New Gear

I really like the idea of multi-bay drive enclosures so I have opted to go for a Icy Dock MB455SPF which is a 5 bay enclosure taking up 3 5.25″ device bays in the case. The reason why I went for the 5 bay is simple, the motherboard I am using has 4 sata ports plus 4 ports on the raid controller means I am limited to 8 hard drives in my server. As I already have a 3 bay enclosure the 5 bay will take my total to 8 bays. Make sure you read part 2 of this series about the must do mods for these enclosures.

Final bit of hardware was the optical drive, being so cheap decision was made to get a DVD writer in the form of a Pioneer 112D.

So we now move on to the case, normally when I build a PC the easiest part is deciding on the case but this project was the exception. We need a case which will provide 6 external 5.25″ drive bays while being compact and looking good. Finding a case with 6 external bays is easy there called Towers Cases, but they are just to big and clumsy for this application not to mention very expensive.

After several weeks of searching I came across what must be the perfect case. It has 9 external 5.25″ drive bays, yes I said NINE!!! Looks good actually if I may be so bold looks stunning, and it is tiny measuring only 200 x 435 x 486 mm. I should point out this is a small case and to make things worse the Icy Dock enclosure are pretty deep units. I must admit I did have my fingers crossed that everything would fit in. Enough about the worries let me introduce you to the Sharkoon Rebel 9 Economy.

A few observations about this case. It is very cheap but surprisingly it does not suffer too badly, I would say it is better quality than other cases in this price range. It does fall short in several areas which may matter to some people and not to others. The metal used is thin and has lots of flex especially the motherboard tray and the side panels.

The metal surfaces are finished well enough but the edges have not been rolled or deburred, which can be bit of a health hazard. The fit on the side panels is not that great partly due to the flex in the metal as well the poor slide catches. There are no luxuries like tool less drive installation or removeable motherboard tray. You do however get 4 front mounted USB ports as well as audio in and out jacks.

Regardless of all the downsides this case I think makes the perfect file server for the home. I will show you a modification which I found was very necessary with this case but I should state it is a mod I normally make to all my PC cases which I will describe in Part 2 of this article.

How Much …….!!!

Here is the final spec for the file server including the price paid for the various parts. I have listed current equivalent components plus approximate prices.

If there is case for recycling this is it. Costing one third of buying it all in, you end up with a monster of a file server costing very little. The new build cost seems expensive on the surface but you have to remember £660 ($1320) will be buying a fileserver which is future proof and gives you over 2.2Tb in storage to get you going.

My list above is not the only combination you can have and I am not the sole authority on building file servers. There are several places where you can save money (and lots of money) without compromising too much on features. For a start do you need removable hard drives? Most people will not and if I was honest nor do I - however it does look good! Just dropping the removable sata enclosures will knock off £127  ($250) healthy chunk of change.

Maybe you would prefer to organise your storage need differently, one avenue is to drop the 4 320Gb drives and just get 4 500Gb monsters. This gives you 2Tb of storage and a £60 ($120) saving.

I am bit of a brand sl*t and I only really understand Intel, so I have quoted for Intel based motherboard and processor. Looking around at other hardware and you could go a long way towards saving another £30 – £40 ($80) just by switching to AMD based motherboard and processor, while getting the same performance.

You will notice I left out the Promise SX150 raid card. While I love this RAID card and it does serve me well, I just don’t think it would make sense purchasing such a card nowadays. The Gigabyte P35C-DS3R spec’d above has Intel’s P35 chipset which includes a well featured raid controller built-in.

At this entry level the performance difference between these two solutions just does not exist and the motherboard solution is just so much easier and cheaper.

Look out for part 2 where I will cover the assembly of this hardware to form the basis for your file server as well as including lots more pictures!!!

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