IKR...what would be awesome...even if HH did decide to show a few "shill" gimmes...do a comparison of "DIY or BUY" like GreatScott! (YT) does for electronic trinkets and stuff... Showcase the sponsored stuff right next to something "equivalentish" he built himself... HH willingness to try and keep it "homelabber friendly" unlike some of these other bozos is what sets him apart! And why we appreciate him so much!
Definition of cereal: ce·re·al noun a grain used for food, such as wheat, oats, or corn. a grass producing a cereal grain, grown as an agricultural crop. "low yields for cereal crops" a breakfast food made from roasted grain, typically eaten with milk. "a bowl of cereal"
@@tim3172thats not pushing lol. There was no push or emphasis on choosing the specific brand of those products, just grabbed what he needed and also advised of alternatives with no shilling for specific brands.
I have 24 drives in 3 stacks of 8 like this, running off two 16e HBAs passed through proxmox to a TrueNAS core VM. It works without issue. I did the exact same as the video with individual fan-out cables and SATA power expanders. The whole thing is cooled by a big ol box fan that keeps room temp.
When ever I research something like this 90% of the time I get people telling me not to do this. I'm glad to see this video cuz it makes me confident I can do this with out to many problems
With processor speeds able to handle MUCH more IO ops, setting up software raid is actually faster than some of the 90's hardware raid compatible hardware... Just imagine ZFS parity computations on a AMD K6-2 (or a pentium 4)...LOL
@@haydenc2742 There was a big leap with the Softraids in the 00's. Then it became viable to make it on Pentium III or Athlon as Servers. Using Softraids for your own Machine became viable with the Athlon X2 Family as most Programs were still single tasked. For intel it was the C2D Series. The HT Processors were not realy good at Softraid and Gaming. I tried Softraid on my Athlon XP 3000+ and went back to the Hardware Raid controller, as 10-15% CPU Performance on a Single Core is a big sacrifice. But it was much less power then earlier.
@@haydenc2742 nothing to do with CPU speeds...... , it is PATHWAYS..... that is why companies still buy servers, specifically becasue of the way he pathways are structured.... like all these clowns randomly sticking in 10GB optical connectors..., if they took time to actually READ the diagnostics from the cards..... they would see the pathways are saturated and the cards are throttling. Also like people saying well i checked and the temp is fine..... What they really mean is they have not understood the real issue and function of the systems..., you have to power cool these drives, becasue under specific circumstances they can suddenly have a 10-20 deg rise in temp in a matter of minutes. And many of these drives are speced at 50 deg and they die... or disable, manufacturers firmware. So you might be happily wanking off about what a wonderful job you did, and suddenly the drives start to heatup and before you have time to throw on extra fans the internal head coils have expanded and crashed the heads or twisted the drives. It's not about building system by throwing shite together......... any clown can do that... any clown can build a working system from working parts... but if you suddenly have a single drive failure and the system then has to start recovering data from every drive to rebuild & reconstructing the data in real time... then suddenly you can have a very very bad and expensive day.... as you hammer the head coils... I have systems that have been running 8 years 24/365..... are way way over the 50,000hours MTBF and have zero errors... zero bad blocks, and no disconnects.
With such PCIe card in HBA/IT mode it's actually 100% fine. What people advise against is using USB connections for this. You could also put some rubbers etc. around screws and on ground to counteract vibrations.
Only thing missing is the supermicro backplane to clean up the cabling. I did something similar to this a while ago and I thought the fans would be overkill, ends up they were useful when actually doing large copies from my workstation. Used that setup for a couple years just because I was proud I'd built it myself.
10:20 Lifehack: instead of cutting a support bracket - you can bend it in or out, that increases gap to really shove any connectors through. I've got Graphics card through razor connector in a very slim PC and because of that I was forced to connect to card's ports inside the case. So I bent bracket, thrown DVI through and bent it back.
With the price of the prebuilt jbod enclosures, this is a very good option. Another good option is a real server case if you have space. I got my 4u case for £400, and spend another £30 on a trio of Arctic P12max fans to get a quieter build. This one has 24 front drive bays, and works great.
I love this channel for the tidbits of info you dish out. Like the "add to psu" hickey. I had no idea that type of thing existed and didn't have much luck finding reference points for inspiration. You're providing a positive service to tech humanity. I threw together a JBOD shelf that was full of jank. This was an enjoyable view.
Thanks! Don't tear it down, you put all that labor into building and filming, use it as a backup target. Veeam or AOMEI will bare-metal backup and restore your Windows to VM and you can restore over Samba.
This was a pretty nice idea ! Just make sure to print out the serial numbers and put them on the side so if a drive fails you can end up identifying it easier!
I like this idea. I am all for doing stuff like this. I have an old case I used for a workstation, and I made my own 4-drive enclosure, which fits right inside the case. I even made a video of it but have not edited any of it. It has been over a year since I did mine. I think I might throw some of the footage up on my channel one day. Essentially, the enclosure design as it slips right into the existing bay. It is pretty cool.
Thanks for your great videos! You are exploring all the options I've been playing with and helping me make sure I'm looking at lots of options. I've seen these racks on Ali Express for a while but didn't want to have to take it apart to change a drive. For just a few pence per drive more, you could have the drives on rails. Use plywood or MDF panels and screws to form a rigid box. I'd go with 3, top, bottom and middle. A pair of screws/pins/stand-offs on each side of the drive could ride in a slotted acrylic rail attached to the side panel. The drives can slide in and out, and the case is wider by only twice the thickness of the acrylic. A 3rd locking screw could fix the drives into the slots. This allows for vertical or horizontal orientation of the array. I hope some enterprising reader puts out a kit! I'm using a Yottamaster 5-bay, USB-C, 10Gig external enclosure. It identifies each drive by serial number on Unraid on my Asrock Taichi, but not on the little Lenovo minis. The Serial numbers are visible to Proxmox/Truenas on any platform I've tried. (I imagine that's a driver's issue with Unraid.) I've never seen any of the "drop-out" issues described by some posters, whatever drop-outs are. I paid £210 direct from Yottamaster and haven't looked back. It's quiet, cool, and very clean with only the A/C and USB C cable. I'd really like to see a SAS or PCI attachment option on these. I've also used the Icy Dock 4x 2.5 inch drive SATA housing. I used the 4-drive version because it accommodates 15mm drives. The enclosure fits in a 5.25 inch drive bay. I use 4x 5TB notebook drives in a zfs zraid1 array for 15TB net storage. More than I need. Next time, I'll use a zraid2 array for 8T net. Thanks again for your excellent videos and for doing the hard work for the rest of us!
This was a great video simply for how it demonstrated the SATA-to-HBA and Add2PSU combination. With that mechanism you can effectively create any DAS of your choosing.
I did this with an Amazon stainless 4x hard drive cage with a 120mm fan. Added a thin mini itx motherboard with dc power supply on a sheet of plexiglass with a female sata power to 4x sata power.
There is an other version of this enclosure where, we can mount a psu and it looks like a huge genga block, i am not sure if it was a concept design or what, but i found it cool. I am sure after a few videos, nas bro will find a entire pc case made out of a acrylic panels
FYI, just built my own copy of this. Love it, love doing DIY, fit exactly what I needed. I decided to just use the internal PS of the server PC (an old gaming PC) and its just fine.
I made a similar (but less professional) setup recently. LSI HBA in my Dell R620. HBA off EBay was ~$35 and came with both cables for 8 drives. Currently they live in a pile on top of my server with a box fan cooling them. Powered by a small form factor power supply I pulled from an old Inspiron desktop. Was having issues with a TrueNAS VM so I decided to do ZFS in proxmox directly. It’s been working great. I do plan on getting a proper enclosure made, and you video makes me think laser cutting or CNC might be the best option, especially since my schools shop has both. Love the content, I actually setup my first server (2008 Mac Pro) after watching your video about crafty with CasaOS. Upgraded it basically immediately for more RAM. Paid $210 for a R620 with 2x E5-2680v2 CPUs, and 256gigs of DDR3 from a local shop. My boss gave me eight 2 terabyte HDDs from some of our old servers and a HP 48 port PoE+ gigabit network switch (for a future project)
I did something very similar, I used a drop of hot glue to hold the washers (I used silicone washers) in place.. I also just made my own case, I used a metal HD rack as a pattern, and the one you bought is very very close to what I made, I had some plexiglass that was left from a different project. I was able to put 10, 10TB HD's.. I'm going to redo how mine is connected and use the way you did it, the way I did was basically use them as connected external drives.. I also used a separate power supply to power mine too, I had a older one, I repurposed to power my HD's.. I wish you had this video out 4 months ago.. Thank you for sharing..
Holy Crap! I just bought this 2 weeks ago. lol Edit: Also, once you went SAS, your connectivity and Stability became infinity better than USB. It's well worth what little you paid for them. Way back, I built a FreeNAS server and used USB to expand. Totally against any recommendation from the FreeNAS Forum. Needless to say those four external boxes eventually bricked. 4x USB = 4x failure rate. I've gone SAS Card with an External open frame using a SAS Expander Card. A Graphics Miner PCIe expander to Power the SAS Card (even though the SAS Expander is an PCIe x4 card, it only uses the power from PCIe, all data is over SAS), and it works like a charm. The SAS Expander does need an Extra fan though, it gets Hot! So I use a 1-Slot Scroll Fan (Used before Graphics Cards regularly had their own Fans).
This honestly looks pretty neat! I'm currently working on my own fully (Including enclosure/case) DIY homelab server rack made of of storage racks and 3d printed plates for PI's, a switch, a drivebay, etc
In a past life, I used an erector set to group pairs of drives together in a stack. These days, there are external single bay metal enclosures sold in pairs on Amazon for $6. They hold a drive with integrated rubber mounts and have a provision on the front for screws. They slide and lock together for easy stacking and come in power-coated black out of the box. I picked up 4 bays for my NAS as an external mirror and I only turn it on for weekly archives.
