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LOSTCIRCUITS		SHORTCUTS: The Challenge Fujitsus and Promises Assembling the RAID Building the System Test configuration HDTach vs. WB99 ATTO vs. Sandra Back to HDTach, WB99 Network File Copy Conclusions Fujitsu Drives Comments?
Internal 4-Way SATA RAID For The XPC     A Concept Study
(Review by MS, April 20, 2003)

Leaving out the floppy drive and instead stacking four drives on top of each other sounds a bit simpler than it really is. Aside from heat issues that would arise if the drives were just lying on top of each other, the main problem is that the drive bay does not have any possibility to actually fasten the drives correctly. The solution, as so often, came in form of a piece of sheet aluminum, courtesy of HomeDepot, that we used to build a custom enclosure. We won't go into the gory details, the resulting rack is as simple as it is ugly but none of that matters as long as it works.

       

Left: Bending the aluminum sheet into a simple box-profile and drilling the mounting holes takes about 30 minutes. Mounting the drives takes another 5 minutes and the result (belly-up) will not win a beauty pageant but has a certain functional beautée. Center: Another size comparison: the stack of four drives with enough space in between for aeration on top of a standard 3.5" drive. Right: The entire enclosure is mounted inside the drive tray of the SB52G2 using double-sticking mounting tape.

Since we only used 4 drives, we chose a longitudinal arrangement, however, it is also possible to mount the drives sideways in the drive bay, which requires a bit more modifications. In that case, it would be possible to fit eight of these drives into the XPC without invading the space of the optical drive.

For better ventilation, we used another small aluminum strip to mount an old Celeron cooler fan in front of the drives. This solution proved more than adequate for keeping the drives cool.

Ever heard the tale of the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan? The finshed drive-bay assembly with the cooling fan in the front came out pretty nice considering all that was used was an Exacto box cutter, a power drill, a tap and a file. Once the system is assembled, the optical drive mounted on top seals off the enclosure to form a U-shaped "wind-tunnel" around the drives. The front bezel of the tray was removed for photographic reasons only.

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