Hi, I am planning on running a single Unraid/Kvm case.I have been looking at ebay´s (second hand) storage arrays cases. There are several good choices out there, but most do need some modding.

 

First and vital mod is airflow since most of them only carry 8/9cm fans (actually "turbines") and are too noise for my home setup. So I would need to fit in 12/14cm exhaust fans (on the top cover at the end) and 12cm fans inside just next to the hard disk cages.

 

Also, backplanes I found are 3Gb only which is a pitty since all MB ports are 6Gb. Anyway, I guess I could live with 3Gb ports and sff8087 connectors (which reduces cable management).

 

Last, cheap ones I found are scsi, so my main concern is if my sata 3,5" disks can be used in those 3.5" scsi trays (like DELL´s PowerVault™ 220S). Also, if I could use them in SAS trays (like supermicro SC846E1-R900B 24 bays case?

 

Any comments -based on your previous experience- are highly welcome.

3Gb/sec is great for spinning disks. Only SSDs can benefit from the 6Gb/sec.

SCSI and Sata/SAS aren't the same. Those trays won't work, and i assume the trays probably connect to SCSI backplanes, those won't work either.

 

How many hdds to you plan on having? Many people think they want to have a case to support 24hdds, but never get anywhere close to that.

 

Fewer big hdds > many smaller hdds. Less power, less heat, less space, etc.

 

I went with unRAID in the beginning because I all sorts of IDE drives laying around, and a few 500GB/etc satas that I could mix and match into a system.

 

In the end, the 4 2tb and 1 1tb was all I ended up using. And now I don't really want to ADD more, just want to replace the ones I have with 4tb drives instead.

I am running now 8x2tb in my old setup. In the new one 3tb parity and 1x3tb and 1x2tb. Old setup will remain backup of only 1x2tb data disk.