First off this project is my entry into the PCA and A4T member hosted case mod competition.

Now for the Explaination
The plans for this project are not quite finalized as of yet, but I think I have a good idea where it is headed at this point. My roommate is helping me with the design on this one and as some of you at PCA may remember he also was the one to design my project last summer entitled The King and the Horse. Since this is part of the competition I do not have a ton of time to work on this however I am taking summer classes right now during the week and I work the weekends so I should have an interesting time getting all the work done in time.

My current plans for this project
Now as the title suggests, this is going to be a computer for data storage. Keep in mind that my current computer was to some extent designed for a similar purpose, but no longer can suit my needs as it is a midtower case with 9 hard drives in it right now. As of right now I am looking at designing the case to support up to about 30 hard drives with the minimum storage drive being 500GB. Yes you read that right UP TO 30 HARD DRIVES with the SMALLEST STORAGE DRIVE BEING 500GB. For that reason I needed a lot of space in this case and as has been the case with all my previous projects I love these $5 cases. Slight problem with $5 cases, they are all small midtower cases. So to make up for this I will be using two identical cases that will be joined together. One side will house the hard drives and the other side will be holding the rest of the hardware. I do have some plans as to the theme of this case, but I dont really want to reveal that as of yet.

Current known and possible parts list with links
2 midtower cases to be hooked together - already purchased pics attatched (will be only pics here with no logo or date stamp)

Castor wheels to be able to move this beast - already purchased

Asus M2N32-WS PRO (has 9 built in SATA and 2 PCI-X ports as well as PCI-E X16)
Newegg.com - ASUS M2N32-WS Pro AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI ATX Server Motherboard - Server Motherboards

Cheap Dual Core AMD CPU (havent picked one out yet, but I dont really need much power or speed here)

Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 pci-x 8 port SATA controller card
Newegg.com - SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card - Controllers / RAID Cards

G.Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800 ram - already purchased
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Inexpensive video card with good H.264 hardware decoding. Will be used to output HD content to a 42" 1080P display. Asus Radeon HD3450 with 512MB ram is the card I am currently looking at. Hardware decode in linux would be great if someone can point me in the right direction for that, otherwise windows is fine.
Newegg.com - ASUS EAH3450/HTP/512M Radeon HD 3450 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

I also have 8 hard drives right now that I will be moving over to this system as soon as it is completed. Will also probably use a small hard drive as the boot drive in addition to these other 8 drives.

Closing points
Any comments, questions, suggestions, feel free to give them. I do have a plan for this project and the theme is pretty well set. However I dont want to give out all the information yet. You will just have to stick around and keep an eye on the project if you want to know that. Case pics below.

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Quote: Originally Posted by Krimson (A4T) what sort of hard drive configuration are you going to do? Raid5 should probably be one of the better choices.. you get parity, plus you only lose one drive's storage. if you want to do a true raid, you may run into some problems trying to put all 30 drives on one full raid.. i would absolutely not recommend spanning all your drives across your 9 onboard ports, and 2 pci-x cards.. if your board dies, you will be up ****'s creek unless you can find the identical board. are those raid cards daisy-chain-able? other than the technical aspect needing possibly a rethink, i always love the ideas of cramming tons of storage space into one server =P

I dont really plan on doing much in the way of RAID at least with the initial drives since they are almost all already full of data and are all individual drives. Right now across my 6 500GB and 1 1TB hard drives I only have about a total of 540GB free space so I would need to get several new drives to set up any raid arrays and I would have to move a lot of data around several times. If I were to do any RAID though, it would most likely be RAID 5. Also the pci-x cards only have software raid support.

Also update with progress pics will follow a bit later this afternoon.

Quote: Originally Posted by Snake2Snipe I dont really plan on doing much in the way of RAID at least with the initial drives since they are almost all already full of data and are all individual drives. Right now across my 6 500GB and 1 1TB hard drives I only have about a total of 540GB free space so I would need to get several new drives to set up any raid arrays and I would have to move a lot of data around several times. If I were to do any RAID though, it would most likely be RAID 5. Also the pci-x cards only have software raid support. Also update with progress pics will follow a bit later this afternoon.

Wow thats alot of pr0n! W00t!

Quote: Originally Posted by Sparky Wow thats alot of pr0n! W00t!

A lot of pr0n indeed.

