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Hardware: HDD & Case Queries

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tomos:
The top HD is a 2TB HD -- the solution that jumps out to me is to replace it (and any other HD of similar size) with an SSD.  Less heat, much faster, takes up less space.
-mouser (May 19, 2021, 02:16 PM)
--- End quote ---
That's 300€ at least (2 X 2TB), here at any rate. I'm slow to spend that much just because of heat... (don't otherwise need SSDs for my use case)

mouser:
I hear ya.  I do worry about hard drive temperatures.  One thing you could do is install one of the programs that monitors hard drive temperatures in the background, and will show them in the system tray and show an alert if they rise above a certain temperature.  There are some good free and paid apps that do that.

tomos:
^ will do that.

Had another hardware approach / idea -- there's holes in the bottom of the case, I could add another bracket, sideways, screwed into the floor of the PC. See sketch looking at open case from the side:

Hardware: HDD & Case Queries

As said, this case is no good for multiple HDDs, so, medium term I'll be looking maybe at buying a decent case and trying to build something myself (will be a first).

This case can then revert to being a one SSD pc...

Shades:
Many, many moons ago, I bought a set of written off computer equipment from the US embassy here in PY. One was a server that had 7 (SCSI) CD players in it. Stripped out the motherboard and drives out of it, my interest was the case. Mounted a much more modern motherboard in it and put in 5 HDDs, one to boot from, which is in the only HDD slot, the rest of the drives went into the section where all the CD drives used to be.

But those are 5.25" devices and HDDs are 3,5". The CD drives had no use for me, so I dismantled all of them completely. The external housing was then cut up to make the 3,5" drives fit, but not so much that it would not fit the 5,25" bays anymore. The server is 10+ years in operation.

If you have an old CD/DVD player that you aren't using anymore, you can strip all the hardware out of it and mount both 2,5" drives sideways in it, much farther away from each other, with no need to actively cooling the drives. Still, in case you consider active cooling, you could cut and bend parts of the metal, so that you can screw a case fan (upright) onto it. And then mount the contraption inside the case through holes in the bottom (or top) of this case.

If there are holes in the bottom of the case, those could be there for air flow into the case. If you think that is the purpose of these holes, don't block these.

Quite a "hobby" project, but as long as it works (and it is out of sight), who really cares?

4wd:
The top drive is 5400rpm, what's the bottom drive?

If the bottom is 7200 or 10k rpm then move it to the top and think about putting a case fan mounted on the case to the right, (so it blows air between them). A slow rpm 12cm fan will be all that's needed.

If they're both 5400rpm then I personally wouldn't worry about it unless they're consistently running at higher than about 35°.

BTW, the top drive doesn't appear to have mounting screws on the side we can see?

Any chance of a photo from the left angled towards the front, (to give a better idea of the mounting points)?

Also BTW, if you want a Simple No Holes Required Mounting Solution:

Hardware: HDD & Case Queries

As long as the computer isn't moved around often, (eg. dragging it along to LAN night), this'll be fine.

For a case, if you're only looking to have 2x2.5" + 2x3.5" (no 5.25") then the Thermaltake Versa H17 or H18 isn't too bad, (I have the H18). Cheap and one of the smaller mATX cases, (honestly, most mATX cases these days are bigger than my old ATX mid-tower).
Also done a couple of builds in the Silverstone Temjin 08 case, they can take more drives and are slightly smaller.

:P Hardware: HDD & Case Queries

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