Hey guys Am looking to put some hard drives in a 19" rack mount bay (ideally 1u) and was wondering if there is anything off the shelf I can get. The only suitable thing I found was the old glyph/motu combo (which I cant find for sale anymore) that held 2 ide hard drives and shared them over a firewire interface which would be perfect (im constructing my audio recording rack with some interfaces and will always need to be able to access the hard drives whenever im recording with the interfaces so they need to be in the rack). Any ideas? I dont need any crazy hot swappable server stuff, just some basic rack mounted hard drives over usb or firewire... thanks in advance! Ben
http://www.span.com/catalog/index.php You can either buy some of their ready made enclosures or buy just the interface boards and slap them in something yourself, like an old amp chassis of ebay or something.
cheers for that - some interesting things although most of it is a bit hardcore for what i want - at least i cant find anything real basic on there? can you see any 1u drive caddies - just something that i can bolt 1 or 2 hard disks into and plug into a controller card for usb or firewire - if so where can I find it? i'm toying with the idea of just getting a cheap old 1u server with power supply off ebay, stripping everything out of it i dont need and getting some ide-usb interfaces off ebuyer and bodging it up!
does it need to be rackmount? I got one of these for my server http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405
Yeah, needs to be rack - the whole point is that i'm currently getting all the gear for my recording rack. Couple of presonus firepod firewire audio interfaces, power amp, headphone amp, and ideally a couple of hard drives in the rack - ill need the hard drives whenever im using the interfaces so it makes sense to build them into the rack. at worst ill just put one of my lacies on top of the case, but a 1u rackmount system would make the whole lot a bit neater!
well if you arent afraid of modding... http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx... Mounting Instrument Cases (1U 19in Rack Case) get the 1u case, drill holes in the bottom and mount the hard drives via the threaded holes on the bottom of the chassis. then get 3 USB to SATA adapters http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=535762 then use eSATA to SATA cables if your adapter has an eSATA output (like the one I linked) http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=504134 and a USB hub to connect them together inside the case. and of course, hack a 1u PSU to power the drives. You could also run a few USB ports to the front for plugging in USB drives, etc... EDIT: looking back now, grab a 3U or 4U case, only 10 pounds more for enough room to fit a full size PSU inside instead of trying to find a 1u PSU for cheap.
