Stuart Herbert

I have three hobbies which really eat up disk space (and I’m not talking about Gentoo here I’ve kept something like 7,000 photos that I’ve taken in the last year or so (and I haven’t had a proper holiday in that time either …). When I remember to take the camcorder along, I shoot as much footage as I can when I train with Rob. I can never keep up with everything he’s pointing out during class! And I write and record music (something I haven’t done enough of for a couple of years now). Now that the wife has a Nikon of her own, I’m going to need even more storage.

It has to be online storage. Kristi uses the photo archive as reference material for her paintings. It has to be resilient - I don’t want to lose data because of a disk failure. And it has to be backed up - it’s too easy to accidentally delete data, or for a buggy app to do so on your behalf

I could buy a NAS box, plug it in, and job done. But that just seems too easy, and far too boring So the plan is to put something together myself to do the job, using Gentoo as the base O/S of course Hardly a difficult job, but something that I can have some fun with.

The first thing I need is the right case. A NAS box is going to need lots of disks - 2 for the O/S, and at least 6 for the data. Over the lifetime of the machine, those disks are going to fail and need replacing. I’ve recently been having to replace a few dead disks in my existing boxes, and having to disconnect IDE ribbons and remove motherboard power connectors just to get the disks out of the bays … it’s just unnecessary effort really. What I want is a case with lots of 5.25″ bays, which I can fit drive enclousures into. When a disk fails, just pull out the draw, pop out the old drive, pop in the new one, close the draw. I shouldn’t have to remove the case cover for a failed disk.

I already own two derelict full-tower cases, which are just wasting space in the upstairs library at home. They have plenty of drive bays, and they were great in the days when I used SCSI drives. But IDE ribbons tend to be a lot shorter - and are limited to just two drives per cable. The top drive bays are just too far away from the motherboard (and even further away from any additional IDE controllers on PCI cards). Not my first choice for practicality.

What I really want is a case where the 5.25″ bays are as close to the motherboard as possible. I settled on CoolerMaster’s Stacker case. It has the bays that I want where I want them - all 11 of them. Mine arrived this morning, and is now sat downstairs in the lounge waiting for me to move it out of Kristi’s way.

Can’t do any more with it this month (already paid for our holiday this month, doesn’t leave a lot for toys!), but next month’s job is to take a trip down City Road and pick up a PSU, mobo, CPU, RAM … and some disks.