Trying to source this Chinese ITX NAS Case (NSC-800)

Ditto - I think I've only actually swapped out failed drives in all of my RAID arays a total of 3-4 times over 3-4 years!!! But those 3-4 times would have been much simpler with hot-swap bays With this case running $400 or so - the 5.25" Hot Swap bays would be MUCH cheaper .

I'd still snap up an ITX case that holds 8x 3.5" drives inside (plus a 2.5" OS drive) - but that search comes up cold. The Lian-Li ITX offerings are SO CLOSE!!! ("Missed it by that much" ) .

You could try a two enclosure solution (you could attach the two enclosures if you like)
One mini-itx enclosure stick an SAS controller with external SAS connector to an SAS DAS enclosure with hot swap bays. Or if you want to forgo hot swap fractal design has a nice m-itx enclosure designed for NAS applications.
Alternatively you could get a rackmount enclosure and rack it, or take of the handles and paint the grey metal black and stick it on a shelf http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219040

I have solved my two digit terabyte needs by using 5to3 HDD cages connected to a raid card. This system has evolved over the years to what it is now:

- a CoolerMaster centurion 590 case ( the smallest 9 5.25 external bay case that I could find )
- three 5to3 5.25 hot-swap cages ( for a total of 15 3.5' HDDs )
- 3ware 9650 for up to 16 sata HDD's
- a corsair closed loop water cooler
- my old system: crosshair II with 8GB 1066MHZ and a AMD 1090T
- intel 160GB SSD for the OS ( also from my old system )
- Gigabyte ODIN GT 850w also from my old system
- at this moment, 10 2TB Samsung HDD's in RAID6 for a total of 14.6TB ( still space for 5 more )


The end result is: having a 5+ hot-swap raid system is expensive: 100USD for the case plus 3x 100USD for the disk cages, plus 60 or so for a power supply, and the bill is already on the 400's without shipping or other stuff.

For the operating system I am using Zentyal. A similar one would be ClearOS. I prefer Zentyal as it is Debian based instead of CentOS based ( clearOS ).

For a pure NAS OS, FreeNAS or OpenMediaVault are great options. OpenMediaVault is a FreeNAS fork based on Debian ( instead of being FreeBSD based like FreeNAS ).

Yeah - I already have an ATX C2D NAS all setup with 10 drives (8x 1TB on Areca ARC-1220 in RAID-6, a single 2TB for "overflow" and a 36GB Raptor OS Drive). Needless to say it saturates GIG-E no sweat

What really lit my fire on trying to find a smaller case was: I recently picked up a ReadyNAS Ultra-4 Plus, and this thing is TINY (and I do mean teeny-weenie!)!!! It holds 4 drives, so I stocked it full of four 3TB 5K3000's. Needless to say, this thing is quite literally like 1/5th the size of my ATX NAS, and has MORE CAPACITY with the 3TB Drives! The ATX NAS just seems so monstrous with the Ultra-4 Plus sitting on top of it!!!

I really just want to transplant my current ATX NAS into the NSC-800 that I started this thread about. Swapping to a mATX form-factor would be a step in the right direction, but I'd be looking at all internal drives when the ITX NSC-800 would be smaller, AND offers the 8x hot swap bays - hard to beat that IMO!

Thanks again for all of the input. However it appears that if I can't get the NSC-800 cases from a domestic retailer that this deal ain't gonna happen for the estimated $400-$500 "shipped to my door" alibaba.com overseas price. An ATX NAS it will remain...

Rock on

@mademax
Really hope u can get these for a descent price.
It's exactly what im looking for!
And love your build pics

Hey hey,

Just heard back from the Alibaba seller! I can likely score a small run of these (4-6) for prices along what Mademax listed earlier. The import fees should be quite a bit less (if any) in the USA (or so I'm told) - so please let me know if anyone has any interest. Shoot me a PM to work out any details. If this is against forum rules - I apologize in advance.

I plan on getting a NSC-200 (to use as an HD test station) and an NSC-800 (for the NAS) for myself regardless.

Rock on!!!

I don't mean to derail the thread, but i always thought software raid was safer? Just wondering why you want a box that can fit a raid card.

Randyman: that's great news . As soon as I finish testing the case I will post some more comments about it.

PaperClipGod: software raid is as safe as it is hardware raid. Regarding fiting a raid card, it doesn't need to be a raid card. For that 8 bay chassis, I don't know of any mini-itx motherboard that has 8 sata ports ( or 9 ports, one more for the system ), so you really need some space to place a card ( be it raid or just sata ). HighPoint has a bunch of them with lots of ports, and very small in size.

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/cs-series_rr2600.htm

mademax said:

Randyman: that's great news . As soon as I finish testing the case I will post some more comments about it.

PaperClipGod: software raid is as safe as it is hardware raid. Regarding fiting a raid card, it doesn't need to be a raid card. For that 8 bay chassis, I don't know of any mini-itx motherboard that has 8 sata ports ( or 9 ports, one more for the system ), so you really need some space to place a card ( be it raid or just sata ). HighPoint has a bunch of them with lots of ports, and very small in size.

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/cs-series_rr2600.htm

Click to expand...

ahhh... right. obv there arent going to br 8 sata ports on a mini itx board!

thanks!

