November 27, 200916 yr Hi, I just picked up one of these cases while it was on sale as my current old case is maxed out with 6 drives. I want to put 5 drives in every 3 5.25 slots. I do not want to purchase cages as the case already has fantastic cooling for however many drives I install in it. Does anyone sell cheap brackets that let you install drives on their sides 5 across? For the Antec 1200 owners out there, how are you planning to get up to 20 drives? Also were would a good spot be for a cache drive? I was thinking maybe on the floor of the case behind the power supply.
November 27, 200916 yr I was planning on something like this for a cache drive. http://www.xpcgear.com/scythe-slot-rafter-2-5.html an SSD or spare 2.5" drive and this bracket would be nice.
November 27, 200916 yr Author Great idea and my kinda price range too! Now to find a similar solution for 5 in 3 brackets....
November 27, 200916 yr Great idea and my kinda price range too! Now to find a similar solution for 5 in 3 brackets.... Ask and ye shall receive
November 27, 200916 yr Author Looks perfect, now I just need to find one that's made in China for a fraction of the price or figure out how to make one. To pick up four of those is almost as much as the entire case. I think it only needs to be a u-shape rather than an enclosed box. I could use an old cd drive as a template for the outer width of the U. Problem is I'm not sure how I would bend the metal for a DIY job.
November 27, 200916 yr You probably can make them for cheaper but I did not want to bother with it. I do want to do some modifications to the box to see if I can get some better airflow through the top. You might be right that you don't need the top plate but it does help to secure the drive nice and tight.
November 30, 200916 yr Hi, I just picked up one of these cases while it was on sale as my current old case is maxed out with 6 drives. I want to put 5 drives in every 3 5.25 slots. I do not want to purchase cages as the case already has fantastic cooling for however many drives I install in it. Does anyone sell cheap brackets that let you install drives on their sides 5 across? For the Antec 1200 owners out there, how are you planning to get up to 20 drives? Also were would a good spot be for a cache drive? I was thinking maybe on the floor of the case behind the power supply. Just out of interest, what MB and SATA cards do you use/intent using to support 20 discs? I've just upgraded my case to an Antec 1200 (currently 11 discs with capacity for 14 in current configuration) and I'm looking to upgrade my set-up to improve parity calcs etc. Currently my MB is an A8N Sli Deluxe with a couple of 4 port cards on the pci so it's ...s.....l.....o.....w... on parity calcs. It would be nice to set a parity check going at night and have it done by the morning!! (I use a cache drive so write speeds are OK-ish 30MB/s and the 'moving' is done at night). I'm assuming I can't use the graphics PCIx16 slots to speed things up so am looking for a new board with plenty of upgrade potential.... cheers
November 30, 200916 yr I don't have all the answers, yet I can post the direction I went. I choose to go with the Supermicro X7SBE & plan to go with two cheap SAT2-MV8 controllers. Along with the embedded 6 port controller and you have 22 ports available. Using a PCI slot rafter and a couple SSD's I also plan to use it for other NFS file storage, thereby removing spindles from other servers. The motherboard is not the cheapest in the lot, however, Supermicro boards are very stable. The 8 port controllers are cost effective (There are 2 separate PCI-X buses on this board). There is a x8 PCIe and a x4 PCIe, so there is an upgrade path. Built in Video and the capability of complete remote management with an IPMI board. I plan to use an older supermicro stacker and 4 supermicro 5in3 modules. So everything will be supermicro except the case and power supply. I cannot say this is the fastest arrangement, yet I'm sure it will do fine with the PCI-X boards and multiple busses. At the very least, it does support 3.3V 66MHZ PCI cards. so the promise TX4's will get an extra speed boost at 266Mb/s. Further reading http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4479.0 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2697.0 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4751.0 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2697.msg36841;topicseen#msg36841 Do a board search for X7SBE. Until the Supermicro 8 port PCIe SAS card is fully supported, this seems like a good solution. (or you could wait for that card).
