Topic: Case Recommendations

[webwhy]

I haven't built a PC in several years so I'm pretty clueless about what the market's offering.  I'm wanting to build a storage machine for my home office/media room, and I'd like to know if you guys have any good recommendations for a server case.  It's gotta hold a lot of drives 5 - 6 and provide good airflow and cooling options.  I don't want to spend more than $140 or so.

[KnuckleBuckett]

SilverStone Temjin TJ02 might be worth a look.

[ober]

Why 5-6 drives?  Why not just get 2 big drives and mirror them?

[hans]

That's what I was thinking. When you can get 500GB-1TB drives these days for reasonable prices what kind of storage server are you trying to build?

I'm a fan of the Antec cases. Really quite. Now I just need to find a quiet hard drive.

[Steve]

When it comes to server cases, and not wanting to break the bank, there is only one that comes to mind.

http://www.xoxide.com/chenming901.html

[webwhy]

4 drives will be at least 500Gb configured in Raid 10....possibly big 1TB drives, budget permitting...OS and other software will be installed on small single drive or possibly mirrored with the 6 drive (overkill luxury depending on budget also)...raid config for mirroring and speed

I'm trying to build a relatively inexpensive SAN mainly for media storage for my home...It's an attempt to experiment with SAN technologies (iSCSI and AoE), clustered file systems and LVM...

Thanks for the tips...i'll check them out

[KnuckleBuckett]

WD makes very quiet high capacity HDDs at great prices.  I am really happy with my 750GB.  Had it for a couple of months.  Thing is silent and stays lukewarm to the touch even after a good heavy defrag.  I think this is mine, but withoug being at home I cannot be perfectly sure.  Specs are the same though.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144423


Cut and paste from New Egg
Cool operating temperature - WD hard drives are designed to have the lowest power consumption of any high-capacity, desktop-class hard drive which lowers the operating temperature for enhanced drive reliability.
Whisper quiet - These highly reliable drives deliver technologically advanced acoustics. With its WhisperDrive and SoftSeek technologies, WD has minimized noise to levels virtually imperceptible to the human ear in home and business environments.

[kermi3]

For what it's worth, the guys who helped me build my machine do HD full recovery services, and they hate WD.  They recommend Seagate all the way.  They said that in their exp, the WD's crap out prematurely - with the exception of the Raptors.

[hans]

"virtually imperceptible to the human ear in home and business environments."

Yeah but not in recording studio environments. I switched to Seagate drives the last time I build my PC and under normal situations they are pretty quiet but when they spin I can hear then in the studio (which they do when I'm recording). Since it's pretty much dead quiet in there otherwise it's annoying so I had to put the whole thing in an enclosure to reduce the noise.

If you're going to build a SAN with lots o drives, why not just DIY your case? Then you can throw as many drives as you want in.

[Steve]

I'm a maxtor guy, but WD isnt a bad company. To each their own. I need to get my new desktop done ASAP with at least a 500GB hard drive. Mt laptop has two 120gig hdd's in it. I have 180gigs of it taken up between the secondary and the primary JUST in mp3's.

[kermi3]

"virtually imperceptible to the human ear in home and business environments."

Yeah but not in recording studio environments. I switched to Seagate drives the last time I build my PC and under normal situations they are pretty quiet but when they spin I can hear then in the studio (which they do when I'm recording). Since it's pretty much dead quiet in there otherwise it's annoying so I had to put the whole thing in an enclosure to reduce the noise.

If you're going to build a SAN with lots o drives, why not just DIY your case? Then you can throw as many drives as you want in.

Just out of curiosity tgm - did you ever try recording to a flash drive and then copying over to the HD when you finish?  Would your files be small enough to do it practically?

[hans]

I've got a Zoom H4 I use when I'm just practicing. Great little device. It sounds like it's little brother the H2 is pretty sweet too (for $200). While I could feed my gear into the Zoom, I've spent a bit of money on a nice firewire interface for my PC that can do more channels at a time (and has nicer A/D conversion). The problem with most flash recording devices is that the quality level just isn't there compared to the computer alternatives. Most flash based recorders are geared around portability not studio quality.
I have thought about switching back to a more analog solution since it's really just me and I don't need more than a couple channels at a time, but the PC route is far cheaper and being a computer geek, easier.

[Perspective]

>Most flash based recorders are geared around portability not studio quality.

I think he meant a flash based hard drive, not recording device.

[kermi3]

>Most flash based recorders are geared around portability not studio quality.

I think he meant a flash based hard drive, not recording device.

Yea, stick in a 2+ gig flash drive and set that as your recording cache/file location.

[hans]

Never thought of that!

Recommendations?

You thinking USB key kind or IDE style?