The Enclosure Thread


Blofeld

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On 24.1.2011 at 7:19 PM, neilt0 said:

 

4 drives?! What next -- a lovely 2-drive Media Server?  ;D

 

4x 12T (IronWolf Pro) is pretty a huge volume, don't you think? Depends of course what you want. 

This definitely is a nice case, the way up to the 24 and 60 drive 19" enclosures (and I for myself am definitely not into those huge and cheap desktop cases, sorry).

 

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1 hour ago, starcat said:

 

4x 12T (IronWolf Pro) is pretty a huge volume, don't you think? Depends of course what you want. 

This definitely is a nice case, the way up to the 24 and 60 drive 19" enclosures (and I for myself am definitely not into those huge and cheap desktop cases, sorry).

 

 

Did you notice the date on the post you responded to ??   [More than 7 years old :)]

 

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On 1/11/2018 at 6:05 PM, Jcloud said:

 

 

Actually I just bought this case. General impressions: it's exactly what I wanted ATX, 9x 5.25" bays that you mentioned, the metal used is good gauge, it's not flimsy. CONS: This S.O.B. IS BIG! Really big! By BIG I mean the height, you look at it and you find yourself asking, "Am I over-compensating for something? Sigmund?"  I personally don't like the top bit, The plastic is like a 90's computer front-panel cover.  Functionally I like it, and as you said it's inexpensive. Aesthetically I perfer it with out the plastic top and front cover, but that's me.

Also note below the 9x 5.25 external bays there are two more INTERNAL 5.25" bays below it with some 2.5" to 3.5" shims it's a good place for cache/SSD drives.

 

My grand scheme is to couple the case with three of these Icy Dock 3x(5.25" bays) 5x(3.5" drive tray less enclosure) I have one, need to buy/grow into the next two. Forgot to mention, if you want to go with the trayless Dock I suggested, you'll need to do some case modification (dremel with a number of disc cutters) to remove the bottom holding tabs for each of top two slots (out of the three the bays take up).

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I think I'm going to pull the trigger on this case today or tomorrow since the rebate ends on the 31st. Now that you've had it for a while longer @Jcloud are you still happy with your purchase? Any other unforeseen issues?

 

Also how are you liking those icy docks? Thats my next issue is trying to figure out which 3x5 dock i like.

 

Thanks for the pix too btw!

 

Void4ever

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On 1/29/2018 at 11:00 AM, void4ever said:

Now that you've had it for a while longer @Jcloud are you still happy with your purchase? Any other unforeseen issues?

Sure, make me your enabler. :P

Seriously though, I'd say go for it, especially if you were already interested in this case. Functionally I'm very happy with my purchase, visually I still hate it -- looks like a cheap Iron Man knock-off, but I get the manufacture's choices on their engineering/construction. Biggest issue (non-) was when I took off the that manufacturing clear flim, the stuff on plastic to keep the glossy finish from being scratch/smudged, it took with it the two Z's from the logo. So I have an, "A  A" case now. LOL  All the bits that matter to me, are good.

 

On 1/29/2018 at 11:00 AM, void4ever said:

Also how are you liking those icy docks? Thats my next issue is trying to figure out which 3x5 dock i like.

I went with tray-less models, I do and don't like the enclosures. As an enclosure, has everything I want. What I don't like are two bits: one the power button, or the blue leds, are kinda cheap in construction, and the drives some times needs a nudge on the door to be fully seated in connector to show up on the controller.

 

The electronic switch is in the back of the bay, and is pushed by a clear plastic push rod (that blue led you see at front) and acts as light-pipe for LED; on one bay I found I had to press it "just right," to get it to turn on. As for the drive door. They used a stainless-steel leaf spring on the door which pushes against the drive, or in my case a different bay that needs a slight nudge after closing to register (so probably need to get a pair of pliers and just tweak it a bit).   Over all I think I'm 50/50 on my enclosure choice, but would buy/try again.