@@AlistairBrugsch I think the link is causing the comment to be suppressed. Naturally, the cages I bought are out of stock and going for exorbitant prices now. As requested, here is the listing title: Phanteks - Stackable 3.5" HDD Bracket Duo Pack Cases PH-HDDKT_03
I came across one of these jbod kits recently when looking for a cheap nas box. I like the aux boards you chose. It makes the entire idea very functional. The only thing I would change is ditching the ATX power supply for a pico power supply. You can mount it underneath like you have with your other small boards. You power it via an AC to DC adapter and the pico power supply converts that 12-19v to the other voltages. To make it still more simple, I have seen some IO shields with molex connectors embedded, allowing you to ditch the power supply all together. Some IO shields exist that also offer SATA\eSATA connectors. If you had enough internal headers and don't mind making a bit of spaghetti in your case, you could route your internal SATA externally. Just note the overall cable length, at some point you may have signal issues. Extending the power and sata from your main system would greatly cut the cost of this "enclosure".
I have been looking at those JBOD racks for a bit, thanks for making this video! On the issue of the fan brackets on the back, if you use IPS Weld-On 16 cement on one side when you have screwed in one side of the drives it is MUCH easier to assemble. You can add cement to the other side after the rack is fully assembled for additional stability.
I have added this acrylic piece on my wishlist for quite sometime. I'm glad i found your video. I'll be doing this jbod thing once i get to this point in future. Thanks for this amazing video
I loved this episode. I have done things like this for over 10 years and it makes my heart warm to know that builders are still thinking outside the BOX or Case. I loved the idea that you painted the plastic and that you found the Noctua 80 mm fans. Back in the past those 80 mm fans had the sound of an angry bee hive so you did good choosing the Noctua silent 80s. I also found the idea of JBOD since I am running out of drive letters in my home computer. The old Cooler Master modules from the classic computers cases work great for an external mount for drives but those are hard to come by. The plastic on the cheap plastic mounts probably soak up some of the drive noise also. Overall it was a great little modding tutorial for us out of the box guys.
There's something quite endearing when you've done a DIY and it all "just works (tm)". I guess that's because you've done it yourself, it's non-trivial to put together and get all the right components ... and it's yours. If you've saved money - even better 😎 I think video like this inspire us tired everyday Sysadmins to pick ourselves up and do some cool tech for ourselves - and if this was mostly built out of "stuff I had lying around", the cost would be very little. Thanks - another good idea! As for what to do with it now that it's assembled, up and running ... maybe make it available over you 10Gb connection(s) as an iSCSI host that allows other systems to mount the storage remotely (that is what we do with VMs at work).
Thanks! I love hearing that these videos are at least entertaining if not slightly inspiring, especially for people that work in IT. Also thanks for the idea!
@@notune424 UA-camrs regularly publish content early for Patreons or Subscribers. The Time Stamp would therefore be before the Live Publish, since UA-cam doesn't force them to re-upload content.
For the washers, just get a thin strip of plastic, say 3/4 inch wide by 6 inches long. Really you could use cardboard. Notch in one end to go around the washer. Get the drive in with just screws, then put the rubber washer between the side of the drive and flat plastic, then use the strip to move the washer into place, then put the screw through. It's really easy enough to make a simple positioning tool to slide the washer around between the drive and acrylic board, shouldn't take a minute or two with a pair of scissors.
I think that's pretty awesome! Not only do you save a few bucks and have a fun little DIY project but you don't limit compatibility as you mentioned that so many of the USB enclosures do. I ran into that with USB enclosures repeatedly and it's a huge headache. If I were you I'd keep it and use it. You built it and although it may be a bit janky it looks pretty slick if you keep it facing front. Thanks!
I built something similar, but it was just... too janky for my liking. I ended up buying a SilverStone CS382 case, it fits a mATX board and has 8 3.5" hot swap bays. It's a fantastic NAS case and solved all my high drive count issues pretty much completely
This was really good bud. I think people who tinker with things like TrueNAS and Unraid have the DIY bug and are going to gravitate to something like this. It’s a great way to keep going when you’ve run out of space… like me 😂
a lot of libraries have 3d printers available, you might be able to make drive sleds for that acrylic enclosure. Or get a friend with a 3d printer. The biggest life-hack for getting cheap components is knowing people. I learned where the cast-off computers go for some departments in my university and you're allowed to just walk in and go picking, but it's also a slight secret.
There are good user friendly 3D Printers around which are inexpensive. The biggest Problem is to avoid the Cheap Printers which needs lot of knowledge to run well. My Advise at the Moment: Bambu Lab A1 Not the Combo with color changer, the simple A1. Very good Printer easy setup and prints out of the Box very good prints. While Printers like the Creality Ender 3 V2 Neo or Anycube Cobra 2 are cheaper, they need lot of more knowledge of printing and especially mantaining those. Rebuilding one of those ATM.
Consider asking your university friends when they plan to replace an entire lab of pc's, so that you can score the best of what's being swapped out, and maybe even 2 of them.
Hey! Just wanted to thank you for putting this video together. I followed it almost exactly and just got it online today! 35TB of usable storage running TrueNas Scale!
If you want a bunch of HDDs but don't want to add a whole second PSU to power them, Corsair sells a little $30 unit that takes a PCI-E 12v power input and sends out 20ampsa of 5v power for connecting a bunch of drives to. Basically expanding the 5v rail a bunch of the one PSU you have.
@@user-pc9th4xr6i Corsair +5v Load Balancer. You can run 8 HDDs off each unit and it only pulls from the 12v rail of the PSU instead of the 5v rail. So no more worrying about 5v load ratings. 1PCI-E cable in, 8 HDD SATA power plugs out. Looks like the price went up to $40 now, so I guess try and find them on sale when they go back down to $25-30
@@user-pc9th4xr6iIt's a buck converter, just a bit expensive for what it is. Cheapest solution is to use an older PSU that's rated for something like 30A on the 5V, those were popular for Perk mining back in the days to power up dozens of cheap smartphones.
It’s funny that in the last few days I experienced the same problem. I want to build a little NAS with 8 HDD’s but there is no ITX case available with enough space. And I also don’t want a big case. I really had an eye on the Jonsbo N3. But I can’t buy it anywhere. So I concluded I have to go DIY. My two requirements were all HDD’s internal and it has to be a cube. So I build a little ITX cube frame from metal where I can mount my board, psu, all 8 HDD’s on anti-vibration mounts and fans for the board and the storage. And then I build a acrylic glass shell for my frame. Looks actually not that bad and very clean. And because I love cube cases I just have to like it.
This is OUTSTANDING! I have also been struggling with storage, i use an older HTPC case for a NAS/PLEX server with TrueNas Core (terrified to swap to Scale) I am using a 7th gen i5 Commercial Matx board, with 16gb ram, the case has room for roughly 6 drives, but with some ingenuity was able to use some single Drive enclosures and some extra Metal slot covers and Pop rivited the enclosures to the slot covers and BAM! Two more secure Drive bays in the unused space where a full ATX board would be! I will say for your solution, you may have been able to power those drives with a MUCH smaller PICO power supply or even a used OEM SFF PSU for much cheaper! Just a thought! Drives don't need all that power! with a few molex adapters you are golden!
About a pico PSU, I have some doubts it's actually safe. When starting up, some drives can pull over 30W, so you'd need a pico psu that's still able to handle 240W at peak (for a few seconds). You can counter that with staggered spinup, but that's more complex, and you can't use that if you put your drives to sleep after some time. Also, you need about 1A (constant) on the 5V per drive, and I'm not sure that those pico PSUs can handle a constant 8A (40W) on the 5V as they provide it through a little converter
I really like your solution. I've been looking for something similar, and everything out there is expensive & wasteful. But not this! I love the power supply extension and how the HBA works.
If you want to make a bigger JBOD enclosure you can also get a SAS expander (to mount in the JBOD enclosure) and a SAS card with only 2 external ports. You need A LOT of mechanical drives to saturate 8 SAS 6gbit channels.
@@hotswapster Sata multiport/multiplexing is not reliable and has limitations (and not all controllers support it). If you want to do a multiplexing setup you should go SAS and use expanders, it is stable and there it's more or less plug and play.
It's amazing how big the market is for storage, yet there is so few solutions that work well. That includes m.2, sata ssd, and mechanical drives. I've got a half dozen ssd's and another of nvme drives just sitting here from upgrades done in the past. I would love to be able to buy a product to hook them up to my server for storage that wasn't usb. I like that you found a solution to the power issue that normally plagues users with external storage needs.
best option I had (and use to this day) it to get one or two of the 5-bay hot-swap enclosures. They come with fans, power ports, and sata connectors into the chassis, and a smooth case you can secure together to make it look like a case in itself. $85 each, but that still puts us at a similar cost.
I've tried all sorts of external enclosure, USB is often flaky when loaded and USB hubs are trash and often just reset when you are writing to multiple drives. Yes everything had its own power brick, this is just controllers hanging and resetting. SAS cards and sas expanders are turnkey and rock-solid, and in most cases much cheaper than large USB enclosures
Working on something very similar at the moment. My power solution is to use two different SATA cables from the PSU, and ziptie them as they hang out of a vertical PCI bracket hole in the case so they stick out a few inches and just use SATA power extensions and splitters to power the drives. Currently running 4 drives off one SATA power cable but I'm hoping I can hook up 8 to one without anything melting.