So now for the updates for today. I took a couple pics of the case frame in the general position that it will be in at the end as well as continued work on the primer and paint on the different pieces of the case. The other portion that work started on today was the stencils for the details of the paint job. One of the stencils is now cut out and ready for use (I did one test spray with it to make sure it looked good). A second stencil is being worked on and it will hopefully be ready for me to cut it out either tomorrow or Thursday. I have finally completely figured out the drive rails and will get the rest of the pieces to work on those tomorrow. I will also be cutting the pieces and drilling the holes to mount all the rails as well as continuing with the paint job.

So I still dont really think I want to reveal the theme of this project as of yet. We will have to wait until some of the stencils are painted on to see if you can guess it. The only thing I have left to figure out is the front panel since the ones that came with the case just will not work. It will all depend on what I come up with while at the store tomorrow picking up the last of the needed supplies to finish this case.

All pieces should be at least started with paint tomorrow. There will also be a lot of drilling for me to do as well as a bunch of cutting. Anyway pics of today's work follow. First pic has cases side by side, second is two side panels with bondo on one and one with primer as well as top panels with base black and one of the two bottom pieces with primer coat. Third pic - case frames with first primer coat, bottom panel with a little more primer. Forth and final pic - two top panels with more black paint, one of two side panels now with reasonably solid black base coat. All four pics today have the notebook with project name, PCA and A4T mentioned and today's date (just to make things official).

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It got a little bit late and as such a little bit dark to get any decent pics of the paint today, but it is looking fairly good. I have the black coats started on just about everything now. I also started working on cutting the pieces that will be used to make the hard drive racks. Pics of the first couple pieces attached. I may get a little bit of work done on the case tomorrow before I head home for the weekend, but probably not much more than a bit more cutting. I should be able to start work on the paint designs early next week since all the stencils should be done and ready for me by sunday evening when I return to my dorm. Expect some pics of the paint at that point.

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So it has been a couple days since my last update. There isnt that much progress for me to report right now but there is one good pic for me to post. This is the first top layer and unfortunately I didnt mask off enough as it turns out but I will take care of that later. For now the pic.

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Well it rained a bit yesterday so I wasn't able to get any painting done. Actually I didnt work on the case at all yesterday. Partly also due to the fact that I have a program due on thursday that I am working on for one of my classes. As such I am running on 24 hours with no sleep right now and have no idea how much sleep I will be getting tonight. This of course means not much progress should be expected today and as is normal for me right now I will be heading home for the weekend so I wont be getting anything done then either. I will be pushing the designer to finish up all of his stuff today though since he is going to be gone for about 3 weeks starting tomorrow.

Maybe if it doesnt rain today I will be able to get the one side panel done, we will see.

Ok so today I finished the work on scaling and cutting out the stencil for one side panel and finished with the main images on the other side panel. Pics of the paint job and the finished stencil are attached below. I had a lot of sanding to do today between the two side panels (one panel to clean up the over spray and the other to just clean up the base). The one I had to clean up the base coat needs at probably one more nice coat of black on it before I am able to use the stencil to get the design on there, but that should only be a day or two away at this point.

I still have some work to do on the pieces that will make up the hard drive racks as well as the front panel and back panel. Also not really sure about design for the top yet or how I am going to latch the two sides of the case together so the case doesnt swing open on its own.

As for the parts going into this build I am sitting around waiting for the motherboard I am looking at to come back in stock at newegg before I place the order, hopefully that will be fairly soon.

pics here sorry they are not the best quality, lighting is not too good around here. Surely some of you know what the theme is at this point right???

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So yesterday I decided to go out and get a jigsaw and all I can say is wow. It worked really well for cutting the aluminum pieces that will be making up the drive rails. Other than the cutting I worked on the paint a bit more yesterday and today. Using the stencil I have now painted the designs onto both side panels, though there is a bit more that I will be working on with those still. Not really much more to report so here are the pics.

both painted side panels and all the cut pieces of metal

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Not a big update today since I was busy with some other stuff, including school work. I did however get just a little bit further on the side panel, it is now only missing a couple small bits and some clean up work before I am done with the panel. Pic attached

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Well I got a bit distracted from the task of working on the case today since the UPS guy stopped by today to deliver some goodies for me. These would include the following
Parts to go in this case:
Asus M2N32-WS PRO motherboard
AMD X2 4400 cpu
Asus ATI Radeon HD3450 512mb
Supermicro PCI-X 8 port sata controller card
Netgear 5 port gigabit switch

Part for other computer:
VisionTek ATI Radeon HD4870 (for use in other computer)

Parts I already had:
PC Power and Cooling 750 silencer
G.Skill 2x2gig DDR2 800 ram
1x 80gig maxtor IDE drive - will use as boot drive only
1x 1tb WD green power SATA drive
1x 750gb Seagate SATA drive

Parts I "borrowed":
roommates CD drive
roommates old midtower case

Parts I still need to buy
6-8 120mm fans need to have good air flow without being too crazy loud
If I could find the Enermax uc-12fab-b fans anywhere in stock for a decent price I would get them, but I cant. I have 3 of those fans in my main computer and I love them, but they do not seem to be made anymore.