 

EDIT: 6/15/2018 -- In regards to the icy dock enclosures, I don't recommend them. I want to like them, and I bought a second one, but it too has a manufacturing defect - there's a bay which the on/off switch won't stay in the ON position.  Given the MSRP of these Icy Dock products, and their flaws I wouldn't recommend them as a, "must buy" sort of product, they would be worth considering if on a fire-sale discount.

Edited by Jcloud
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  • 1 year later...

Hi everyone, I'm currently picking parts for my first unRAID server build. Currently the only parts I have in my hands are an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 CPU, a ASUS B450M-A/CSM MicroATX motherboard, three 3.5" HDDs (specifically a 2TB, a 3TB, and a shucked 10TB Easystore for parity), an EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 (may or may not include this in the build, depends on if it fits, I don't plan to game on this build), and an old Corsair 500W Bronze PSU (though I'm strongly considering not using this and instead getting an EVGA 750W Gold PSU or similar). I'm trying to build a compact and visually appealing mATX server that will sit in a visible place. For drives, I expect to have 3-4x 3.5" HDDs (the ones mentioned before plus one more to expand), 1-2x 2.5" SSDs, and/or 1x NVMe SSD (for cache pool, depends on available deals).

I've been eyeing the Bitfenix Prodigy M for a couple months even though it's hard to find available nowadays. Currently it's on Amazon for $102.07 (that includes tax+shipping). I really like the older-Mac-Pro-like appearance, and it seems to support 3-4x 3.5" drives, up to 5x 2.5" drives. I've heard that cable management can be difficult in this case due to the placement of the PSU, and that it's hard to ventilate properly because of the tight space.

Is anyone here familiar with this case? I would appreciate any feedback or advice, including other case suggestions for this usage.

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  • 3 months later...

This thread is a little long and the original post is dated but still hoping to find some answers/suggestions. I have a 2 month old unRAID build based on a Norcotek RPC-4220 storage enclosure. I'm experiencing lots of UDMA CRC errors and suspect some of it may be due to half the drive bays not having anything installed since I purchased the unit 6+ years ago.

 

It ran fine as my FreeNAS, but was only equipped with 10 drives installed, in addition to the 2 internal 2.5" slots I used for SSDs. Now that I've migrated it to unRAID, only the 2 internal slots and the 1st shelf/backplane of 4 SATA drives are connected to the motherboard SATA ports. The remaining 4 shelves/backplanes (16 bays) are attached to a LSI 9201-16i with 30" long SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 miniSAS cables.

 

The LSI card itself may not be genuine and I have a case submitted to LSI asking about it. I've also ordered new 6G certified miniSAS cables that are only 11.5" long. The existing cables (new, came with the card from the Chinese retailer via eBay) are so long they are looped back and forth a few times inside the case. I'm concerned this could lead to cross-talk and other errors so that's why I've ordered the shorter cables.

 

Getting back to the enclosure, I'm concerned that the 10 bays which had nothing connected for 6+ years have oxidation or other connection issues that could also be the source of my errors. I'm prepared to disassemble and clean the connectors with contact cleaner and then apply contact stabilizer like Stabilant 22. This will be after I get unRAID back healthy - one 8TB drive is currently disabled and contents emulated. The rebuild from parity will commence soon, just waiting for a zero pass from the preclear plugin to re-confirm my spare 8TB. I'll also move the 8TB to a motherboard connected SATA port for the rebuild, as I'm still unsure if the LSI controller could also be partly or wholly at fault.

 

As a last resort, I'm thinking of purchasing a new enclosure, which the above backstory explains. However there hasn't been any major enclosure recommendations for quite a while - the thread has been fairly dormant. Does anyone have any current model suggestions for a relatively inexpensive storage case with at least the same 20 drive bays as my Norcotek RPC-4220? 

