My wooden hard drive case with power supply [pics]

Hey all,
I had an idea for making a minicase to complement my larger Antec server case, that housed up to 6 hard drives and would have its own dedicated power supply.

The hardrives would connect to the Antec case by passing the IDE cables out the back of the minicase and through an open PCI bracket on the Antec, and then connect to an IDE controller card.

So here is the case after 3 days of cutting and nailing:



And here it is after about a week:


The unit switches on independently of the main computer via the switch in the center.
Once on, the red power LED above the fan grill turns on, and the 4 (currently) hard drives rev up. The 6 LEDs at the top are activity lights.
The fan is a 120mm Thermaltake Thunderblade blue LED fan, 78cfm @ 21db.

Heres the fan and fan grill. The fan is of course an intake. I got the grill off eBay for like $5, i love it:


Here are the 6 activity LEDs. Each one is independently wired to the 3rd wire on each of the 80wire IDE cables. The switch is wired to the 20 pin ATX connector, the green and a black cable:



Heres the back of my Antec Smartpower 400w. I made the support plate that surrounds the PS out of 2mm wood, and drilled screwholes. Its very sturdy:



Here are the IDE cables coming out the back. Those are ventilation holes on the rear as you may have guessed, they match up with the 120mm fan on the front:



Theres the left side of the case. I cut lighting bolts in the side and covered them with perspex, which covers the front and other side by the way. The left side is also a door, which hinges upwards:



Here we see the hinges concealed by the edging on the top. You just lift it off to open the door:



Here are the 4 drives in their racks. As you can see there is still room for 2 more hard drives in the bottom slots. The whole hard drive rack slides out of the case real easy, i have a latch on it to secure it in place:



Hmm, quite blurred, but you get the general layout of the inards:



Here are the molexes connecting to the drives. The white cables carry the activity signals up and across to the activity LEDs on the front of the case:



Here we see the messy wiring job, but it doesn't matter as it cant be seen and doesn't obstruct air flow:



A view of the Antec PS:



Here is the Thermalright Thunderblade 120mm. You can see the screws that travel through the wood, through the perspex and through the fan. It was some job cutting the fan shape out of the perspex without it cracking, but I got it in the end:



Sorry for the blur. Here's the case turned on with the red power indicator on too:



Here's a clearer one:



Here's the fan at full steam, pretty cool:



The fan and grill:



Here's the view from My Computer, loads 'n lots of lovely storage:



In case you're wondering, the drives are only 10gb a piece, i raided eBay and got a few bargains. They're only for backup, not continuous day to day use. I leave that up to my 240gb RAID 0.

I sprayed the case with a matt black barbeque paint, using 3-4 coats. In certain light, you can see imperfections, but for the most part it has a nice finish.

Well that's it, what do yas think?

Well I have to say...
Nice job!! Good idea and well done.

That is absolutely amazing. Wouldn't you need quite long IDE cables to go on two hard drives then out the back and through onto the IDE connectors?

Yup, you hit the nail on the head.

I had a bit of trouble finding long cables. 70cm was near enough the longest i could find, without getting rounded cables. (I wanted to do it cheap.)

So i got the cables and soon saw that the 2 hard drive connectors on each cable were like 5 or 6 inches apart, and i only needed then to be about 1 inch apart because as you can see the drives are very close together.

So that would have meant that i would have 5 or 6 inches of cable bunched up in the case unused. So i got really old ide cables i had and ripped off the hard drive connectors (the slave ones) and pressed them in to the new cables so that the connectors would be 1 inch apart.

Now i had 70cm IDE cables with 3 hard drive connectors on each(of course you can only use 2 of them for master and slave), but i gained an extra 5-6 inches of cable on the OUTSIDE of the case which is where i needed as much slack as possible.

So now the minicase is about a foot away from my main Antec case, which is fine for me.

Now that sexy.

So you can turn on a PSU just by using the green wire and any black wire?
Does the ground wire have to be one of the atx connector?

What are average temps in the little wooden case?

And I think most of the airflow will go from the intake to the PSU, those ventilation holes in the back are pointless because there isn't any air being drawn out, I advise putting a silent, moderately weak 80MM there to compensate for the PSU's outtake.
The 120MM intake should be able to handle 2 exhaust's if its anywhere decent, wich it is.

See, i thought that myself, but you'd be suprised at the breeze coming throught those holes.
In regard to temps, i dont really know, i haven't measured it yet. But im guessing its near room temperature, those drives give off nothing, even after 1/2 an hour.



Oh, and im no sure if the ground wire has to be on the ATX, but ever tutorial i've seen uses a ground wire from the ATX connector, and not from a molex.

nice idea, and it turned out great.

voodoomelon said:

They're only for backup, not continuous day to day use. I leave that up to my 240gb RAID 0.

Click to expand...

I would say. Dont use a raid0 for backup my friend. One dies then array dies. performance is good but security is better

wow that thats a great idea and looks awesome! i like the lightning bolt a lot and lights up nicely. good job

Good job man. I think the way you did the fan makes the case.

Really sweet. You say you just turn on the HD's when the computer is already on, and it doesnt harm anything? Just wondering. Looks awesome!!

Very cool. I like how you designed it all, looks pretty thought out and not rushed. Good job!

Hmmm... I have some hard drives and PSU lying around.... I just dunno about the super-long ide cable part... I would like to put a gadget like this quite a ways away... Guess could buy a USB adapter...

the is a sweet idea , and the case looks sweet , very nice work there

Love It! Gives me great ideas on what to do for my SATA Array. Currently they just hang around.

I have a question..Are you powering these drives seperatly from the computer ? Is there any specific order you power the system up ?

First, i am aware of the risks of RAID 0, hence the hard-drive case for backup. But you can't beat 266MB/s (theoretical)

And to boot up, simply turn on the minicase first, then boot up the main PC.
I did have one or 2 problems to begin with, but ironed them out.

Very clever.
How do you bring the IDE cables into your main box?

must say very nice mod you did there, extremely neat, A for effort ......or is it E..

Thanka very much.

I have a PCI IDE controller card in the bottom slot of my Antec case (here), and I simply took the back bracket of the card. The IDE cables then simply pass through that slot and attach to the IDE connectors on the card.

I do have 2 free IDE connectors on the motherboard, but as you can imagine, the cables wouldn't reach very far in a full size server tower, hence the controller card.