wrote

Thermaltake makes a nifty three 5 1/4" bay cage with a 120mm fan in front of it

Yeah, http://www.thermaltake.com/product/C...cage/a2309.asp

That's a nifty device. I'm sure this is by design (to aid in
cooling), but it's only a 1:1 mapping of 5.25" bays to 3.5" bays.

Yeah, its really just a decent way of providing good airflow
over the 3.5" drives when they are in the 5.25" drive bay stack.

Finding a tower case to fit four of them might be impossible
as I haven't seen any tower cases that offer 12 bays.

I seem to recall having seen a few, but sure, they are pretty rare.

At the very best it limits my case options severely.

Yeah, tho you could have a couple of cases mounted side by side
with no covers on the sides where they meet, with some sort of
mechanism to clamp them together, maybe even just a long bolt
thru both cases in a couple of places. That would provide a
convenient way of having two power supplys too. Just have half
the drives and their power supply in the second case.

Those iCages are cost effective, though - I found
them as cheap as $16.81 apiece at ACSOutlet.com
(http://www.acsoutlet.com/A2309-Standard.aspx)
- shipping yet to be determined.

Yeah, meant to include the pricegrabber link as well and forgot.

Buying four would cut a good amount off buying the two SuperMicro
cages I was considering, but the SuperMicro cages allow me five
drives in the space of three bays plus hot-swappability.

Yeah, they certainly have their advantages. Hot swap might be
handy but its a bit theoretical when drives are pretty reliable now.

The big advantage with the iCage vertical spacing is that
you have plenty of free space between adjacent drives
to make it easy to keep the drives cool with quiet fans.

Tough choice, but I think the fact that I can only fit
three of those iCages in the tower cases I've been
considering might end up being the deciding factor.

I'd consider the two case approach myself, because
it makes the second power supply mounting easier too.

I'd rather have the big fan that the iCage has and
would personally put a fan controller on it and
wind the speed back while ensuring the drive
SMART temps are fine, so its nice and quiet.

There arent going to be that many cases that will take 4 of those tho.

I'd keep looking at dedicated hotswap backplane cases, though.

Yeah, me too.

All the dedicated hotswap backplane cases I've been able
to find have been rackmount. I don't have a rack (this is a
home project) nor am I currently considering a rack.

And the prices are in a different class too.

I have had difficulty finding some pedistal-tower-form-factor cases
with dedicated hot-swap backplanes. If you could point me in the
right direction to where I should look I'd appreciate it.

I wouldnt bother myself, essentially because you dont really
need hotswap. Is it any big deal if you have to turn the system
off in the rare event that you do need to replace a drive ?

Its obvious why servers need hotswap, but its unlikely
you do unless the other inhabitant of your house are
likely to Bobbit you when you need to swap a drive.

It would be cheaper to just get a solid door for the room
the NAS is in and lock it while you are swapping the drive.

If you're serious enough to need RAID5,
you should do it with the right equipment.

Dunno, you can make a case that he doesnt really
need hot swap and that cold swap would be fine
and worth the massive saving on price.

If you're just experimenting, that's a different matter...but building
your own cases/cooling system, and buying quality power supplies
could reach the price of a dedicated case pretty quickly.

If you could actually find a full tower case that can take 4 of those
iCages, and two power supplys, the price may not be quite that bad.
The iCages are reasonably priced.

I prefer the twin case route now. Mainly
because it handles the extra power supply too.

Right now my case looks like the following:

Sheet metal, plastic, fans: $145 Cooler Master CM Stacker tower case
Power Supply: $150 Corsair CMPSU-620HX 620 watts
Drive Enclosures: $245 for (2) SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B hot-swap drive
enclosures

Yeah, maybe I can find a cheaper case than $540 that will give me all that.

Yep, two cases with 2 iCages each would be cheaper.

The only real thing you lose is hotswap and you gain ease of separate
power supply and you dont need such a monster supply as the Corsair.

You need to consider whether a single power supply has enough
current for all those drives on the +12V rail that powers the drives
too. Most of those big supplys have the extra wattage on the other
12V rails that are intended for the cpu and video cards, not drives.

Corse if your raid card supports staggered starts it may not matter much.

Maybe I can jury-rig a rackmount in the space
where I am planning on keeping this equipment.

Or maybe I can just build a new computer rack.

Or just bolt a couple of normal cases together etc.

This is why this is called the _planning_ stage

It is indeed.

Thanks for your continued help. I'm going to continue researching.

I'd be interested to hear how it works out when you
implement it, whichever route you end up going, particularly
if it ends up not as obvious as it first looks currently.