Scratch Build – In Progress Project: MiniITX NAS

I've been wanting to build a small NAS for a few years now. Then a couple weeks ago my main computer had a hard drive start to make a clicking sound. So I figured now would be better than ever before that drive let go.

So I ordered up some components and started fabbing up an aluminum case. Parts list is below:
-Intel D150MO miniITX mainboard
-Serener 120W power supply
-Sabrent SATA PCI card SBT-SRD4
-4x 1.5TB WD Green Drives
-320 GB WD Scorpio Blue Drive
-PNY 2x1GB DDR2 667mhz ram chips
-CoolerMaster 120mm fan
-22mm/16mm vandal switch for power/reset

And from there it was all fabrication. I cut and bent the entire case from 1/16" aluminum.

This is the base with hard drive tray mounted and the outside of case.

Now with outside panel laid overtop to check fit (from the back)

From the front

With front and back fitted to enclose the whole thing.


Next step cutting it all up and fitting windows.

 

Looking good so far. ask one of the moderators to put this in project logs

 

And now for the rest of the photos.

This is all the windows/holes rough cut with a jigsaw.



The after alot of file work



And now with paintwork finished up

 

And now on to the building and adding all the internals.

This is the hard drive rails with the power supply mounted on the inside. I can't take credit for the design of this part. I used the style from the BlackDwarf NAS that was floating around the web lately, and made it fit this box.

and the piggy back 320GB WD Scorpio Blue drive for the OS to run from. Mounted up with a little plexiglass.


Hard drive rack mounted to the base.

Mainboard installed



Now on to some wiring.
I didn't want all the Sata and power connectors floating all over the inside so I cut them all down and made custom length cables. First one was for the 320GB drive.


Then on the the remaining 4 sata cables for the NAS array.


This shows an original cable next to one cut down so you can see how much shorter they are now.



And a pic of the power connector wiring. I have since then redone this and remade it with all black wiring.


I was originally using a Highpoint RAID card that had a provision for activity/failure LEDs for each drive so I soldering up a piece of circuit board to hold all the resistors and leds. here is a front and back picture of it.



I then had to much trouble trying to get the OS to work with that rocketraid card, so I have since ditched it for a standard sata pci card. You'll see it in a later picture.

This is the final set of pictures to show everything put together





And up and running.


This is the sabrent sata card i ended up with.


I started with Windows Home Server, but had lots of trouble with setup and just couldn't get it to run smoothly. So then tried FreeNAS, but also had trouble getting everything to work right. Finally ended up with Ubuntu 10.04, and it's running great. Now just have to figure out what to do with 8 LED holes i drilled in the front panel. Might just make a new panel without them.

 

This does look good so far. I am wondering though where the MB is going to go?

-edit- the MB pics didn't display in the thread for some reason when I looked at this this morning.

 

The motherboard is the bit in the back with all the cables plugged in. It is an ITX format board = tiny.

 

Nice start. Hope you can do it before your hard drive die.

 

Interesting position for the hard drive, will be waiting how this turns out.
How are the dimensions of the build so far?

 

Interesting stuff. I'm looking at doing something similar so I'll be watching.

What will you be running on it for your NAS?

 

yep, why did you choose this position instead of a standard one ?


Ciao

 

And why do you think the drive will die? As far as i know the bearing inside a HDD is designed for any angle of mounting, hence why you can mount flat or on its edge, upside down even. It just doesn't matter.

 

@ Burnout

It's related to his main hd , tha's why he started the Nas project , not with the nas' hd

 

Nice start. I'm interested in this one as I'm going to start my own miniITX project soon as well. Good luck with it!

 

so just to answer a few of the questions that have been brought up. Dimensions are roughly 7.5in wide x 11.75" deep x 10" tall. those aren't exact, just as close as i can get right now without a ruler handy.

I also did finish before my other computers hard drive gave out. got everything copied over and am expecting that old drive to go withing the next week or so.

It's currently running Ubuntu with samba so my windows pc and see it's drives. still working on software to do regular backups and going to setup an itunes server once i figure that out also.

As for hard drive orientation, I like the way BlackDwarf NAS was laid out so i used that. It also promotes good airflow because the single fan mounted on the back is exhausting air to the rear of the case. There are some slots cut under the hard drive that allow the cool air to come in and go up between each drive. They are all running around 33-37C.

 

The design of the case is really cool, and I understand why you copied the placement of the hard drives from the other casemod

 

A binary counter that shows a percentage of disk use.

Great looking mod, i really like what you did with the windows!

 

very innovative. clean simple work. nicely done

 

Very nice work

 

Yeah the windows cut really goes great with the shape of the hd holder behind.

 

oooooooooo really nice.....wish i have those stuff...