Don't worry about leaving those washers out. They would provide ZERO noise isolation since the screw is still hard connected to the panel and the drive. To provide isolation you cannot have a hard mount between the drive and the panel. Something like those screw grommets you might see would do this, but a washer will not.
Hey for the washer replacement, you might wanna consider felt tape put on the side of the hdd. Inferior to the silicon/rubber vibration reduction but still can get the job done somewhat (experienced it with my synology nas) and it'll be a bit easier to slide in an out after you have bunch of drives on the said acrylic housing
JBOD was a type of RAID the treats 4 4TB as 16TB and is a hardware version of a storage volume. LVM, BTRFS and ZFS can pool drivers together. not necessarily any faster but also not any slower. it's just writing to OneDrive at a time as needed.
I hate the marketing for Magic Spoon. There is no such thing as grain-free cereal. Cereal is, by definition, grain. That's like saying water-free water.
I've always liked your diy solutions for home use, ever since that diy server nas board video you made in the beginning. If you ever get a 3d printer, I'd put some kinda panels for the front and rear of the jbod.
@@RoshiGaming Amazon sorry, might be cheaper at a local hardware store so check there as well. You just cut it into 4 even pieces and bend the ends so it stands and you mount the drives like he did except it’s 4 pieces
Nice build! A way cheaper but very reliable way to remote the second PSU is a relay with a 12 or 5 V trigger. With the NO and C outputs on the relay hooked to the 2nd PSU's power on pin and ground. The trigger is obvious, any spare 12V or 5V connector from the first PSU. Been using this method for my Hotswappable cages on my NAS for years without a hiccup.
not related to the content of the video but- I'm disappointed by who you chose to sponsor you. That cereal is inedible and anyone who's tried it knows it too. I cant take anything you say seriously after you tell me the chocolate flavor is your favorite. Cardboard has a more interesting flavor profile. And then the price!? $9...and the box is so tiny you literally only get a few average size bowls out of it. Now there may be some people that do genuinely like this (there's also people that like well done steak) but there is no place on gods green Earth other than this sentence where this cereal and the word "delicious" are even remotely close in proximity. Only slightly serious rant aside, if you don't maintain your integrity through ad reads how can I expect the rest of the video to be any different?
I'm sorry to hear that, and I get where you're coming from. That being said, I never said it tastes as good as Cocoa puffs or something lol. Obviously there are sacrifices when making cereal with those requirements, but there are people that are looking for that knowing it won't taste exactly the same as other options. I actually do like the two flavors I mentioned, especially for what they are. As far as integrity goes, I turn down a lot of sponsors because I don't find them to be consumer friendly. But just because someone doesn't like a product doesn't mean it's a scam. My kid doesn't like ice cream (super weird), but I wouldn't be upset with someone advertising Ben and Jerry's just because of that. I get where you're coming from, but a product you don't like doesn't equate to a scummy business. That being said, if you ever think an advertiser I work with is engaging in malicious or anti-consumer behavior, I'm open to hearing it; I've cut ties with sponsors for that before.
The cereals looks a lot like those sponsored products that cost too much for what they are, appear in a whole lot of UA-cam videos, and that could be made for cheaper. I’d have the same opinion as ridge wallet, it’s stupid expensive, but it’s a quality thing that helps the channel. I don’t know anything about those cereals, but seem to be the same idea.
What does his AD read have to do with the quality of information he's presenting in the video? The fact that you're unable to compartmentalize and independently process a set of DIY instructions on how to setup a JBOD from an AD of a food product that you personally dislike sounds like a skill issue.
thanks for your response! Integrity was probably too strong of a word to use (not trying to imply you're a bad person or anything) and I get where your coming from too but if you're willing to read whatever another company wants you to off a script regardless of your own opinions then how can I know you wont do the same in the regular video content. You said above that there will obviously be some flavor sacrifices but you never made that clear in the ad (how's that obvious?) I fully recognize this what YTers have to do make money to grow their channel these days and this is %100 a personal issue between me and this brand... but in this case this product so offensively bad to the senses and gets review bombed everywhere but its own website so often that the only way I believe its even still around is bc youtubers constantly promote it and clueless people buy it. I'd have a very hard time believing there are very many repeat buyers. And your endorsements of it here in the comments are useless bc of obvious bias. not really mad at you, just the state of advertising on YT, apologies for directing it at you.@@HardwareHaven
Great video, I actually made something like this myself recently apart from I did not end up using some acrylic kits. I had some spare 3mm plywood lying around and I must say if you have the means to cut it straight and pre-drill the mounting holes after you have spray painted it it can do just as good a job as those acrylic kits you bought from China. You did a great job my only comment and advice would be you can purchase far smaller power bricks which provide 12 volts and up to 9 amps which would be more than enough to power all of those drives meaning you could ditch the pc power supply but you'd lose the power on functionality. You could then mount one of these power bricks to the side or top of the case. Most of them use barrel jacks but they sell converters. Even hanging out the back but more clean. Great work, keep it up Edit: P.S I also own one of those sabrent x4 2.5" enclosures and they are indeed trash, why companies wish to hide drive serials and labels with they're own name and branding is a mystery to me.
I think this is a really great solution because of the expandability. True nas + a little bit older computer that can handle the data transfer has so much more appeal to me than $1,000 16 bay nas. If you don't need instant access but want to be able to store a bunch of old videos, that's such an easy way to have all the hard drives with all the old stuff on it that you can just stick in the closet in a very organized kind of way. It looks like it's a bit annoying with the screws and washers and the cable management, but it's definitely a worthwhile endeavor. That's very expandable. Love the videos
For the ppl that don't have 3d printers you can still look for an STL file of this rack or any other hdd rack that fits your needs and send it over to a 3D printing service company which will print it and send it over to you. You could choose color, material type and other customisations on many of this companies. Some aren't cheap though.
Very pro way of DIYIing them, of which I had previously wondered about a best approach to using those open drive holders. Thanks for showing the best way to do it.
I actually did something slightly differerent to get my drives into my case. I have a MicroATX case (Thermaltake Versa H18) with a MicroATX mobo. It has a power supply shroud, but no drive bays (just places to screw in some drives). I bought a 5-drive hard drive cage that is supposed to fit in a 5x 5.25-inch bay, I think. Then I just used double-sided tape to attach it to the top of my PSU shroud at the front of the case. The case and this cage and perfectly sized so that the cage and drives don't interfere with the motherboard, and they fit with the case's side panel on. They also get easy access to air from the front panel. This won't work in every case, but it was perfect for my scenario! And since this was internal, I was able to easily connect each drive with SATA cables directly to the motherboard.
Good video, if the size of array is going to be an issue, there is an alternative. Icydock do a 6 x 2.5" to 5.25" drive adaptors (MB326SP-B) but these do cost around $90, You could probably get away with a 250W PSU to power the drives. Unless your using SSD's, the 2 fans they have may be adequate, the drives may get warm if used long term so additional ventilation may be required.
If you're looking for 30 printer I do highly recommend the Bambu labs one. They are workhorses and large ish build areas. The app is easy to use and cloud connected and live camera view. Plus if you want to do multi material colors they have those AMS systems. They aren't really cheap but for what you get I have been very happy with my X1 carbon
Spoiler... I got the A1 Mini. Its printing right behind me as I type haha. I imagine at some point I'll want something with a bigger print bed, but I'm loving it so far. Especially for someone like me that doesn't have the time to dive into the details, it's perfect.
You can make the acrylic enclosure a bit taller and put the PSU in the bottom, and you can use an IEC Y splitter to reduce the power cables to one instead of two (one for each PSU). Also, there are many cheap fan controller boards with thermal probe to controller the fans' speed, I think that will make it a bit quiter while it's idle
I love your videos dude, I've learned a lot from watching your NAS and Router tutorials, I've yet to see anyone do a tutorial on how to access your NAS from outside your local network though, I think it'd be cool if you made one.
Those sata extensions cables work really well for the 3.3 volt problem for shucked drives. You can peel the back cover off and just take the 3.3 volt cable out and put the covers right back on.
The gray fans look sick AF. Very nice video, I really learned a lot! Thanks for your hard work making these videos. Using a power supply that's 650W at only 65W (about 10% of max) is typically very efficient compared to using a PSU near it's maximum power. Using a second PSU instead of adding those 65W of drives to your 400W lenovo PSU was a very good move.
If you want vibration dampening without the hassle, one thing you can try are silicone grommets for M5, M6, or #6-32 screws. You may need to drill the holes out to a slightly larger size as grommets are supposed to fit inside the hole. Some older cases, particularly Antec, used to come with those. Oh, and one more thing you can do for vibration dampening the entire thing is adding earthquake-resistant gel pads. They are usually clear blue in color, and you should be able to find them at most online stores in the Asia region.
You don't believe this! I was actively preparing a similar JBOD. But I go for an old PC case. The small chip to to switch the powerblok on was new to me. Thank you for this cool video!
You can also us a paperclip or a metal wire to bridge two pins in the 24pin ATX PSU connector (look up a pinout diagram). That's all the switch does, closes a contact between the two wires, to signal the PSU to turn on
If you are using a seperate case check out the Supermicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB1 JBOD Power Board. A little bit more costly than the solution in the video but enabling the power button makes it easier to move the case between systems.
Have you considered placing it in an old/unused tower or mid-tower PC case? My grandfather is designing a similar JBOD and we have several old tower cases. He's thinking of doing something simialr to what you did, except he'll be mounting it all in an old tower case and running the cables out of the back of the case into the back of our main PC. Oh, and his thinking of putting those 5-8" USB powered "personal" fans inside the case for added air flow! Could be a great DIY project and video for the future. Enjoyed the DIY!