November 30, 200916 yr Author I'm using an Asus P5E-VM DO that has 6 built in SATA ports. I plan on buying a couple of the newer SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCIe cards once they get sorted out. There's been a lot of progress getting them to work with Linux so I'm hoping by the time I need the space it'll be sorted out. I believe we should be able to put one of these cards in the x1 slot after doing some exacto knife work. I'm a bit confused about what can go in the x16 slot but it sounds like these SATA cards can go in there (and run at their slower x4 speed).
November 30, 200916 yr I choose to go with the Supermicro X7SBE & plan to go with two cheap SAT2-MV8 controllers. Along with the embedded 6 port controller and you have 22 ports available. Using a PCI slot rafter and a couple SSD's I also plan to use it for other NFS file storage, thereby removing spindles from other servers. The MB does sound good. Shame it doesn't seem to be widely available in the UK (at least not at the 'normal' places). Until the Supermicro 8 port PCIe SAS card is fully supported, this seems like a good solution. (or you could wait for that card). What's your guess for the performance gain of the PCIe over the PCIx SAT2-MV8 card?
November 30, 200916 yr I choose to go with the Supermicro X7SBE & plan to go with two cheap SAT2-MV8 controllers. Along with the embedded 6 port controller and you have 22 ports available. Using a PCI slot rafter and a couple SSD's I also plan to use it for other NFS file storage, thereby removing spindles from other servers. The MB does sound good. Shame it doesn't seem to be widely available in the UK (at least not at the 'normal' places). Until the Supermicro 8 port PCIe SAS card is fully supported, this seems like a good solution. (or you could wait for that card). What's your guess for the performance gain of the PCIe over the PCIx SAT2-MV8 card? PCI-X 133mhz is rated at 1024MB/s PCIe X1 is rated at 250MB/s so PCI-X is "roughly" around x4 speed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Speed Since a single lane can handle a "mechanical" drive at full speed (approx 120Mb/s top speed these days) the 8 port PCI-X card vs the 8 port PCIe card would probably be very close. I think the issue is in bus contention. PCIe being direct CPU to Controller vs PCI-X having bus communications in the middle. (simplified). Taking a look at the Supermicro SASLP-MV8, it is documented as being x4. http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SASLP-MV8.cfm Someone posted that the X8SBE with 16 drives using the AOC-SATA2-MV8 PCI-X card achived 77,000 KB/s parity check speed. http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAT2-MV8.cfm
December 1, 200916 yr Looks perfect, now I just need to find one that's made in China for a fraction of the price or figure out how to make one. To pick up four of those is almost as much as the entire case. I think it only needs to be a u-shape rather than an enclosed box. I could use an old cd drive as a template for the outer width of the U. Problem is I'm not sure how I would bend the metal for a DIY job. In case you did not find this, see also "Looking for 5-in-3 bracket (no hotswap/backplane)". Brian's DIY rack may give you some ideas.
December 7, 200916 yr Author The more I look at these I wonder if they are a 2 piece unit that I could use to hold 10 drives when using each half by itself. Does anyone have these that can coroborate that they are made up of 2 identical halves? If so the price drops to $15 each which is do-able...
December 7, 200916 yr The more I look at these I wonder if they are a 2 piece unit that I could use to hold 10 drives when using each half by itself. Does anyone have these that can coroborate that they are made up of 2 identical halves? If so the price drops to $15 each which is do-able... I have 2 of these and they work just fine. They are indeed two pieces but you would have to do some fancy cutting to get them apart, not to mention that you would be destroying some of the rigidity of the structure. I would not want to cut on in half and only screw the hard drive down on one side.
December 7, 200916 yr Author I have 2 of these and they work just fine. They are indeed two pieces but you would have to do some fancy cutting to get them apart, not to mention that you would be destroying some of the rigidity of the structure. I would not want to cut on in half and only screw the hard drive down on one side. Thanks prostuff1, So are those rivets, not screws, holding the 2 L-shaped halves together?
December 7, 200916 yr I have 2 of these and they work just fine. They are indeed two pieces but you would have to do some fancy cutting to get them apart, not to mention that you would be destroying some of the rigidity of the structure. I would not want to cut on in half and only screw the hard drive down on one side. Thanks prostuff1, So are those rivets, not screws, holding the 2 L-shaped halves together? I can look again when I get home but from what I remember they are indeed rivets and there might be a little bit of spot welding.