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

Dale

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  • 1 month later...
On 7/15/2019 at 5:41 PM, AgentXXL said:

As a last resort, I'm thinking of purchasing a new enclosure, which the above backstory explains. However there hasn't been any major enclosure recommendations for quite a while - the thread has been fairly dormant. Does anyone have any current model suggestions for a relatively inexpensive storage case with at least the same 20 drive bays as my Norcotek RPC-4220? 

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

Dale

I'm finding myself in a similar situation.  I've been running a 4220 for many years now.  I suspect one of the horizontal boards is toast and haven't used it in a while.  I'm looking into upgrading some of the components like the controller and motherboard as well.  

 

What's the current recommendation for a reasonable priced, rackmount, 16+ drive case?

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1 hour ago, Bitbass said:

I'm finding myself in a similar situation.  I've been running a 4220 for many years now.  I suspect one of the horizontal boards is toast and haven't used it in a while.  I'm looking into upgrading some of the components like the controller and motherboard as well.  

 

What's the current recommendation for a reasonable priced, rackmount, 16+ drive case?

So in the long run, I've removed the SAS/SATA backplanes from the Norco 4220. I'm still using it as my enclosure although I'm watching eBay for a decent deal on a Supermicro chassis with at least 24 bays. As for my drives, I'm now direct cabled to them in the Norco enclosure. I purchased some new miniSAS (SFF-8087 host) to 4 SATA forward (HD targets) breakout cables. I've essentially lost the hot-swap capability but for a home server like this, that isn't an issue.

 

The bigger concern was ensuring that the mess of cabling doesn't block airflow to and through the drive bays. The Norco isn't great for this anyhow as there's next to no airspace between drives. Because of this the drive temps run hotter than I'd like. I replaced the standard fans that Norco supplied with 2 x 140mm fans which both move a lot more air and are also much quieter than the stock fans. It required some metal work to open up the mounting plate to accommodate the larger fans.

 

If you're fine with direct cabling and can live with a 15 bay enclosure, the Rosewill RSV-L4500 4U case is an inexpensive option from the Rosewill official store on eBay. Note that I also ordered a certified genuine LSI 9201-16i as the initial one was a Chinese knock-off. That said, the Chinese knock-off is now performing well with the drives direct-cabled, so in the end I didn't need to order the genuine one.

 

I went the inexpensive direct cable route as I'm on disability income and just don't have enough disposable income to buy a Supermicro enclosure yet. I'm saving up for one as that seems to be one of the most recommended for those needing space for a lot of drives. The other solution is to replace the 4TB and 6TB drives with more 10TB+ drives so I can reduce the drive count. Right now I'm sitting at 114TB with 6 x 10TB, 4 x 8TB, 1 x 6Tb and 4 x 4TB. And I still have 3 bays left in the Norco for more array drives - it would be 5 but I've used the first 2 bays for my dual parity drives (which are Ironwolf NAS vs the rest of my drives which are shucked from USB enclosures).

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

ive outgrown my 8slot, 5slot and 4slot NAS'es. And realized that using a lot of different volumes isnt optimal for radarr/sonarr.

 

So im looking for good rack-mounted enclosure that fits 24+ HDD (or 72) that can use motherboards and sas/sata cards that works great with unraid.

so, something like supermicro and the likes.. 

I just dont want to feel that im running out of space anytime soon.

 

anyone has suggestions?

(im from sweden, so id prefer if i got suggestions on enclosure that i actually can buy and not only available to US customers etc..)

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I just bought/built this insane rig. Dual 8 Core CPU, 30+ Devices, 200TB usable (still have one 14TB drive pre-clearing so those pics show 184TB). Meet "MassEffect". 45 Drives Storinator Q30 Turbo. Huge improvement over my old Norco 24 bay rig (now backup server). Rock solid temps peaking at 32C during parity/rebuilds. From the largest server poll thread, this may be 🤷‍♂️ the largest single UNRAID build yet (at least that I have seen documented) and completely pushes UNRAID to it's current limit on number of drives. I can take this thing all the way to 448TB with 28X16TB drives with dual parity if I want to get really crazy. Loving it!