Was just thinking about this! Yesterday I hacked out the 5.25 inch bay separating the two front slots on my p410 (same case, different chipset) for a cheap 3 bay enclosure i wanted to add more drives soon, this video was right on cue! great video :)
That's awesome! I have an old PC that I went with the icy dock solution and 2.5" SSD's but was not very happy with how it turned out. In this case I used an internal hardware raid, which in doing reading later found out wasn't really hardware raid anyways. Here, your CPU will deal with the drives and that doesn't take a lot of processing power! So for an older machine you don't want going to e-waste I love this. Thanks for sharing!
Im running everything on a DIY Zimaboard NAS with 2 Harddrives in a woodworking diy case. This is exactly what I was looking into to add more drives. Thanks!
You've done a really nice job there, well done 👍 Great video quality and presentation too. That enclosure is quite clever, using the drives themselves as a structural component.
i have been racking my brains for 3 weeks on this problem. My Powerdedge 420t can hold 8+ drives with no issues. But every tower pc i was looking to get to replace it, it can only hold 3 drives. This solved my problem and I can finally pull the trigger on my server upgrade!!!!
I found this exact thing on Ebay 3 years ago. I got the 8 bay version. So, here is a few pointers from my experience. If you use "Cooler Master Dual SSD" adapter. You just double your 8 or 10 drive to 16 or 20. I have 16 ssd's in my truenas core box. You will have to drill the holes out in the ssd tray and sides to use pc case fan screws. And the 4 holes in the ssd tray may not always line up. Sometimes your stuck using 3. Or just make the holes slightly bigger and just start the screws first. Don't fully tighten until you have them all started. Also, if you want to get creative like I did. You can bend some aluminum sheeting i got from my local hardware store. and 120mm fans fit perfectly behind them. And can even use that side as the bottom. You are just going to need a lot of sata power splitters to get it all to work. But, being ssd's, it's not much poer being drawn. Esp. compared to hdd's.
they have 3.5-inch Hard Drive Cage, 16-compartment Shock-proof Expansion rack, Multi-bay mobile External Hard Drive Cage on ali express and then you could add any slide in or hotswap drive mount or use the provided ones. You could even go down the rabbit hole of sata backplanes for the power so all you would need is prob 2 molex to power it (like on the silverstone 380b) for example. Cheers
Looks awesome! Simplicity is key with something like this though. Especially if you can get away with it for half the cost of a JBOD. as someone who bought a 4U case for 15 drives. I can say those HBAs work great. Just need to make sure you spec the PSU the correct size and / or "balance" the drives per power rail so you don't overload one over the other. Found this out the hard way in proxmox when it dropped drives in the middle of the night.....
Not sure if this was already mentioned in the video but useing the extra drives to either make a raid( wich raid to use is mostly dependant on the use case and personal preference but raid 5 I believe is a prety safe option for both performance and redundancy) or expanding a raid you already have in your desktop or laptop is usualy a great way to optimize how the new drives are used. Theirs a decent amount of stuff to talk about reguarding Raids so it you might be able to make a good video talking about Raids. Research on multiple Raids will be required tho If you don’t already know a good bit about them and how they function.
Totally viable way of doing it, especially when you often play around with the setup. For a cleaner look and a more long time solution you can shop around for an older pc case with a lot of 5.25" bays in the front. up until ~2015 there where many cases around that had the complete height of the front open with those bays. you can either throw in the DIY acrylic rack (even two of those cause you dont populate the mainboard area) or use cheapo bays/adapters to mount the drives. if you want you can even have hotswap racks etc. dirt cheap nowadays cause no one uses this stuff anymore in a professional environment. all cables, power supply etc. can be mounted inside the case. you can even use a slot bracket to convert the external SFF-8644 back to internal connectors for a complete clean and professional setup and make yourself a JBOD case. with a bit of luck you find everything for a very low amount of money, or you pay a bit more and get a high quality enclosure like from LianLi etc.
I got a used enterprise 12bay with the option to expand two more 12 bay jbods. The unit i got was $600. It was alot of money, but it runs Synology dsm and it's super easy to use for a beginner. And i don't feel like i have to worry about expanding in the future.
I've been looking at these strictly for a mounting point for the drives to screw into. I wanted to build a wood enclosure to hold the psu, and hide the wiring. I was also going to add an sff-8083 pass through port to the back of the wood case. I also want to build some type of vented front panel so the fans would be mounted to the case and not the drive enclosure. My main concern is the lack of reviews on these plexi sheets, and plexi can start cracking under stress and shock, so I'm unsure how they will hold up to the screws being tightened then the vibration. Thank you for this video and if you continue using it, any updates would be awesome.
Well, I like it - a lot! I wonder what it would be like now you have a printer - what sort of design you could come up with to tidy cables, maybe mount the PSU under too? I'm fairly new to the channel, but love your work and it was an easy sub.
You could do something very similar with a couple of off the shelf 5.25" to 3.5" drive adapters like the ever popular Rosewill one and the much higher quality Startech, Icydock, or Silverstone offerings. It would also be pretty easy to tap into the host computer's front panel power button header as the PiKVM does.
I wouldn't trash it. I wouldn't have went your way either as I prefer clean. That being said, I have two suggestions - (a) You can take what you have and throw it into a Cougar MX330-G MX330 with room to expand. (b) You can get rid of the make shift tower and just get something like DARKROCK Classico Storage Master Case or utilize what I have for mine - Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower Chassis (I have the one that has the side window). I got the case, threw some spare parts I had laying around in it, and then I threw two 18TB Ironwolf Enterprise NAS Drives and one 10 TB Ironwolf Enterprise NAS Drive for my media server (Movies, TV Shows, Music), one 8 TB Skyhawk, and three 2 TB Firecudas. Stays cool and looks neat. It sits on a tower caddy that attaches to the leg of my desk. Out of site, out of mind.
i've done this in a slightly different manner. if it commects to the big power workstation i run a sata cable inside and use sata expanders. i have a usb to sata adapter in case i need to use that but i'm also not using truenas or anything like that. just labeled the partitions and use them like that. just don't have a spare computer (or really the space) to setup a dedicated nas machine.
I did a similar thing with two strips of metal, drilling holes and just using drive screws to keep them all in place. The drive screws will work themselves loose after a while, so I put polyimide tape over them to stop that. The strips of metal were some very cheap metal rulers, which had the added benefit of making it easy to mark out the holes evenly spaced. You don't need to use rulers, they were just cheaper than metal strips. Economies of scale, or something, I guess.
Hi, on bottom of this external kit you can put sff power supply and test it like that. I hope sff power supply will fit inside. I see that most of space taken with power supply. Also you can put rubber stands on bottom of this plastic case.
I've got a double wide Lian Li PC-D600. It's got a whole right side of the case loaded with 5.25 inch bays. I've got 2x 3x5.25 to 4x3.5 bays for a total of 8 3.5 drive bays. I've got 2x 5.25 to 4x 2.5 inch bays for a total of 8 2.5 bays. They're all hot swapable. For the extra SATA ports I used a 9550SXU-12 PCI-X SATA II raid card.
Dude I’m so bored of listening to UA-camrs pushing products .. this was a really good idea and was well described and presented. Thank you!
IKR...what would be awesome...even if HH did decide to show a few "shill" gimmes...do a comparison of "DIY or BUY" like GreatScott! (YT) does for electronic trinkets and stuff...
Showcase the sponsored stuff right next to something "equivalentish" he built himself...
HH willingness to try and keep it "homelabber friendly" unlike some of these other bozos is what sets him apart! And why we appreciate him so much!
Definition of cereal: ce·re·al
noun
a grain used for food, such as wheat, oats, or corn.
a grass producing a cereal grain, grown as an agricultural crop.
"low yields for cereal crops"
a breakfast food made from roasted grain, typically eaten with milk.
"a bowl of cereal"
he wouldnt have to push products ,if youtube stopped coming up with weak reasons to steal ad revenue from creators
He "pushes" several products in this video: The LSi HBA, the eVGA 650 watt, the Add2PSU adapter, not just 80 mm fans... Redux Noctua fans, etc.
@@tim3172thats not pushing lol. There was no push or emphasis on choosing the specific brand of those products, just grabbed what he needed and also advised of alternatives with no shilling for specific brands.
I have 24 drives in 3 stacks of 8 like this, running off two 16e HBAs passed through proxmox to a TrueNAS core VM. It works without issue. I did the exact same as the video with individual fan-out cables and SATA power expanders. The whole thing is cooled by a big ol box fan that keeps room temp.
That's awesome!
Why proxmox to truenas vm and not just truenas?
@@Todrak I got other VMs I run on that machine.
Did thou know thou can use a expander card to easily multiply thine ports? It lets thou use up to 512 drives at least on the 4 port hba I hast.
@@worldking348cool, but y do u speak that wae?
Hardware Haven also built his own UA-cam channel. It's great!
Also a bit janky
@@HardwareHaven 🤟
@@HardwareHavenif it was anything but, I wouldn't be here 😂and the opening titles you come up I always enjoy
When ever I research something like this 90% of the time I get people telling me not to do this. I'm glad to see this video cuz it makes me confident I can do this with out to many problems
With processor speeds able to handle MUCH more IO ops, setting up software raid is actually faster than some of the 90's hardware raid compatible hardware...
Just imagine ZFS parity computations on a AMD K6-2 (or a pentium 4)...LOL
@@haydenc2742 There was a big leap with the Softraids in the 00's. Then it became viable to make it on Pentium III or Athlon as Servers. Using Softraids for your own Machine became viable with the Athlon X2 Family as most Programs were still single tasked. For intel it was the C2D Series. The HT Processors were not realy good at Softraid and Gaming. I tried Softraid on my Athlon XP 3000+ and went back to the Hardware Raid controller, as 10-15% CPU Performance on a Single Core is a big sacrifice. But it was much less power then earlier.
