Question on stacker case power button

[teamhood]

Hey all. I am buying the starter kit from Tom and buying the rest. I received my case yesterday (wow that thing is huge) and I was wondering where Tom ended up mounting the power/reset button? I know isn't keeping it in the front bay since we need all 12 of those bays! Just wondering if someone could supply a little help!

 

Thank you

-Mike

[rharvey]

Tom completly eliminates the power button and we use the power switches on the power supply's to power off the unit. A little cumbersome if the rear of the unit is hard to get at but with any luck you should not need to power off/on that often.

[TCIII]

teamhood,

 

If you program the BIOS per Tom's instructions, you do not need the front panel.

 

However, if you want to turn the server completely off, you will have to use the power switch on the power supply.

 

By using the 4 into 3 sub-chassis, I was able to retain the front panel, but I only have eight drives in mobile racks going that route.

 

Regards,

TCIII

[musicmann]

I'm using 3 of the 4-in-3 bays, so I have room for a full array of 12 drives, and I retain the power switch.  The only downside to the bays is when you need to add/replace drives.  It is much more cumbersome to have to open both sides of the case, unplug IDE and power cables, remove the bay, remove the sides of the bay, mount new HDD, etc, etc, etc.  But I like the more stock look of the case, and hopefully I won't have to replace drives too often.

[teamhood]

Ahh, okay. I am still debating if I am going to purchase the bays or go with the 4 in 3's. I might end up starting off with the 4 in 3's but, I like the idea of easily accessing the drive once it fails. I am just trying to keep the cost down and adding the 12 bays is close to $200 some dollars for the ones that Tom uses.

 

So, I guess I have a few more decisions to make!! Anyone research who has the cheapest price on those bays??

 

I have been trolling here and over at AVS since this was first announced and I am going to finally jump on wagon. I am pretty pumped, just waiting on the starter set that I ordered this AM. Now, time to snatch a few of those 500 gb while they are so cheap

[georgema]

Hi,

 

I was looking at the IcyDock trays and noticed that they also have 'backplane' system for SATA and IDE drives ( http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/products/backplanes_gal.php?search=SATA ). They look similar in concept to the Stacker 4 in 3 bays but they also offer:-

 

3 in 2

4 in 3

5 in 3

 

I don't know if they are compatible with the Stacker drive bays but might be worth a look. They have fans and are also hot swap which would ease maintenance if there was a drive failure. If you had four of the 5 in 3 that would be 20 drives....don't know if that would work in practice but would certaily allow you to pack the drives in or keep a DVD/RW in there as well.

 

PCStats have a review of one of the units http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1971 The IDE units don't look quite as modern as the SATA ones but again worth a look.

 

George M-A

[stchas]

teamhood,

 

If you're still looking for mobile racks for the CM Stacker case, try Census PC (http://www.censuspc.com/product.php?productid=692&cat=0&page=2) or PC PitStop (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/removable_racks/mb123ak.asp).  I've done business with PC PitStop a couple of times.  Census PC is a little cheaper, but they were out of stock when I wanted them.

 

Kevin