Coolermaster Stacker modified to fit 47 HDD, total of 12 Terabyte
 

Controllers I'm using to fill the pci slots, bottom 2 are 3ware 6800 8 ports, 8x200 gig drives each. Middle controller is a 3ware 9500s, 12x500 gig sata, 4th controller is a promise sx6000, top controller is a 3ware 7500 series 12 port, 6 and 12 320 gig drives respectively. I've had a ton of ide drives from a variety of servers i wanted to piss off to one machine, and building this consolidates most of the ide drives into one box, the satas are a recent addition just for this server. i have to make some extra grilles for the front of the machine, apart from that, its wiring, and moving data around. Weighs 53kg, should be 12.3 TB of raid 5 arrays. It's taken 3 months of work, acquiring bits like controllers etc etc has taken 12 months, don't want to know what I've spent on. (remote link requires registration to view, check attachments on this newspost for a sneak peek)

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...d.php?t=602130

Wireless case?

I hope he lives near the arctic circle, most of those drives are going to get rather toasty!

Check out the fan setup, I think airflow is no issue;)

Can't view the thread without signing up. Even if there are fans infront of those drives, all those IDE cables are going to pretty solidly block airflow. Doesn't look to be like there is any cooling for the drives on the bottom of the case either, they won't get any case airflow with all the IDE controller cards and IDE cables above them...

How do you like to have an IT guy like him to work for you? :)
I once have an employee in IT department trying to repair an old printer with duct tape, a good guy in nature. I asked him to get a new printer and spend his time in making sure the Barracuda spam filter was working.

Kougar I attached this pic in the first post: http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/a...erabyte-29.jpg shows the bottom cooling:)
and in front of the front array of HDDs there are fans too, I see no thermal issues here, the cables behind the HDDs can be as airflow restrictive as can be, don't matter much, the HDDs will have fresh air pushed over them straight from outside the case

Should those fans be blowing in or pulling out? :D

ideal config should be blowing air INSIDE the case, from bottom and front, blowing outside, top and rear.

I remember howto by Lazyman "lift case to let air flow in" was that blowing in our out;)

And what power supply will be powering all those drives? If you need that much storage wouldn't it make more sense to sell off the IDE drives and buy some 1TB sata's?

Like to true story I told above ..... why would the IT guy fixes an older printer with duct tape instead of doing something more constructive and productive.:D

But, enthusiasts don't use practical common sense, the same reason people spend more money fixing up an old car when the money spent could get a new one.:)

he rigged a couple of dumb power supplies up to supplement the existing one.
and he wanted to consolidate all of his storage, it all works, why get new stuff when the old stuff meets his needs? :P

that and theres the wank factor... how many times does one get to say "...well I have a 47 drive array in my rig"

We're 2008 and this project is still not finished; would have been cheaper and faster buying a rackmount for 50 HDDs;)