@@haydenc2742 nothing to do with CPU speeds...... , it is PATHWAYS.....
that is why companies still buy servers, specifically becasue of the way he pathways are structured....
like all these clowns randomly sticking in 10GB optical connectors..., if they took time to actually READ the diagnostics from the cards.....
they would see the pathways are saturated and the cards are throttling.
Also like people saying well i checked and the temp is fine.....
What they really mean is they have not understood the real issue and function of the systems..., you have to power cool these drives, becasue under specific circumstances they can suddenly have a 10-20 deg rise in temp in a matter of minutes.
And many of these drives are speced at 50 deg and they die... or disable, manufacturers firmware.
So you might be happily wanking off about what a wonderful job you did, and suddenly the drives start to heatup and before you have time to throw on extra fans
the internal head coils have expanded and crashed the heads or twisted the drives.
It's not about building system by throwing shite together......... any clown can do that... any clown can build a working system from working parts...
but if you suddenly have a single drive failure and the system then has to start recovering data from every drive to rebuild & reconstructing the data in real time...
then suddenly you can have a very very bad and expensive day.... as you hammer the head coils...
I have systems that have been running 8 years 24/365..... are way way over the 50,000hours MTBF and have zero errors... zero bad blocks, and no disconnects.
With such PCIe card in HBA/IT mode it's actually 100% fine. What people advise against is using USB connections for this. You could also put some rubbers etc. around screws and on ground to counteract vibrations.
@@p0358 inb4 someone reads that wrong and use actual condoms
Only thing missing is the supermicro backplane to clean up the cabling. I did something similar to this a while ago and I thought the fans would be overkill, ends up they were useful when actually doing large copies from my workstation. Used that setup for a couple years just because I was proud I'd built it myself.
did any of the disks die because of vibration?
@@germanenriquezillescas9421 no, didn't have any of them die and I still have the drives even though they currently are not in use.
Supermicro backplane?
@@TomR459 Are you asking what a supermicro backplane is?
10:20 Lifehack: instead of cutting a support bracket - you can bend it in or out, that increases gap to really shove any connectors through.
I've got Graphics card through razor connector in a very slim PC and because of that I was forced to connect to card's ports inside the case. So I bent bracket, thrown DVI through and bent it back.
With the price of the prebuilt jbod enclosures, this is a very good option. Another good option is a real server case if you have space. I got my 4u case for £400, and spend another £30 on a trio of Arctic P12max fans to get a quieter build. This one has 24 front drive bays, and works great.
I have exactly the same thought. A 4U case will take less space than a external hdd caddy.
Maybe too obvious, but remove the internal 400W PSU, and put the 650W one in there to handle everything (PC and JBOD).
You know, I thought of that.... as I was editing 🤦♂️
The jankiness was worth it for the video though haha
@@HardwareHavenlenovo using its own connector from the psu to the mainboard. its not regular ATX 24pin, its more like ATX12VO.
This is assuming there's no proprietary bs connection between that PSU and motherboard
@@guiorgy from markings on the side seems to be a standard FSP power supply.
You can adapt the connector... i have a lenovo m92 sff board transplanted into an atx tower running off a standard atx psu
I love this channel for the tidbits of info you dish out. Like the "add to psu" hickey. I had no idea that type of thing existed and didn't have much luck finding reference points for inspiration. You're providing a positive service to tech humanity.
I threw together a JBOD shelf that was full of jank. This was an enjoyable view.
Thanks! Don't tear it down, you put all that labor into building and filming, use it as a backup target. Veeam or AOMEI will bare-metal backup and restore your Windows to VM and you can restore over Samba.
Thanks for the thanks haha. Sorry it took so long for me to see it.
This was a pretty nice idea ! Just make sure to print out the serial numbers and put them on the side so if a drive fails you can end up identifying it easier!
I like this idea.
I am all for doing stuff like this.
I have an old case I used for a workstation, and I made my own 4-drive enclosure, which fits right inside the case. I even made a video of it but have not edited any of it. It has been over a year since I did mine. I think I might throw some of the footage up on my channel one day.
Essentially, the enclosure design as it slips right into the existing bay. It is pretty cool.
I wish it was more common to to sell JBOD enclosures that look like a PC case, but don't use USB and just expose sata connectors on the back
Thanks for your great videos! You are exploring all the options I've been playing with and helping me make sure I'm looking at lots of options.
I've seen these racks on Ali Express for a while but didn't want to have to take it apart to change a drive. For just a few pence per drive more, you could have the drives on rails. Use plywood or MDF panels and screws to form a rigid box. I'd go with 3, top, bottom and middle. A pair of screws/pins/stand-offs on each side of the drive could ride in a slotted acrylic rail attached to the side panel. The drives can slide in and out, and the case is wider by only twice the thickness of the acrylic. A 3rd locking screw could fix the drives into the slots. This allows for vertical or horizontal orientation of the array. I hope some enterprising reader puts out a kit!
I'm using a Yottamaster 5-bay, USB-C, 10Gig external enclosure. It identifies each drive by serial number on Unraid on my Asrock Taichi, but not on the little Lenovo minis. The Serial numbers are visible to Proxmox/Truenas on any platform I've tried. (I imagine that's a driver's issue with Unraid.) I've never seen any of the "drop-out" issues described by some posters, whatever drop-outs are. I paid £210 direct from Yottamaster and haven't looked back. It's quiet, cool, and very clean with only the A/C and USB C cable. I'd really like to see a SAS or PCI attachment option on these.
I've also used the Icy Dock 4x 2.5 inch drive SATA housing. I used the 4-drive version because it accommodates 15mm drives. The enclosure fits in a 5.25 inch drive bay. I use 4x 5TB notebook drives in a zfs zraid1 array for 15TB net storage. More than I need. Next time, I'll use a zraid2 array for 8T net.
Thanks again for your excellent videos and for doing the hard work for the rest of us!
This was a great video simply for how it demonstrated the SATA-to-HBA and Add2PSU combination. With that mechanism you can effectively create any DAS of your choosing.
I did this with an Amazon stainless 4x hard drive cage with a 120mm fan. Added a thin mini itx motherboard with dc power supply on a sheet of plexiglass with a female sata power to 4x sata power.
There is an other version of this enclosure where, we can mount a psu and it looks like a huge genga block, i am not sure if it was a concept design or what, but i found it cool.
I am sure after a few videos, nas bro will find a entire pc case made out of a acrylic panels
FYI, just built my own copy of this. Love it, love doing DIY, fit exactly what I needed.
I decided to just use the internal PS of the server PC (an old gaming PC) and its just fine.
I made a similar (but less professional) setup recently. LSI HBA in my Dell R620. HBA off EBay was ~$35 and came with both cables for 8 drives. Currently they live in a pile on top of my server with a box fan cooling them. Powered by a small form factor power supply I pulled from an old Inspiron desktop. Was having issues with a TrueNAS VM so I decided to do ZFS in proxmox directly. It’s been working great. I do plan on getting a proper enclosure made, and you video makes me think laser cutting or CNC might be the best option, especially since my schools shop has both. Love the content, I actually setup my first server (2008 Mac Pro) after watching your video about crafty with CasaOS. Upgraded it basically immediately for more RAM. Paid $210 for a R620 with 2x E5-2680v2 CPUs, and 256gigs of DDR3 from a local shop. My boss gave me eight 2 terabyte HDDs from some of our old servers and a HP 48 port PoE+ gigabit network switch (for a future project)
You only need some aluminium/ steel plates and a bunch of holes for hdds
I did something very similar, I used a drop of hot glue to hold the washers (I used silicone washers) in place.. I also just made my own case, I used a metal HD rack as a pattern, and the one you bought is very very close to what I made, I had some plexiglass that was left from a different project. I was able to put 10, 10TB HD's.. I'm going to redo how mine is connected and use the way you did it, the way I did was basically use them as connected external drives.. I also used a separate power supply to power mine too, I had a older one, I repurposed to power my HD's.. I wish you had this video out 4 months ago.. Thank you for sharing..
Holy Crap! I just bought this 2 weeks ago. lol
Edit: Also, once you went SAS, your connectivity and Stability became infinity better than USB. It's well worth what little you paid for them. Way back, I built a FreeNAS server and used USB to expand. Totally against any recommendation from the FreeNAS Forum. Needless to say those four external boxes eventually bricked. 4x USB = 4x failure rate. I've gone SAS Card with an External open frame using a SAS Expander Card. A Graphics Miner PCIe expander to Power the SAS Card (even though the SAS Expander is an PCIe x4 card, it only uses the power from PCIe, all data is over SAS), and it works like a charm. The SAS Expander does need an Extra fan though, it gets Hot! So I use a 1-Slot Scroll Fan (Used before Graphics Cards regularly had their own Fans).
This honestly looks pretty neat! I'm currently working on my own fully (Including enclosure/case) DIY homelab server rack made of of storage racks and 3d printed plates for PI's, a switch, a drivebay, etc
In a past life, I used an erector set to group pairs of drives together in a stack.
These days, there are external single bay metal enclosures sold in pairs on Amazon for $6. They hold a drive with integrated rubber mounts and have a provision on the front for screws. They slide and lock together for easy stacking and come in power-coated black out of the box.
I picked up 4 bays for my NAS as an external mirror and I only turn it on for weekly archives.
Can you please provide a product link to the stackable enclosures you're referring to?
Got a search term for those? I've only seen these acrylic ones
@@AlistairBrugsch I think the link is causing the comment to be suppressed.
