Power-only 4 HD's - suggestions

[kreyszig]

Hi all,

I've been trying to find an economical way of creating a RAID NAS setup, or something to that effect. I.e a low power draw pc with raid 1 & 0 that I can keep on all the time, as I have two machines each running 300+ watt gpus that i don't need on all the time, but I do need access to their HDs.
So, I just bought a fanless thin client (flex-atx) that is pretty well spec'd and a 4 port sata raid card. I will obviously get rid of the embedded xp client stuff and run a linux distro on there (possibly a full one via an internal notebook drive or CF card)
The question I have now is - how to power and store the 4 HD's this setup requires.
The thin client has a 12V DC mini-ATX PSU, I am hoping that I will be able to draw enough power to spin 4 drives from that - can anyone tell me whether this is a likely possibility?
If this is true I guess I am after a box only solution that I can run power to but doesn't have any inbuilt (expensive) raid included. (Can you imagine hwo messy that would be! 4 SATA cables + 4 power connectors...)
If you reckon I'd need a seperate power source then I suppose I am looking for a box with PSU that take 4 HDS, but isn't a £500 nas drive.
Any suggestions?

Kreyszig

[arthurleung]

Couldn't you just buy 2 cheap NAS? Like the Thecus N299 or N2100. That will only cost 100 quids each.

4 SATA cables + 4 power connectors can be very clean if you do it correctly, I've had 12 drives going in the same case with very nicely done cabling.

Just buy some short and/or right-angled cables and you will be fine

Power supply may be a issue, depends on what motherboard you have.
Some motherboard support staggered spin-up. 4 harddrives will draw 100W at start-up, and gradually go down to 40W (or as low as 20W if you have those WD GP series HDD).

[kreyszig]

well, i'm committed to the thin client for one. and i'd like to stripe *and* clone the drives, which puts two bay NAS out of the question (without software raid, and thus another pc)

I've decided to go with a 2U rack case. that way I've got plenty of space and don't need to worry about running power externally. Kind of defeats the purpose of the thin client platform, but gives me lots of tinkering space, I might even get the power brick inside there too. plus it was a great excuse to get a dremel

fingers crossed I can sort something with the power draw, 100 watts is way over what this board normally handles (30W)

Couldn't you just buy 2 cheap NAS? Like the Thecus N299 or N2100. That will only cost 100 quids each.

4 SATA cables + 4 power connectors can be very clean if you do it correctly, I've had 12 drives going in the same case with very nicely done cabling.

Just buy some short and/or right-angled cables and you will be fine

Power supply may be a issue, depends on what motherboard you have.
Some motherboard support staggered spin-up. 4 harddrives will draw 100W at start-up, and gradually go down to 40W (or as low as 20W if you have those WD GP series HDD).