Hi there As a long long long (did I mentioned long?) time reader, today I will make my first post and my first work, whish is worth to be shown in the net (hopefully) ... But first I have to say: Because I'm not from the UK, my English might not be this good Okay, here we go... Uhm not really, here is the current "changelog" November 24th 2008: Beginning, Planning, First Impressions (this posting) November 28th 2008: Cutting blowholes in the backplate, air-cooling etc... *klick* Now the real start In all my years working with the computer, I learned something about myself... I can't delete any data So I need more and more of avaible diskspace to work with... this time I wanted to have enough space for nearly everything I have on all my computers. That's the reason why everybody thinks I'm a Data-Junky, and to be honest, they are right The hardware 5 x Samsung Spinpoint 750 GB 1 x SATA to eSATA Port-Multiplier 2 x 80mm fan some cables and wires The materials - mostly aluminium - wood (for tability reasons) - some screws (hopefully not much) The plan Well, yes, I have to admit, it's not looking thiiiiis difficult, but the devil is sitting in the details (hope this phrase is also known in English...) The contruction... Bottom part Top part And the part where I'm cutting out the front and back part. As you can see I tried to avoid every possible source for scratches or other damages of the aluminium For god's sake, there is a foil (or is it film?) on the side, which will be visible in the final case. As you can see, I used a breaking bensh, an investment of 30 Euros for 640mm of breaking power! It wasn't this easy to turn the 0.8mm strong aluminium plates... but finally, I made it. I bought this clamps extra for my breaking bensh because the other things you can see in a picture above are completely unusable for that kind of work. After finishing the top, botton, front and back, I wanted to see, how it looks: And I liked, what I saw I was proud of my own and first metal-work, but than I've noticed, that I've made a mistake when measuring... The fan is 80mm x 80mm and the "inner part" of the front / back "was" 80mm before turning the aluminium ... so the fans where sitting too tight and I had to do the work again Some more pictures of the case to show, what I'm trying to do... As you can see, in this stadium of my work I allready have the "cage" for my harddrives. Sorry, I forgott to make pictrues of that But you can use your imagination to make pictures, just use the pics with the breaking bensh some pics ago and.... you know You can also see the Port-Multiplier (the little red thing in the buttom right corner) and it's future position in the case... Years ago, I learned to be a designer. Now I'm working as an datacenter admin (linux, SAP and stuff like that...) but my passion is still design. So tried to make something, where I don't have thousends of screews, disturbing the "beautyness" of my creation Hopefully, the whole case will have only 8 screews (except the back), which will be visible on the side panels (not included in this statium of process, hehe) So that's it for the first try. I hope my english was not too terrible at all, more of my work will come in the next hours (maybe) or tomorrow C0R4X ps: If this is the wrong forum or wrong prefix of the thread-title, feel free to change it Mr. Moderator
When the bottom and top are on it looks very clean and professional from that side. Love it. I didn't see it mentioned, but how are you getting power in for the fans and drives? Going to run a power brick/pico-psu/regular power supply? Looks very cool though. I like it, keep it up!
Thats a nice and clean External HD Array, looks good in a living room just next to your TV. Are you gonna paint it?
Thank you so far NightrainSrt4: Well, the power-"problem" is indeed a problem, but I found a "Quick 'n' Dirty" Solution I will just use the given power-supply from the several computers. I will put a molex-plug to the front of the computer and the back of the array. Allready tested it and build an cable Little preview: It will do it Trip.X: Well, I allways liked the clean and stylish design from my apple macbook, so I think the case won't be painted. Maybe nature or brushed And unfortunatally I don't have a TV, only have a line and a beamer
I also liked the Mac's, im planing a case mod on the centurion 590, just clean and simple with a large window in the side panel. But its for next year, when i've got my new pc
And the next part... cutting out the blow-holes Well, I red a lot of threads where so many people are cutting out holes by using a drill and after a bit more of drilling and cutting with a jigsaw, they are honing (man, hopefully this is the right word, lol) In my case, I wasn't in mood to do the same thing, so I just bought some tools, which can do this for me Essays for my drill to cut threw bi-metal materials. Thank god for this invention Of course, the biggest essay was only 75mm in diameter, the fans have 80mm... but... will work with 75mm too... Because I used this things for metal the first time, I carefully red the manual and the manuel sais: "Uh, thanks for using me, but pleeeease only run me on drills with 120 to maximum 200 rounds per minute..." Naaa, okay, that might be a problem, because I only have a battery powered drill, which has not enough power, and a drill from my father, which is likley as old as me, over 26 years, but still running like hell. This machine only has two "gears". Too fast and much too fast. What I mean is: Something over 800 rpms and up. But I'm fearless, so I grap my glasses (use glasses while working with metal every time!!) and started... I was pretty surprised of the result, but nevertheless, I had to hone... d**n it. But lucky me, not very much You remember, only 75mm in diameter, but I was looking realy cool... I was so excited how it would look with grills... ah I was satisfied But I knew... there have to go some screws threw... After cutting the holes for the fans it was time to go on with the backplate. Cutting the hole for the eSATA Port wasn't that easy as I hoped... although, it was realy cold under the roof. Can't belive, that someone did not insulated the roof... but wearing my coat was a good solution And as you can see here, my mission to cut the small hole as nice as the bigger holes has failed But I will care about this later... Adding the holes for the grill and fan-screws... After putting the port-multiplier in place, I remembered, I had a problem with powering the whole thing. Not enough space and not willing to spend 120+ Euros for a small, internal power-supply I decided to use a molex-plug and some wires to lay the power-connection from the PC out of the case to get enough power. Sorry for the partly bad pictrues... I realy realy like me iphone, realy, but the camera is crap... Just testing with wood-spax-screws... will buy some screws today... Without fans... ... and with... from behind... and front-view That's all for today... comming up next: Internal wiring and putting the drives in place... hopefully c&c welcome
Wow, it took one whole day (more than 24 hours) to check my posting by a moderator... there must be a lot of new members to check But it's okay
Very nice, sleek design and good work so far! Where did you get that e-sata - sata-thing? Looks like an excellent thing for this kind of build. I have some plans for a NAS/external drive myself, but don't have the money for the HDDs right now.
© http://www.addonics.com I found it at www.conrad.de, one of the biggest electronical store in Germany... Can't say, where to find it in the UK, sorry... but it's about 80 Euros... might be something about 60 GBP... But there are some restrictions while using the Port-Multiplier: - Max of 750 GB harddrives (or less) - Only useable on a raid-sata Port (you have to use a sata -> eSATA bracket, or maybe with onboard eSATA) - Chipset have to support the function Port-Multipliing. Nearly every chipset is able to to that except nvidia chipsets. A site ni English, with a lot of these kind of hardware can be found here: http://www.coolgear.com/
