Case Mod - In Progress ((CASE CLOSED/ReSETTING)) mITX low-noise Home Server build log

I have decided to buy a IBM M1015 controller to run some of the drives from, since 6 SATA ports on the MB was eventually not enough...


Will not receive the card until 7-20 days from now, so all I can do for now is drawing it:








It fits just perfectly!





Stay tuned for more updates in near future

 

And now the news:


Today I had a few minutes to pull out the "Dremel" and cut away little more of the original 5.25 cage because I had an epiphany... The newly sleeved front PCB were the USB, on, restart buttons and LEDs are placed, it used to be mounted in the bottom of the drive cage!


But with the drive cage totally rearranged that is no longer possible... So a new solution had to be cooked up and I've come up with a small mounting plate cut out of the original bottom, will be "welded" into the front with chemical metal.


So here we go modding away:







Off to a pretty good start:





Done deal:








The front lip it will be "welded" into the front with:





In other news, the things I ordered yesterday from Germany, like the IBM M1015 controller, have already shipped - so if everything go according to what I guess then I have it here before the end of the week


Tomorrow I will see if I can get time to measure cable lengths so I can order the last little detail - SATA(n) and SFF8087 cables!

 

Still building...


Or more precise, still waiting till I can finish the build!


The guys in Germany I ordered my IBM controller from seem to have been a little fast sending out an email saying it was shipped, because today I received a tracking number that shows the package have not been touched until today... So sometime later this week I should get it.


That's not all, I need cables! I have not measured in real because nothing is really assembled yet, but I measured on my drawing and am pretty sure I got the right length.
I just ordered 6x 12" latching SATA III 90' cables and 1x 19" SFF8087 to 4x SATA III, both in the brand Startech ordered over Amazon in the UK




The last piece I need when those things arrive is my unRAID license code to make the whole thing genuine

 

I have now decided that as soon as the whole thing is assembled and I can get my GUID, then I will buy a unRAID Pro key... Rest of the system is already pretty much Pro so why the hell not


In other news:


German retailer ALB computer made a mayor error and forgot to send my IBM ServeRAID card!
They only send a bunch of smaller thing's I needed for other reasons
I am currently trying to get them to understand that I am not cheating them and the card was for real not in the package, but they are German and Germans apparently are not good at taking critic... I hope it will end well...




You see here, no IBM PCI-express card:





So now when I am again just waiting I better do some real work... Today I smoothed out the little bracket I cut recently.


Before:





After:





Molded my chemical metal, that had become a little overdue so it dried up way much quicker than normally (normally it takes around 10 minutes so you can shape it) wich ment it looks not so nice... But who cares, it will not be easily visible.








Looks like I measured correct, because with just a little squeeze the front PCB board fit nicely in place. Even tested the USB and is still easily accesible.





Later in the day yet another brown borring package from the UK arrived:





Inside it was my 50cm SAS cable and my 8 SATA cables:





But why 8? I just like to have a few spares...
Because as they say on the package, good quality is hard-to-find









I hope I can get a few hours to assemble more tomorrow... I want to hopefully finish this build before this month have passed (but with my luck it might not be possible...)




Stay tuned

 

This looks interesting!

And for the name: NASa?

 

Was just toying around with a picture editing program...

at.
M
NAS
C

 

A bunch of pics!!!




I installed rubber grommets on all screws in the cabinet














Ready to assemble:

 

Installed the fan in my Lian Li mount:





Sucking in, blowing down:





Installed:








Feet:





Antivibration thick rubber:

 

My IBM RAID card:





Installed:





Prepared USB for my boot drive:





First HDD installed, 2TB Hitachi:





Mounted with rubber:





Secured cables:





Put rubber list on all sharp edges:

 

Securing cables:





Installing boot drive SD card reader:





SATA cables:








Naming them:





Ready to install:





Plugged in:

 

Assembled front view:





Only missing the front and the top:





Front installed (have to do something about the open 5.25" hole)





Everything assembled:





Turned on for the very first time:




Now I reached the part were it's all about software, I am not a software guy so this is the absolute tricky part for me


Stay tuned to see the final pics whenever I finish it up

 

**CHANGES**

1)
It seems as the motherboard is faulty somehow, no matter what I do it refuses to boot from USB (but I will though have to test with a boot cd and a drive one of the coming days).

2)
My wife got very sick and had to give birth to our daughter 5 weeks before time, so ever since the previous post I have been taking care of my two girls. Both are fine by now.

3)
Because of 2) we have moved the living room furniture around and it's no longer ideal to have a server below the couch, so I need to find another case to contain it in.

4)
Because of 2) I now have many pictures and video I would never be able to recover if anything happened to my storage media, so backup is utterly important now! I need to backup to the cloud for off site solution and peace of mind. (unRAID can not do that, so I am going the Linux route now).

5)
My primary Mac Mini have now moved from a desk to the sofa area and are therefor now a HTPC solution, therefor I need a server capable of running Plex (transcoding not important).

6)
Want something easy, plug and play without major surgery - a Hackintosh Lion Server would have been top nice, but no mITX seems to be supported. My eyes caught the Lian Li PC-Q11A case and that's what Im going for with my current 5 TB drives (will add a few 2.5" drives in the near future for somewhere between 1-2TB more storage).


To be honest I had first seen the PC-Q07 because it is absolute cheap!
But I would have to do some very strange things to it:


Cut out and make rom for the MB in the bottom, plus cut some mesh sheet to cover up all the extra holes in the back.


Barely fit one of my Lian Li drive cages inside for up to 3x3.5" drives but no PSU (would have to be externally or pico PSU).


The box to the side is the normal ATX PSU I am using, tiny tiny case!


...but after drawing it I realized it's not worth the trouble.


THIS is much more doable:






(trick photos, not actual pictures)


Cherry on top - I can even fit my DVD-burner in the case! Have an old Lacie D2 laying around not really using it because it's not primary connected and too much trouble to do so whenever I need a DVD/CD...



Stay tuned, this time it will not take forever before things happen (I hope)

 

Just passed by the Fractal Design site to see if they had anything of interest, and I will be darned - they did!

Node 304

Might go to reconsider all this and maybe it all ends up with a hackintosh server anyway (as I just realized there is a few itx boards that would work)

 

And so it is... Changed my mind and am resetting the whole setup for the purpose of building a Hackintosh Server running OSX instead... Will make a completely new build log when I am done (just so it's not getting as cluttered as this one).

For now you can follow the new build on my blog - Hackingtosh.info

(yes, it has a G in it...)