Small computer case to hold 8 drives for custom NAS

[dje007]

Small computer case to hold 8 drives for custom NAS using micro mother board is there one out there at the moment?

Or a NAS that holds 8 drives and will not cost a arm and leg.

 

[scotty]

Wow, it's hard enough to find any case that supports 8 drives, let alone a small or mini chassis. I recently did some searching for a friend of mine who wanted 6+ drives in a really small form factor, and the most we could find was 4 drives, + 2 if you were willing to sacrifice the 5.25 bays with adaptors.

With that many drives I think you're pretty much stuck with a server type chassis, either pedestal or rackmount. Rackmount is probably your best bet for capacity & size. 8 drive bays isn't much to ask for in the rackmount arena. Lots of options there. You can get a variety of rackmount cases where you can put in your own componentry, or an off-the-shelf solution like an HP DL2xx series storage server.

You could also consider iSCSI NAS's like Buffalo's terastation pro, which allow you to combine several relatively small 4-bay devices into 1 array.

 

[BostonDan]

Drive Cage/Blackplane

To keep it as small as possible, I would look for the smallest case that supports 5 or 6 5-1/4 drive bays and then fill the drive bays with 2 drive cages/backplanes (Manufacturer PCMCIS) sold at MicroCenter. I was considering something similar but ended up purchasing the Intel SS4200-E(4 drives) and plan on purchasing another once drive space is exhausted. Hope this helps.

 

[dje007]

To keep it as small as possible, I would look for the smallest case that supports 5 or 6 5-1/4 drive bays and then fill the drive bays with 2 drive cages/backplanes (Manufacturer PCMCIS) sold at MicroCenter. I was considering something similar but ended up purchasing the Intel SS4200-E(4 drives) and plan on purchasing another once drive space is exhausted. Hope this helps.

Yeah that is what I was looking at newegg has some nice drive bays that will do the job, now just to find a nice small case with 6 X 5.25" bays