 

 

 

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Edited by falconexe
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...
1 minute ago, squirrellydw said:

I have an older Norco 4220 case that is about 10 years old, any benefit to upgrading it?  Wasn't sure if I would get a speed increase with new backplanes.  I don't even know what version mine is anymore.

New backplanes? Unless I've missed something, Norcotek is now out of business. A few months ago I emailed and tried calling (disconnected number) to see if I could get replacement backplanes for my 4220. No response from the email and I've seen other mentions that Norcotek is dead. Not sure what kind of speeds you're seeing, but I've got 18 drives in mine and the speed maxes at about 150Mbps for writes to the array. More common to see it around 80 - 110 Mbps.

 

The SATA/SAS controller and the motherboard+CPU combo plays into this as well. 16 of my drives are connected to my LSI 9201-16i which a PCIe 2.0 card that I have installed in a PCIe x8 slot. Max speed of this LSI is 6Gbps (SATA3) but it's also limited by the rest of the system and how many PCIe lanes are in use and/or dedicated to other hardware.

 

I'm looking at a Supermicro enclosure to eventually replace my 4220 but for now I've removed the defective backplanes and direct-wired to each drive using miniSAS SFF-8087 to 4 SATA forward breakout cables. And of course separate power for each drive too. Definitely a LOT more mess than using the backplanes, but at least my system is now not throwing random UDMA CRC errors that it did when using the backplanes.

 

I may look at upgrading the LSI to a PCIe 3.0 version with 12Gbps capability, but not until after I get a new motherboard/CPU. I'm budgeting to eventually pickup a Threadripper setup so I can run a few more VMs and still have some CPU core headroom.

 

Dale

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/5/2020 at 9:11 PM, squirrellydw said:

does anyone know when this will be released

http://www.istarusa.com/en/istarusa/products.php?model=M-4160HD-ATX
 

edit. Just heard back from them, they are still working on the back plane.  How much a difference would I see between 6Gb and 12Gb backplane 

Is this a fake knock off then? Amazon has it listed for $671. This thing looks just about perfect for what I want. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Wow all these crazy setups and requirements and I am just sitting here looking for a 8-12 3.5" bay rackmount case (max depth 60cm).

 

Any suggestions? Oh yeah, EU would be great, I don't know if shipping from the US or China would make sense for a case of this size right?

 

Also ATX would be great since I want to reuse my 1260L. I'm running a Gen 8 atm but 4 bays is not enough anymore.

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On 3/12/2020 at 1:20 PM, volume said:

By the end of 2020, i hope that i could found and built my new server on a fractal define 7XL

Capable for 18 drives without modifications.

For those that they dont have a basement or room to store a noisy 24 bay rack server, it may be a nice solution.

 

 

 

 

 

Wow.. didnt know that model. I have a Define 6 now and are out of hdd space. I think i have to look into that one :-)

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On 3/24/2020 at 5:34 PM, germericanish said:

Wow all these crazy setups and requirements and I am just sitting here looking for a 8-12 3.5" bay rackmount case (max depth 60cm).

 

Any suggestions? Oh yeah, EU would be great, I don't know if shipping from the US or China would make sense for a case of this size right?

 

Also ATX would be great since I want to reuse my 1260L. I'm running a Gen 8 atm but 4 bays is not enough anymore.

I bought a Codegen V2 500mm the other day and it worked out great for my needs. It's got 9x3.5" bays and can fit a regular ATX motherboard. In the attached pictures, I've currently got a mATX motherboard. The fan it comes with isn't great and has a molex connector so I'd recommend purchasing a separate one. I've also got 2x80mm fans on order for the back.

 

Please forgive the fact that it's plugged into a Google Wifi router and is sitting in my son's room, this isn't its final place - I'm looking for a small rack (9-12U) that will just fit this case and isn't too much longer - any suggestions?

 

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Edit: the parts originally started life in an old rig and evolved into the slight mess you see here. I'll be ordering some better components when I work out which ones I need.

Edited by Lithium
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