Naturally, the cages I bought are out of stock and going for exorbitant prices now. As requested, here is the listing title:
Phanteks - Stackable 3.5" HDD Bracket Duo Pack Cases PH-HDDKT_03
@@T3hBeowulf I found the product. How do you stack them?
@@xSpaceDementia They slide together on rails and lock in place with a spring tab. You can stack as many as you want.
I came across one of these jbod kits recently when looking for a cheap nas box. I like the aux boards you chose. It makes the entire idea very functional. The only thing I would change is ditching the ATX power supply for a pico power supply. You can mount it underneath like you have with your other small boards. You power it via an AC to DC adapter and the pico power supply converts that 12-19v to the other voltages. To make it still more simple, I have seen some IO shields with molex connectors embedded, allowing you to ditch the power supply all together. Some IO shields exist that also offer SATA\eSATA connectors. If you had enough internal headers and don't mind making a bit of spaghetti in your case, you could route your internal SATA externally. Just note the overall cable length, at some point you may have signal issues. Extending the power and sata from your main system would greatly cut the cost of this "enclosure".
I have been looking at those JBOD racks for a bit, thanks for making this video! On the issue of the fan brackets on the back, if you use IPS Weld-On 16 cement on one side when you have screwed in one side of the drives it is MUCH easier to assemble. You can add cement to the other side after the rack is fully assembled for additional stability.
This is the kind of stuff I’m here for!! Legit affordable options and totally thinking outside of the box (or case in this matter)! Love it.
I have added this acrylic piece on my wishlist for quite sometime. I'm glad i found your video. I'll be doing this jbod thing once i get to this point in future. Thanks for this amazing video
I loved this episode. I have done things like this for over 10 years and it makes my heart warm to know that builders are still thinking outside the BOX or Case. I loved the idea that you painted the plastic and that you found the Noctua 80 mm fans. Back in the past those 80 mm fans had the sound of an angry bee hive so you did good choosing the Noctua silent 80s. I also found the idea of JBOD since I am running out of drive letters in my home computer. The old Cooler Master modules from the classic computers cases work great for an external mount for drives but those are hard to come by. The plastic on the cheap plastic mounts probably soak up some of the drive noise also. Overall it was a great little modding tutorial for us out of the box guys.
There's something quite endearing when you've done a DIY and it all "just works (tm)". I guess that's because you've done it yourself, it's non-trivial to put together and get all the right components ... and it's yours. If you've saved money - even better 😎
I think video like this inspire us tired everyday Sysadmins to pick ourselves up and do some cool tech for ourselves - and if this was mostly built out of "stuff I had lying around", the cost would be very little.
Thanks - another good idea!
As for what to do with it now that it's assembled, up and running ... maybe make it available over you 10Gb connection(s) as an iSCSI host that allows other systems to mount the storage remotely (that is what we do with VMs at work).
Thanks! I love hearing that these videos are at least entertaining if not slightly inspiring, especially for people that work in IT. Also thanks for the idea!
Your comment is 1 day before ?!?!?!?!?!?
@@notune424 UA-camrs regularly publish content early for Patreons or Subscribers. The Time Stamp would therefore be before the Live Publish, since UA-cam doesn't force them to re-upload content.
@@notune424 I'm a channel supporter - we get early access 😃
Oh thanks@@CorwinPatrick
For the washers, just get a thin strip of plastic, say 3/4 inch wide by 6 inches long. Really you could use cardboard. Notch in one end to go around the washer. Get the drive in with just screws, then put the rubber washer between the side of the drive and flat plastic, then use the strip to move the washer into place, then put the screw through. It's really easy enough to make a simple positioning tool to slide the washer around between the drive and acrylic board, shouldn't take a minute or two with a pair of scissors.
I think that's pretty awesome! Not only do you save a few bucks and have a fun little DIY project but you don't limit compatibility as you mentioned that so many of the USB enclosures do. I ran into that with USB enclosures repeatedly and it's a huge headache. If I were you I'd keep it and use it. You built it and although it may be a bit janky it looks pretty slick if you keep it facing front. Thanks!
"if you keep it facing front" 😂
Thanks!
I built something similar, but it was just... too janky for my liking. I ended up buying a SilverStone CS382 case, it fits a mATX board and has 8 3.5" hot swap bays. It's a fantastic NAS case and solved all my high drive count issues pretty much completely
This was really good bud. I think people who tinker with things like TrueNAS and Unraid have the DIY bug and are going to gravitate to something like this. It’s a great way to keep going when you’ve run out of space… like me 😂
a lot of libraries have 3d printers available, you might be able to make drive sleds for that acrylic enclosure. Or get a friend with a 3d printer.
The biggest life-hack for getting cheap components is knowing people. I learned where the cast-off computers go for some departments in my university and you're allowed to just walk in and go picking, but it's also a slight secret.
There are good user friendly 3D Printers around which are inexpensive.
The biggest Problem is to avoid the Cheap Printers which needs lot of knowledge to run well.
My Advise at the Moment:
Bambu Lab A1 Not the Combo with color changer, the simple A1.
Very good Printer easy setup and prints out of the Box very good prints.
While Printers like the Creality Ender 3 V2 Neo or Anycube Cobra 2 are cheaper,
they need lot of more knowledge of printing and especially mantaining those. Rebuilding one of those ATM.
Consider asking your university friends when they plan to replace an entire lab of pc's, so that you can score the best of what's being swapped out, and maybe even 2 of them.
Hey! Just wanted to thank you for putting this video together. I followed it almost exactly and just got it online today! 35TB of usable storage running TrueNas Scale!
If you want a bunch of HDDs but don't want to add a whole second PSU to power them, Corsair sells a little $30 unit that takes a PCI-E 12v power input and sends out 20ampsa of 5v power for connecting a bunch of drives to. Basically expanding the 5v rail a bunch of the one PSU you have.
What is it called?
@@user-pc9th4xr6i Corsair +5v Load Balancer. You can run 8 HDDs off each unit and it only pulls from the 12v rail of the PSU instead of the 5v rail. So no more worrying about 5v load ratings. 1PCI-E cable in, 8 HDD SATA power plugs out. Looks like the price went up to $40 now, so I guess try and find them on sale when they go back down to $25-30
@@user-pc9th4xr6i My reply keeps getting deleted for some reason. Sorry. Just try and search for Corsair Load Balancer
Ive tried typing things out 3 different ways now and my reply keeps getting deleted. Sorry
@@user-pc9th4xr6iIt's a buck converter, just a bit expensive for what it is. Cheapest solution is to use an older PSU that's rated for something like 30A on the 5V, those were popular for Perk mining back in the days to power up dozens of cheap smartphones.
I love DIY solutions like this. Many of us don't have the budget for enterprise hardware. This is very helpful.
It’s funny that in the last few days I experienced the same problem. I want to build a little NAS with 8 HDD’s but there is no ITX case available with enough space. And I also don’t want a big case. I really had an eye on the Jonsbo N3. But I can’t buy it anywhere. So I concluded I have to go DIY. My two requirements were all HDD’s internal and it has to be a cube. So I build a little ITX cube frame from metal where I can mount my board, psu, all 8 HDD’s on anti-vibration mounts and fans for the board and the storage. And then I build a acrylic glass shell for my frame. Looks actually not that bad and very clean. And because I love cube cases I just have to like it.
I love the idea when you already have most of the bits. This is clearly in the realm of "you could...but should you?"
This is OUTSTANDING! I have also been struggling with storage, i use an older HTPC case for a NAS/PLEX server with TrueNas Core (terrified to swap to Scale) I am using a 7th gen i5 Commercial Matx board, with 16gb ram, the case has room for roughly 6 drives, but with some ingenuity was able to use some single Drive enclosures and some extra Metal slot covers and Pop rivited the enclosures to the slot covers and BAM! Two more secure Drive bays in the unused space where a full ATX board would be! I will say for your solution, you may have been able to power those drives with a MUCH smaller PICO power supply or even a used OEM SFF PSU for much cheaper! Just a thought! Drives don't need all that power! with a few molex adapters you are golden!
About a pico PSU, I have some doubts it's actually safe. When starting up, some drives can pull over 30W, so you'd need a pico psu that's still able to handle 240W at peak (for a few seconds). You can counter that with staggered spinup, but that's more complex, and you can't use that if you put your drives to sleep after some time. Also, you need about 1A (constant) on the 5V per drive, and I'm not sure that those pico PSUs can handle a constant 8A (40W) on the 5V as they provide it through a little converter
I really like your solution. I've been looking for something similar, and everything out there is expensive & wasteful. But not this! I love the power supply extension and how the HBA works.
If you want to make a bigger JBOD enclosure you can also get a SAS expander (to mount in the JBOD enclosure) and a SAS card with only 2 external ports. You need A LOT of mechanical drives to saturate 8 SAS 6gbit channels.
This comment is as useful as finding out eSATA comes with and without multiplexing...thanks for the tip. I'll be looking for an expander!
@@hotswapster Sata multiport/multiplexing is not reliable and has limitations (and not all controllers support it). If you want to do a multiplexing setup you should go SAS and use expanders, it is stable and there it's more or less plug and play.
@@hotswapster I mean SAS cards and SAS expanders, you can use Sata drives with that, no problem. Just DO NOT use Sata port multipliers
It's amazing how big the market is for storage, yet there is so few solutions that work well. That includes m.2, sata ssd, and mechanical drives. I've got a half dozen ssd's and another of nvme drives just sitting here from upgrades done in the past. I would love to be able to buy a product to hook them up to my server for storage that wasn't usb. I like that you found a solution to the power issue that normally plagues users with external storage needs.
