Of course it is! That's what makes it worthy of doing. And even more worthy of posting here! Good luck; can't wait for a full project log of this puppy.
Was just thinking, if you want them stacked close together you could also use watercooling? Another idea I just had is maybe have a rolodex effect for the drives. And maybe have a base with the mobo and raid controller etc with the rolodex effect on top with the 8 drives. I was thinking this would make it easier to run power and cables to the drives.
dude, you really have me thinking here... you have some great ideas! I'm currently still building and upgrading my main box, but it's nearly there, especially in terms of hardware. After that, i'd very much want to build a home-server just like what you are describing right now, and it's almost certain to be hung on the wall. I'll be keeping a very close eye on this, and i'd very much appreceate everything you have to say about windowing your drives. It'll be mighty interesting to see By the way, i'd have to vote for mounting all the drives to the wall as opposed to inside a tube. Where is the tube gunna go mate? edit: ooooooo +1 for the rolodex!
You could mount the tube in the corner of the room. Or, since it'd be tall and thin, just make it stand on the ground (easier to hide wires etc going to it that way anyway) like one of those tall floor-standing speakers. Jesus, there must be something in the water, I've just had another idea! You could make a coffee table with all those HDDs. Rip the tops off them, light them from behind the platter with some LEDs. You could even have the LEDs cycling slowly through different colours in a syncronised way. work out some circuitry to move the arms in the HDDs and arrange them in neat rows. Then have them sandwiched between some toughened glass and you have a work of art. Or an annoyingly distracting coffee table that sounds like a server room...
I'm now thinking combined raid array, 8 foot tube...floor to cealing.....middle of the room....high-tech pole dancing !! (or is that too much for this forum )
Woah!! Slow down.... you might wanna save some of these ideas for when you next have a dry spell But the coffee table one had occured too me already I happen to have a coffee table at the moment which has a 2ft sqaure glass panel in the middle. Obviously, all this hinges on two things :- a) disposable income... b) ... to buy enough hard drives to allow me to screw up a few Lets face it, the whole idea of windowing a hard drive is a Fundamentally Bad (tm). The chances of this succeeding are slim, and as much as I like the idea from a purely visual point of view, I really really would like it to be functional too.
Right... couple of photos of the first hard drive mod (and, incidentaly, my first mod, period ) I'm trying to SU the actualy idea, but I'm new to it, so still learning. Plus, I'm at the whim of my wife's laptop, as I don't run windows, and there's no version of SU for linux yet...
errr.... damn. They're working for me. I uploaded them to my cp, and just copied the BB code into (IMG) (/IMG) ..with [ ] brackets, obviously. Where did I go wrong ??
Work for me. I thought you would remove the lid before you started hacking holes in it, I think that's traditional... You did, right?
Yup, I did The six cover bots come off, plus the head arm center bolt. There was no 'warrenty void if removed' sticker on this drive. Bagged the naked drive straight away to minimise dust. I wouldn't do this with an expensive drive... for that I'd do this all in a cleanroom or atleast 'cleanbox' of some sort. After that, I just hacked the window out of the top area of the disk, leaving the arm bolt hole intact. I just drilled a corresponding hole in the perpex to allow access. I then shaped the perspex around all the mounting bolts in the middle, and filed it down until it was a nice fit, with rounded-over edges. When I stuck it down with the acrylate, you can see where the recess beneath the arm pivot point filled with glue, and the vapour has turned the perspex white...very weird. Oh, and also, before glueing the perspex on, I had polished the metal cover itself to be pretty much mirror finish. And yes, it still works... been going for a couple of days now
For your first mod ever starting on a hard drive is ambitious. But man you've pulled it off, it looks great.
thxs... the technique needs perfecting, and I still have doubts about larger capactity drives being sucessfull... but I'm keeping the faith
I did that to an old laptop drive once. Wanted to put it in a clear external firewire case. Never got around to the clear firewire case. I used clear silicone to glue the cover on. Just use a thin bead. I ran the drive like that for a few years. Did the steamy bathroom "clean room" method. I've thought about getting a small sand blasting cabinet for a clean room. Throw a hepa filtered fan in it to give it a small positive pressure with clean air.
Sounds like a plan..... Although I was just gonna make the cabinet out of laminated mdf But the hepa filter is spot on. Mind you, I might try my next drive with the bathroom trick Mine is constantly hosed down by my four year old... I doubt there's much dust in there anyway
