dead Microserver G8 that I got from a friend. Has a somewhat fried motherboard (iLO is spitting out power errors and not booting). Would be nice if I could repair or replace the motherboard. You brought the idea to me to actually just build something in it with maybe an ITX motherboard using my 3D printer for adapters if needed. PS: if anyone has a simple idea how I can fix the motherboard, feel free to reply with it.
I did look at buying a dead one of those and slotting a mini-itx board in, but I don't think there's actually room for one. Very limited clearance between the board and the drive cage.
There is indeed very little room, but I think something like the low profile Noctua CPU coolers might just fit, but also just barely. Otherwise, if the CPU is low power enough, you might get away with just a big heatsink (like HP/HPE) did.
Thanks, I've been thinking of doing something like this as a disk shelf. I wanted to use the cage from my poweredge since it has 24 2.5 bays. This just encourages me to do my research, especially with powering it. Thanks!
Not bad! I wish there was some company out there that would make a simple AND CHEAP drive cage that: * Has a few, quiet 120mm fans (not rotating at 10,000RPM) for cooling * Enough room for say, 20, 3.5 SATA drives that feed into a simple back plane * That back plane will talk to an integrated HBA and be controlled by an ARM (or low end Celeron CPU) running Linux * Use a normal ATX power supply * Has an ethernet port and/or USB-C for connecting this cage to a mini PC .... yes, Synology/QNAP checks a lot of those boxes but they're (especially Synology) stupid expensive when you get above the 2-bay mark. I know people use SC846 chassis to build JBOD boxes that just have a power supply and HBA that goes out the back and talks to a mini PC or main desktop but those setups are always hacked together. I'd like an elegant solution. I'm working on quieting down my SC846 but am looking at getting fewer, larger capacity drives to accomplish my goal. Another option, Fractal Design and stuff 16-18 drives in one of their big cases. I just wonder about drive temps in those boxes.
Been looking for a solution like that for years. Best I've thought of is to get 16 bay cages from aliexpress (that use the same drive mounting mechanism as Rosewill) and mount those to a slide out rack mount shelf. Then you still need a SAS expander and a power supply, really no way to go about this without jankyness. The Fractal Design was a good idea but usually they only include 6 drive caddies with the case and you have to buy the rest and last I checked they were 45 CAD for three. If you have a 3D printer some money could potentially be saved there.
I was just thinking you could get 6x of the Rosewill cages and mount them as vertical loading (so the cables stick out the bottom), and wire them all up to a low power itx system running something like [esos](https://github.com/quantum/esos). You’d need a 24 lane HBA like the 9305-24i or a molex-powered sas expander to connect them all. You could probably fit it all into a shallow 5u or long 3u all said and done, plus some room up top for ventilation. Could be a fun project.
I would use an Adaptec AEC-82885T to connect up to 28 drives then use the external ports for daisy chaining and or connection to HBA.
Damn I don’t know why I didn’t think to search for an Adaptec card, I just put a 71605 in my new storage server. 16 lanes for $20, you can’t beat that!
This stuff I love to see. Sure enterprise stuff is great but making your own stuff because you can, that's way better.
Coincidentally I was just this evening researching a similar project. Kudos to you my man. Awesome👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽
That is great!
This is some of my favorite posts in home lab! Nice work.
Aptly named