Has anyone here built a DIY hard drive enclosure?

[Guest]

I'd like to, and I think all I need is a fan, Oxford 911 chipset, rack, and power supply. I'm not really sure where to begin, though. Can't even find a 911 to buy.

Any trail blazers out there?

 

[Scenaria]

why?

I would think its a lot cheaper just to pick one up already done...

 

[Guest]

I want to make a little 1U case to hold 2 300 Gig drives. I don't want to buy cheap cases, and for the price of 2 decent cases, I thought I might be able to make something nicer looking, and possibly cheaper, ther would live in my rack instead of sitting atop my computer case, in harms way, looking ugly. :grin:

 

[PRR]

> a DIY hard drive enclosure?

For the old full-size drives, two 2x4s and two scraps of masonite.

Though if you know the right junkpiles, obsolete enclosures are free.

What is this 911?

NewEgg.com has four pages of USB drive enclosures from $13 to $50.

If you have a box (or scrap wood) or are doing workbench chores, $21 buys all the electric bits. This version fits 3.5" drives like the one I got (for $27!), but also has a 2.5" adaptor for flaptop drives.

 

[Guest]

Oxford 911 chipset, as recommended for audio applications.

 

[gyraf]

I hope you're not aiming at building your own interface electronics..?

 

[peterc]

We're looking at doing a big HD case at the moment with Firewire to IDE 2 x 4 channel bridge cards from www.fwdepot.com

The idea is to have online backup on our server & duplicated storage in each studio for a parallel backup system. Up to now we've been using FW Maxtors but we want a more permanent solution for the server rather than having a bunch of separate FW disks on the shelf.

Our plan is to start with a few 300 gig IDE's in a PC case with the above mentioned bridge cards, & expand as necessary.

Looks good on paper.

Peter

 

[Guest]

Twitch, I don't know what kind of drives you are using, but I use lacie Firewire Drives wich are great, and rackmountable.... though, I don't know if the ones with the FA Porsche design are rack mountable... I'd suggest staying away from maxtor, as I have had several problems with them but that's just my personal experience....

I reread your post and it seems like you are going IDE, so this may not be too relevant...

 

[woodensoul]

I've tried external drives with the the Oxford911 and it seems a little clunky( at least with ProTools )
Am going to use SATA300 now and expect better results.
Check macgurus for good descriptions and how-to roll your own SATA
http://www.macgurus.com/
And some good editorial info here too
http://www.anandtech.com

I have an SATA drive and controller card and will let you know once I get it all installed.
The fastest and sturdiest still seems to be scsi: up to 320Mb/sec burst on the buss and 95Mb/sec sustained from the drives.

Paired with the latest dual-processor G5?s, a 4-drive SCSI striped RAID array is capable of sustained read/write speeds of over 280MB per second!

Steve

 

[pucho812]

I have made them.

why?

it is cheaper in some cases. no pun intended. I highly recomend ADS Enclousers. They have the 911 chipset and they have a IEC connector right out the back depending on the model. I have used lace(SP) drives and IMO they are nice but the wall wart style power supply sucks I have had many a problem with those power supplies...
I highly recomend making your own and it's real easy, Just by the drive and then the enclouser case. Easy enough to make just opebn the case and connect 2 ribbon connectors, one is for the power and the other is for computer connection. then close it. pretty straight foward. I usually make drives for clients cause cheaper then glyph and can make thm much nicer and bigger for same price.

 

[BR]

I bought my enclosure with the Oxford 911 chip for $35 on newegg. Don't see the point on building one...
just do a search on newegg for "firewire enclosure oxford 911" and you will see a bunch..

 

[pucho812]

what is newegg?

 

[peterc]

www.newegg.com