Man, as someone who doesn't hoard data but does have a 3D printer... this is making me want to start hoarding data.
best option I had (and use to this day) it to get one or two of the 5-bay hot-swap enclosures. They come with fans, power ports, and sata connectors into the chassis, and a smooth case you can secure together to make it look like a case in itself. $85 each, but that still puts us at a similar cost.
I've tried all sorts of external enclosure, USB is often flaky when loaded and USB hubs are trash and often just reset when you are writing to multiple drives. Yes everything had its own power brick, this is just controllers hanging and resetting.
SAS cards and sas expanders are turnkey and rock-solid, and in most cases much cheaper than large USB enclosures
Working on something very similar at the moment. My power solution is to use two different SATA cables from the PSU, and ziptie them as they hang out of a vertical PCI bracket hole in the case so they stick out a few inches and just use SATA power extensions and splitters to power the drives. Currently running 4 drives off one SATA power cable but I'm hoping I can hook up 8 to one without anything melting.
Don't worry about leaving those washers out. They would provide ZERO noise isolation since the screw is still hard connected to the panel and the drive. To provide isolation you cannot have a hard mount between the drive and the panel. Something like those screw grommets you might see would do this, but a washer will not.
Hey for the washer replacement, you might wanna consider felt tape put on the side of the hdd. Inferior to the silicon/rubber vibration reduction but still can get the job done somewhat (experienced it with my synology nas) and it'll be a bit easier to slide in an out after you have bunch of drives on the said acrylic housing
Nice JBOD made without glue or tape 😇
JBOD was a type of RAID the treats 4 4TB as 16TB and is a hardware version of a storage volume. LVM, BTRFS and ZFS can pool drivers together. not necessarily any faster but also not any slower. it's just writing to OneDrive at a time as needed.
It's really not bad honestly.
This reminds me of when I had to fabricate parts to add a second hard drive to a case! Thank you for showing this
I hate the marketing for Magic Spoon. There is no such thing as grain-free cereal. Cereal is, by definition, grain. That's like saying water-free water.
That and the price for such a little box is like 2x-3x the price.
In the Boy Scouts, we always brought dehydrated water. Small and easy to use. Just add water.
I've seen the ingredients, I'm not putting that in my body.
Who cares. Its something you pour milk over and has better nutrients than more of the other sugary junk out there.
It's so expensive for what it is too lol Just add a scoop of whey into your cereal and it's basically the same thing macro wise
I've always liked your diy solutions for home use, ever since that diy server nas board video you made in the beginning. If you ever get a 3d printer, I'd put some kinda panels for the front and rear of the jbod.
you can also do this with shelf tracks for about ~$6 right now, but that works as well :)
$6 where?
@@RoshiGaming Amazon sorry, might be cheaper at a local hardware store so check there as well. You just cut it into 4 even pieces and bend the ends so it stands and you mount the drives like he did except it’s 4 pieces
Nice build! A way cheaper but very reliable way to remote the second PSU is a relay with a 12 or 5 V trigger. With the NO and C outputs on the relay hooked to the 2nd PSU's power on pin and ground. The trigger is obvious, any spare 12V or 5V connector from the first PSU. Been using this method for my Hotswappable cages on my NAS for years without a hiccup.
not related to the content of the video but- I'm disappointed by who you chose to sponsor you. That cereal is inedible and anyone who's tried it knows it too. I cant take anything you say seriously after you tell me the chocolate flavor is your favorite. Cardboard has a more interesting flavor profile. And then the price!? $9...and the box is so tiny you literally only get a few average size bowls out of it. Now there may be some people that do genuinely like this (there's also people that like well done steak) but there is no place on gods green Earth other than this sentence where this cereal and the word "delicious" are even remotely close in proximity. Only slightly serious rant aside, if you don't maintain your integrity through ad reads how can I expect the rest of the video to be any different?
I'm sorry to hear that, and I get where you're coming from. That being said, I never said it tastes as good as Cocoa puffs or something lol. Obviously there are sacrifices when making cereal with those requirements, but there are people that are looking for that knowing it won't taste exactly the same as other options. I actually do like the two flavors I mentioned, especially for what they are. As far as integrity goes, I turn down a lot of sponsors because I don't find them to be consumer friendly. But just because someone doesn't like a product doesn't mean it's a scam. My kid doesn't like ice cream (super weird), but I wouldn't be upset with someone advertising Ben and Jerry's just because of that.
I get where you're coming from, but a product you don't like doesn't equate to a scummy business. That being said, if you ever think an advertiser I work with is engaging in malicious or anti-consumer behavior, I'm open to hearing it; I've cut ties with sponsors for that before.
The cereals looks a lot like those sponsored products that cost too much for what they are, appear in a whole lot of UA-cam videos, and that could be made for cheaper.
I’d have the same opinion as ridge wallet, it’s stupid expensive, but it’s a quality thing that helps the channel. I don’t know anything about those cereals, but seem to be the same idea.
They give him a script to read, chocolate cardboard isn't too sweet. LOL
What does his AD read have to do with the quality of information he's presenting in the video? The fact that you're unable to compartmentalize and independently process a set of DIY instructions on how to setup a JBOD from an AD of a food product that you personally dislike sounds like a skill issue.
thanks for your response! Integrity was probably too strong of a word to use (not trying to imply you're a bad person or anything) and I get where your coming from too but if you're willing to read whatever another company wants you to off a script regardless of your own opinions then how can I know you wont do the same in the regular video content. You said above that there will obviously be some flavor sacrifices but you never made that clear in the ad (how's that obvious?) I fully recognize this what YTers have to do make money to grow their channel these days and this is %100 a personal issue between me and this brand... but in this case this product so offensively bad to the senses and gets review bombed everywhere but its own website so often that the only way I believe its even still around is bc youtubers constantly promote it and clueless people buy it. I'd have a very hard time believing there are very many repeat buyers. And your endorsements of it here in the comments are useless bc of obvious bias. not really mad at you, just the state of advertising on YT, apologies for directing it at you.@@HardwareHaven
Great video, I actually made something like this myself recently apart from I did not end up using some acrylic kits. I had some spare 3mm plywood lying around and I must say if you have the means to cut it straight and pre-drill the mounting holes after you have spray painted it it can do just as good a job as those acrylic kits you bought from China.
You did a great job my only comment and advice would be you can purchase far smaller power bricks which provide 12 volts and up to 9 amps which would be more than enough to power all of those drives meaning you could ditch the pc power supply but you'd lose the power on functionality. You could then mount one of these power bricks to the side or top of the case. Most of them use barrel jacks but they sell converters. Even hanging out the back but more clean.
Great work, keep it up
Edit: P.S I also own one of those sabrent x4 2.5" enclosures and they are indeed trash, why companies wish to hide drive serials and labels with they're own name and branding is a mystery to me.
I think this is a really great solution because of the expandability. True nas + a little bit older computer that can handle the data transfer has so much more appeal to me than $1,000 16 bay nas.
If you don't need instant access but want to be able to store a bunch of old videos, that's such an easy way to have all the hard drives with all the old stuff on it that you can just stick in the closet in a very organized kind of way. It looks like it's a bit annoying with the screws and washers and the cable management, but it's definitely a worthwhile endeavor. That's very expandable. Love the videos
For the ppl that don't have 3d printers you can still look for an STL file of this rack or any other hdd rack that fits your needs and send it over to a 3D printing service company which will print it and send it over to you. You could choose color, material type and other customisations on many of this companies. Some aren't cheap though.
Very pro way of DIYIing them, of which I had previously wondered about a best approach to using those open drive holders. Thanks for showing the best way to do it.
I actually did something slightly differerent to get my drives into my case. I have a MicroATX case (Thermaltake Versa H18) with a MicroATX mobo. It has a power supply shroud, but no drive bays (just places to screw in some drives). I bought a 5-drive hard drive cage that is supposed to fit in a 5x 5.25-inch bay, I think. Then I just used double-sided tape to attach it to the top of my PSU shroud at the front of the case. The case and this cage and perfectly sized so that the cage and drives don't interfere with the motherboard, and they fit with the case's side panel on. They also get easy access to air from the front panel. This won't work in every case, but it was perfect for my scenario! And since this was internal, I was able to easily connect each drive with SATA cables directly to the motherboard.
Good video, if the size of array is going to be an issue, there is an alternative.
Icydock do a 6 x 2.5" to 5.25" drive adaptors (MB326SP-B) but these do cost around $90, You could probably get away with a 250W PSU to power the drives.
Unless your using SSD's, the 2 fans they have may be adequate, the drives may get warm if used long term so additional ventilation may be required.
Hard to find high capacity 2.5" drives that aren't SMS
Great video. I learned a lot, and its nice to see someone not just shilling products.
If you're looking for 30 printer I do highly recommend the Bambu labs one. They are workhorses and large ish build areas. The app is easy to use and cloud connected and live camera view. Plus if you want to do multi material colors they have those AMS systems. They aren't really cheap but for what you get I have been very happy with my X1 carbon
Spoiler... I got the A1 Mini. Its printing right behind me as I type haha.
I imagine at some point I'll want something with a bigger print bed, but I'm loving it so far. Especially for someone like me that doesn't have the time to dive into the details, it's perfect.
This is just what I was looking for. I had considered one of those JBOD cases but avoided it because of the cost. Thanks for the information.
You can make the acrylic enclosure a bit taller and put the PSU in the bottom, and you can use an IEC Y splitter to reduce the power cables to one instead of two (one for each PSU).
Also, there are many cheap fan controller boards with thermal probe to controller the fans' speed, I think that will make it a bit quiter while it's idle
See...now THIS is what I'm talking about!!!!
Within reach of the home lab, and most peoples pocketbooks!
Keep em coming!!!!
