Hard Drive Cages

[Lost Soul]

hi im trying to do an interesting project by turning an old case into a nas raid 5 setup, and well im trying to suspend all the hds and in order to do this i need to modify all 3.25 bays except for 1, so i guess you can say i have to mod the 3.25 cage as well,

well any ways off to my questions

does any one know if there are any premade 5.25 cages for sale, if they even have any that arnt attached to the case it self, other then hot swappable cages

im thinking of just trying to use a type of sheet metal to make this , and then tac weld it, if need be.

does any body have any thoughts on this, maybe a better way to go about this,,

and btw the reason im not removing the 3.25 bay all together is because i have a lcd fan controller / temp reader and it fits perfectly in there.

maybe this is a stupid ideal but, i just like building things, so hit me with your thoughts if any one has any,,

thanks

Edited December 4, 2006 by Lost Soul

[clintb]

I'm kinda confused about what you're asking, so let me ask

1. You have a case that has both 5.25 and 3.5 slots, correct?

2. One of the 3.5 bays will be used for your fan controller / temp reader.

3. Are you wanting to use the 5.25 bays for the hard drives?

An easy way is to tell us how many 5.25 bays you have and how many 3.5 bays.

If you're wanting to mount 3.5" hard drives in the 5.25" bays without the use of removable racks, you can get cheapie metal adapters for that purpose. You'd retain the blanking plates on the 5.25" slots. The adapters I'm referring to were generally for mounting a floppy in a 5.25" bay.

Of course, there's always something like these products:

Athena Products @ Newegg

Specifically, this:

5x SATA hard drive bay

4x SATA hard drive bay

3x SATA hard drive bay

[Lost Soul]

well i have 4 5.25 bays and 4 3.25 , what im trying to do, is use 5 hds but im also trying to make this case as silent as possible im keeping 1 cd-rom in the top 5.25 bay and ill leave a fan controller/lcd in the top 3.25 bay

what im gonna do is take 3 hds and suspend them in the 5.25 bays with soeing machine elastic to silent the motion in them (vibration).

but as for the 3.25 bays, i cant suspend the other 2 hds with out removing 3 of the 3.25 bays and creating some type of 5.25 bay conversion, that way i can suspend the other 2 hds, doing this should help aload on vibration and be the ultimate in hd silencing

i know this is unorthodox but the result im looking for should be worth the hassel ,,

so far im thinking of modding the 3.25 cages to make it only hold 1 3.25 bay which is the fan controller / lcd

then creating 4 bars, jb welded or tac welded in place to create a type of 5.25 bay, then by doing that i can use the bars to tie the elastic in place to suspend the remaining hd's

over all by doing this mod i think it should only cost around 15 bucks or less usd at the most,, the parts will be a jb weld, some aluminun bar brackets, and a few yards of soeing machine elastic, ,

Edited December 4, 2006 by Lost Soul

[Lost Soul]

you know i decided to scratch this project and just add a mobile 5 bay sata encloser,, i just started to think being able to swap drives easier would benefit the future.

can any one tell me any noise factors that would come into play on such a setup. ?