As of right now I have the parts minus the two large drives (and the 4870) installed in my roommate's case and running just to make sure all the parts are working. I will install one of the two large drives later to make sure the sata controller card is working, and maybe the other to one of the motherboard SATA ports to make sure they are working as well. I have an additonal 7 drives that I am using right now. I will be moving them over once the new case is done because there is not room in the current midtower case for 10 hard drives.

Currently have it running a stripped down version of Win XP just to make sure things work, will probably be going with Windows Server 2008 once I get it all set up and in the real case.

ok that is more than enough of my talking, here is a pic of the hardware up and running (though it is hard or impossible to actually tell that it is running I promise that it is).

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So I am now in my last week of summer quarter and I am trying hard to get this project finished. My jigsaw once again saved me a ton of work. I used it to cut 2 metal panels for the front of the case which would have taken me forever and a fair number of cutting disks with my dremel. With the jigsaw it took about half an hour to cut the 2 pieces and they are fairly thick steel so that is really quite good.

Thursday I also spent a good hour or two wet sanding to clean up the paint on the side panels though I dont have any pics of that.

Today I spent some time doing a bit of cutting for the framing of the front panels and attaching all the pieces together. Once the pieces were all attached I added some bondo to fill in the holes. With the bondo I will be able to make the panels seem to be a more cohesive unit rather than just a couple pieces of metal that were thrown together. I still need to cut the fan holes and a cd-rom slot in the front panels but that will come a bit later.

Any way here are a couple pics of the front panels that I worked on today. I forgot the date and pca / a4t tags within the pic so I will update with new pics tomorrow, until then here are ones without that.

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So this is a little bit of a disappointing moment for me. This is where I announce that I will be unable to complete this project in time for the voting. When I entered the contest I knew that it would be hard for me to finish in time and even now with the extension of the deadline I will not be able to finish. With work and school taking so much of my time I was just not able to spend the time needed on this case. I am saying this all now because I will not be around for the next 2 weeks to work on this project. Now having said that I give you the last update before the end of the contest.

The only real progress I made since my last post was to get the fan holes and the cd-rom drive hole cut in the front panels. I never did retake the pics of the front panels with the date and PCA / A4T in the photo so if you need to ignore them or remove them for this worklog to fit within the rules of the contest feel free or post here and I can remove them.

Things that still have to do:
add pac-man and the ghosts to the side panel with the maze
add eyes to the ghosts on the other side panel
add pelets to the side panel with the large ghosts
finish hard drive racks
mask hard drive racks with painted plexi
this plexi will be painted similar to the side panel with the ghosts but they will be blue in color
paint a large pac-man on top of case that will "open its mouth" when the case is opened
mount hinges to the back of the case
mount wheels on bottom of case
finish front panels
paint front panels black
mesh the fan holes and paint mesh in color of ghosts and pac-man
mount front panels to case
clear coat everything
wet sand and polish out clear coat to a nice finish
install all hardware into case
(repeat next two steps till the case is full)
realize that all my hard drives are full
buy more hard drives

Wow well now that I list it out I still have a lot of work to do. Hopefully I am able to finish before school starts for fall, at least through the clear coating.

Below I have pics of the front of the case, both sides, and a pic from the front with the case slightly open so you can see how it will open when it is finished.

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I really didnt have much time to do stuff these past couple weeks and i really wont have much time in the coming weeks either. It hasnt helped my progress that the weather turned to typical pacific northwest fall weather already so painting outside is not as easy to do now. I may be able to get some work done on the case durring the week of the 15th but i dont really know my plans at this point. So I will leave you with just a small update of what I did get done this last week.

I worked on getting the support for the hard drive racks mounted into the case. These main support pieces still need to be painted but just getting them mounted was enough of a pain. I also got the hinges and the wheels mounted just as a test to see how it all fit together. There is a little bit of adjustment that needs to be done with the hinges to make them fit better, but they are close. The main support posts for the hard drive are in a fitted great, just need to take them out to make the cuts for the racks to slide in right and mount the tracks on the front and back of the case for the racks there. Other than that there is a small bit of paint work left for the outside of the case as well as painting the hard drive rack pieces shown in this picture. Then there will just be the making of a latch to hold the two sides together and mounting everything.

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