December 7, 200916 yr They are indeed two pieces but you would have to do some fancy cutting to get them apart, not to mention that you would be destroying some of the rigidity of the structure. I would not want to cut on in half and only screw the hard drive down on one side. This has been A question in my mind about cutting them in half to safe a few dollars. I think with drives only bolted on once side, the head movement will tend to cause the drives to shake. If you've ever held a drive in your hand while there is heavy drive activity it will be evident that for long term health it is probably best to keep the drive as stable as possible.
December 12, 200916 yr Author I have 2 of these and they work just fine. They are indeed two pieces but you would have to do some fancy cutting to get them apart, not to mention that you would be destroying some of the rigidity of the structure. I would not want to cut on in half and only screw the hard drive down on one side. Thanks prostuff1, So are those rivets, not screws, holding the 2 L-shaped halves together? I can look again when I get home but from what I remember they are indeed rivets and there might be a little bit of spot welding. Did you need to bend tabs in your case to install these drive holders?
December 12, 200916 yr Did you need to bend tabs in your case to install these drive holders? Yes, I did indeed have to bend some of the tabs in my case. Some require this and some do not. I did check to see if there were any spot welds and there were none, so it would only be a matter of drilling the rivets out and then the parts should separate... though I still think they should be left as one piece.
December 13, 200916 yr re: economical 5 in 3. i have the Coolermaster Centurion 590. Similar to Antec 900 w/ 9 x 5.25 bays. The case comes with 1 Coolermaster 4 in 3 stacker (unlike the 900 with 2 - 4 in 3 stackers). there is NOT fans in all slots like there is in antec. The fans attach to the stacker in the coolermaster. how are the front fans mounted in the antec 9/1200? i agree that i don't want to pay for hot swap or backplane and i do like the eco 5 in 3 solution. frankly, re: cost. the eco 5 in 3 doesn't seem so cheap considering the Cooler Master 4 in 3 stacker is about $26 shipped (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817993002 ). Density not as good. Are there any 5 in 3s w/ cooling for ~$30 shipped?
December 13, 200916 yr I'm using scythe 4 in 3's myself.... couldn't find a cheap 5 in 3 solution. (UK)
December 13, 200916 yr I'm using scythe 4 in 3's myself.... couldn't find a cheap 5 in 3 solution. (UK) those are definitely on my radar. the antivibration measures and low price makes them appear to be a winner. a great choice if you have front cooling (900/1200 does, i don't) and don't need maximum density (OP does).
December 13, 200916 yr Author The front fans in the Antec 1200 can either attach to the 3 provided 3 3.5 in 3 5.25 bays or snap in by themselves in front of whatever you put in there. Yesterday I put together a homemade 5-in-3 shelf and it works great. The drives are rock solid even though they are only bolted down from the bottom. This morning temps are in the high teens (ambient). Last night they didn't go over the low 20's while doing a lot of read/write activity. The 1200 works really well with just a cheap shelf vs an expensive 5-in-3 bay. The wire you see in the first pic goes to the bottom of 4 variable speed fans on the front of the case: Based on the temps I'm getting you don't need much space between the drives to get enough airflow: By using the provided Antec Water Reservoir Accessory shelf I was able to use the provided thumb screws to hold the shelf in place. The 2 drives on top are in one of the provided 3-in-3 bays which I won't be using once I make more shelves: Here you can see the fan unit back in front of my homemade shelf: Now I just need to get a hold of 3 more of these Antec reservoir accessory shelves to finish the job: The template provided here helped in whipping up the shelf using only a punch, 5/32" bit and cordless drill.
April 14, 201214 yr Paul, you wouldn't happen to have a copy of that template file kicking around, would you? The link is no longer valid as it's been quite a while since it was uploaded.
April 14, 201214 yr Author Paul, you wouldn't happen to have a copy of that template file kicking around, would you? The link is no longer valid as it's been quite a while since it was uploaded. Sorry mate I've looked and looked but can't find it.
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