What a creative project which solves a real problem. I was thinking recently to expand my storage solution and this seems like a very viable solution.
I love your videos dude, I've learned a lot from watching your NAS and Router tutorials, I've yet to see anyone do a tutorial on how to access your NAS from outside your local network though, I think it'd be cool if you made one.
Those sata extensions cables work really well for the 3.3 volt problem for shucked drives. You can peel the back cover off and just take the 3.3 volt cable out and put the covers right back on.
The gray fans look sick AF. Very nice video, I really learned a lot! Thanks for your hard work making these videos. Using a power supply that's 650W at only 65W (about 10% of max) is typically very efficient compared to using a PSU near it's maximum power. Using a second PSU instead of adding those 65W of drives to your 400W lenovo PSU was a very good move.
If you want vibration dampening without the hassle, one thing you can try are silicone grommets for M5, M6, or #6-32 screws. You may need to drill the holes out to a slightly larger size as grommets are supposed to fit inside the hole.
Some older cases, particularly Antec, used to come with those.
Oh, and one more thing you can do for vibration dampening the entire thing is adding earthquake-resistant gel pads. They are usually clear blue in color, and you should be able to find them at most online stores in the Asia region.
You don't believe this! I was actively preparing a similar JBOD. But I go for an old PC case. The small chip to to switch the powerblok on was new to me. Thank you for this cool video!
You can also us a paperclip or a metal wire to bridge two pins in the 24pin ATX PSU connector (look up a pinout diagram). That's all the switch does, closes a contact between the two wires, to signal the PSU to turn on
@@marcogenovesi8570 i believe this one does a bit more. It only goes on if the pc is on. Nothing fancy but still pretty cool!
If you are using a seperate case check out the Supermicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB1 JBOD Power Board. A little bit more costly than the solution in the video but enabling the power button makes it easier to move the case between systems.
I was trying to build this last week but only found the expensive options. This is exactly what i wanted and pretty cheap
Have you considered placing it in an old/unused tower or mid-tower PC case? My grandfather is designing a similar JBOD and we have several old tower cases. He's thinking of doing something simialr to what you did, except he'll be mounting it all in an old tower case and running the cables out of the back of the case into the back of our main PC. Oh, and his thinking of putting those 5-8" USB powered "personal" fans inside the case for added air flow! Could be a great DIY project and video for the future. Enjoyed the DIY!
Was just thinking about this! Yesterday I hacked out the 5.25 inch bay separating the two front slots on my p410 (same case, different chipset) for a cheap 3 bay enclosure
i wanted to add more drives soon, this video was right on cue! great video :)
That's awesome! I have an old PC that I went with the icy dock solution and 2.5" SSD's but was not very happy with how it turned out. In this case I used an internal hardware raid, which in doing reading later found out wasn't really hardware raid anyways.
Here, your CPU will deal with the drives and that doesn't take a lot of processing power! So for an older machine you don't want going to e-waste I love this.
Thanks for sharing!
Im running everything on a DIY Zimaboard NAS with 2 Harddrives in a woodworking diy case. This is exactly what I was looking into to add more drives. Thanks!
You've done a really nice job there, well done 👍 Great video quality and presentation too.
That enclosure is quite clever, using the drives themselves as a structural component.
i have been racking my brains for 3 weeks on this problem. My Powerdedge 420t can hold 8+ drives with no issues. But every tower pc i was looking to get to replace it, it can only hold 3 drives. This solved my problem and I can finally pull the trigger on my server upgrade!!!!
I found this exact thing on Ebay 3 years ago. I got the 8 bay version. So, here is a few pointers from my experience. If you use "Cooler Master Dual SSD" adapter. You just double your 8 or 10 drive to 16 or 20. I have 16 ssd's in my truenas core box. You will have to drill the holes out in the ssd tray and sides to use pc case fan screws. And the 4 holes in the ssd tray may not always line up. Sometimes your stuck using 3. Or just make the holes slightly bigger and just start the screws first. Don't fully tighten until you have them all started. Also, if you want to get creative like I did. You can bend some aluminum sheeting i got from my local hardware store. and 120mm fans fit perfectly behind them. And can even use that side as the bottom. You are just going to need a lot of sata power splitters to get it all to work. But, being ssd's, it's not much poer being drawn. Esp. compared to hdd's.
they have 3.5-inch Hard Drive Cage, 16-compartment Shock-proof Expansion rack, Multi-bay mobile External Hard Drive Cage on ali express and then you could add any slide in or hotswap drive mount or use the provided ones. You could even go down the rabbit hole of sata backplanes for the power so all you would need is prob 2 molex to power it (like on the silverstone 380b) for example. Cheers
Looks awesome! Simplicity is key with something like this though. Especially if you can get away with it for half the cost of a JBOD.
as someone who bought a 4U case for 15 drives. I can say those HBAs work great. Just need to make sure you spec the PSU the correct size and / or "balance" the drives per power rail so you don't overload one over the other.
Found this out the hard way in proxmox when it dropped drives in the middle of the night.....
I've had good experiences with my Oyen Digital Mobius 5 bay enclosure but I love the DIY nature plus the ability to have twice as many drives.
Not sure if this was already mentioned in the video but useing the extra drives to either make a raid( wich raid to use is mostly dependant on the use case and personal preference but raid 5 I believe is a prety safe option for both performance and redundancy) or expanding a raid you already have in your desktop or laptop is usualy a great way to optimize how the new drives are used. Theirs a decent amount of stuff to talk about reguarding Raids so it you might be able to make a good video talking about Raids. Research on multiple Raids will be required tho If you don’t already know a good bit about them and how they function.
Totally viable way of doing it, especially when you often play around with the setup. For a cleaner look and a more long time solution you can shop around for an older pc case with a lot of 5.25" bays in the front. up until ~2015 there where many cases around that had the complete height of the front open with those bays. you can either throw in the DIY acrylic rack (even two of those cause you dont populate the mainboard area) or use cheapo bays/adapters to mount the drives. if you want you can even have hotswap racks etc. dirt cheap nowadays cause no one uses this stuff anymore in a professional environment. all cables, power supply etc. can be mounted inside the case. you can even use a slot bracket to convert the external SFF-8644 back to internal connectors for a complete clean and professional setup and make yourself a JBOD case. with a bit of luck you find everything for a very low amount of money, or you pay a bit more and get a high quality enclosure like from LianLi etc.
I did the exact same thing for the exact same reasons a few years ago. I absolutely love it.
I love it! I’ve been tempted to DIY my own enclosure for years, but never took the plunge.
I got a used enterprise 12bay with the option to expand two more 12 bay jbods. The unit i got was $600. It was alot of money, but it runs Synology dsm and it's super easy to use for a beginner.
And i don't feel like i have to worry about expanding in the future.
I've been looking at these strictly for a mounting point for the drives to screw into. I wanted to build a wood enclosure to hold the psu, and hide the wiring. I was also going to add an sff-8083 pass through port to the back of the wood case. I also want to build some type of vented front panel so the fans would be mounted to the case and not the drive enclosure. My main concern is the lack of reviews on these plexi sheets, and plexi can start cracking under stress and shock, so I'm unsure how they will hold up to the screws being tightened then the vibration. Thank you for this video and if you continue using it, any updates would be awesome.
Well, I like it - a lot! I wonder what it would be like now you have a printer - what sort of design you could come up with to tidy cables, maybe mount the PSU under too? I'm fairly new to the channel, but love your work and it was an easy sub.
You could do something very similar with a couple of off the shelf 5.25" to 3.5" drive adapters like the ever popular Rosewill one and the much higher quality Startech, Icydock, or Silverstone offerings. It would also be pretty easy to tap into the host computer's front panel power button header as the PiKVM does.
I wouldn't trash it. I wouldn't have went your way either as I prefer clean. That being said, I have two suggestions - (a) You can take what you have and throw it into a Cougar MX330-G MX330 with room to expand. (b) You can get rid of the make shift tower and just get something like DARKROCK Classico Storage Master Case or utilize what I have for mine - Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower Chassis (I have the one that has the side window). I got the case, threw some spare parts I had laying around in it, and then I threw two 18TB Ironwolf Enterprise NAS Drives and one 10 TB Ironwolf Enterprise NAS Drive for my media server (Movies, TV Shows, Music), one 8 TB Skyhawk, and three 2 TB Firecudas. Stays cool and looks neat. It sits on a tower caddy that attaches to the leg of my desk. Out of site, out of mind.
i've done this in a slightly different manner. if it commects to the big power workstation i run a sata cable inside and use sata expanders. i have a usb to sata adapter in case i need to use that but i'm also not using truenas or anything like that. just labeled the partitions and use them like that. just don't have a spare computer (or really the space) to setup a dedicated nas machine.
I did a similar thing with two strips of metal, drilling holes and just using drive screws to keep them all in place. The drive screws will work themselves loose after a while, so I put polyimide tape over them to stop that. The strips of metal were some very cheap metal rulers, which had the added benefit of making it easy to mark out the holes evenly spaced. You don't need to use rulers, they were just cheaper than metal strips. Economies of scale, or something, I guess.
Hi, on bottom of this external kit you can put sff power supply and test it like that. I hope sff power supply will fit inside. I see that most of space taken with power supply. Also you can put rubber stands on bottom of this plastic case.
I've got a double wide Lian Li PC-D600. It's got a whole right side of the case loaded with 5.25 inch bays. I've got 2x 3x5.25 to 4x3.5 bays for a total of 8 3.5 drive bays. I've got 2x 5.25 to 4x 2.5 inch bays for a total of 8 2.5 bays. They're all hot swapable. For the extra SATA ports I used a 9550SXU-12 PCI-X SATA II raid card.