PaperclipGod said:

I don't mean to derail the thread, but i always thought software raid was safer? Just wondering why you want a box that can fit a raid card.

Click to expand...

PaperclipGod said:

ahhh... right. obv there arent going to br 8 sata ports on a mini itx board!

thanks!

Click to expand...

The need for 8 ports is indeed one reason, but I've always leaned on hardware RAID setups for redundancy (RAID-5/6) and for the raw speed. I just don't trust software RAID any further than I could throw it. Software RAID-5 (or RAID-6 if it even exists in Software) is notoriously slow on its writes - the "All in one" NAS boxes like the ReadyNAS exhibit this and are not capable of saturating Gig-E with writes, and can barely saturate Gig-E on Reads (actually can't most of the time!)! My Hardware NAS saturates Gig-E in both directions w/o breaking a sweat, and I can lose 2 entire drives w/o losing any data along with this performance.

I use hardware RAIDs on my Desktop, Recording DAW, and my primary NAS. I use software RAID via the ReadyNAS as a 2nd backup to the main NAS. I also use "software RAID" (Intel RST) for RAID-0 SSD OS partitions - no parity calculations needed .

FYI - I'll be ordering these cases soon. If no one wants "in", I'll just order the NSC-200 and the NSC-800 for myself. PM for details...

(OT again) What about 8 port add-in cards, sans hardware RAID? I've been looking for a add-in card to give me additional ports for my WHS, but at most what I find affordable is just 4 port cards. Anything with more ports then that, usually is a hardware RAID card which automatically ups the price significantly. Also, most do not pass through/allow reading of the S.M.A.R.T. data from the drive. Any suggestions?

You might want to start your own thread for getting answers to specific RAID Card suggestions and such. This is really about the NSC-800 cases, so I doubt you will get much input on this thread.

I can tell you my Areca hardware RAID cards (ARC-1222x, ARC-1220, ARC-1210) can acces SMART data (can be seen via the Areca's Web Interface per drive). But again, these are true "hardware" cards with their own CPU and RAM - and their high-performance and track record in critical applications speaks for themselves .

I'll be placing my order with Alibaba on Monday afternoon - If I haven't heard back from anyone, I will only be getting a single NSC-200 and a single NCS-800 for myself. If you want to "get in" and be able to lump the pricey overseas delivery fees in with my common order (one delivery fee for upto 6 units!) - please get back to me before then via PM...

FWIW - I ordered 1x 2-Bay, 1x 4-Bay, and 1x 8-Bay unit for myself. Now I just have to wait for the slow boat from China

I'll let you know how it works out with the RAID card and all (I'm sure these will be identical to the ones mademax recieved last year). PS - The 8-Bay models now come with a 2x 2.5" bay so you can have a RAID-1 OS Array off the MoBo's NB, and then run the 8x Hot Swaps off the RAID card...

Paid more than I wanted, but at least I'm getting 3 cases for the flat $100 shipping fee (instead of a single case for the same $100 fee!!! ). USA Import Taxes on "PC Cases" is only 2.5% - so that won't be too bad at all...

Exciting! Hope I'll be able to afford all the bells and whistles some day (soon).

neonblingbling said:

Exciting! Hope I'll be able to afford all the bells and whistles some day (soon).

Click to expand...

Hey guys,

I live in Europe and have also been in contact with the manufacturer of the NSC-800 case.

One thing that has put me off from purchasing a batch is the sas/sata backplane, specifically regarding the status leds.

Can someone comment if it is possible, to have the leds report faulty drives (for example through blinking) in case I use a raid card such as LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i?

I saw the comment earlier that this won't work without the raid card and it only shows indication for activity and power, but with this raid card, can I connect the backplane to the card and have the leds properly report failure? The raid card specification says it supports Fault LED support through SGPIO, but I dont know if SGPIO can connect to the NSC-800 backplane.

Kind regards,
Dieter

Hi Dieter,

The sas/sata backplane doesn't have support for SGPIO or other backplane protocols. Its just a PCB with sata ports. The power and access leds are driven by the power and sata cables, I mean:
- the power led of the hdd lits if there is an hdd taking power from the plug
- the access led of the hdd lits if there is sata activity on the port.

so, no visual suport for faulty drives.

mademax said:

Hi Dieter,

The sas/sata backplane doesn't have support for SGPIO or other backplane protocols. Its just a PCB with sata ports. The power and access leds are driven by the power and sata cables, I mean:
- the power led of the hdd lits if there is an hdd taking power from the plug
- the access led of the hdd lits if there is sata activity on the port.

so, no visual suport for faulty drives.

Click to expand...

Hi mademax,

thanks for your feedback.

Kind of incredible that they produce such a NAS style case but then have a "dumb" backplane with no connection possibilities to a raid card.

Oh well

Kind regards,
Dieter

OK... I'm a bit confused now and can't figure out the answer via the pics provided...

How will this setup with the PCB Backplane work with a RAID card like the Areca?

Doesn't look like it's really going to?

It'll work just like it would if you didn't have a backplane and just a bunch of drives in a normal case. The backplane is there just to make hotswapping drives easier.

So there is a SATA connection for each drive on the Backplane?