First, thank you for the responses. Gives me a lot of courage to commit myself fully to the thread and also showms that I am not alone on the boat.
Now coming to the question of why such a large case? I must say that this question was there on my mind when I got to know about it too. This was an odd 2 years ago. At that time, I used to get 720p encoded mkv files off the net. Collected about 50 movies and then realised that our ISPs were kind enough for us to get the 1080p files also. In another 3 months, I had collected about 100 more movies and all with an average size of 15GB. In the process, I also started replacing my previously downloaded 720p files with their 1080p encoded files. God had a surprise planned for me and on one fateful day, I realised that one of my drives on my WHS system had crashed due to a failed northbridge fan. This was all stored in a crappy Intex cabinet which was a clone of the famous LanBoy cases. I did not realise this failure till there was a short circuit in my electric cabling and my UPS failed on me. I had over 400+ movies by then and about 20000+ music files encoded in either FLAC or 320Kbps MP3 and all neatly tagged with album art and cd covers. I was devastated but at the same time I did not loose heart. I got my act together and decided to invest in a proper setup as by now I had realised that the future of entertainment was in digital storage. It would be foolish for me to collect more movies and music without a proper file storage setup and while I do what is required, I connected the RMAed drives to my main system which could accomodate upto 6 drives. I again have a collection of about 250+ movies mostly encoded in 1080p and a few in 720p. Apart from this, I have about 4000 music files in FLAC or 320Kbps mp3. All in all, I again have about 10TB of digital media files with no further room for expansion. At the same time, I invested in an APC 3000UXI and re-did my house wiring to connect all my electronic equipment to this UPS. Now, its time to get the data storage in order. I can very well get the Cooler Master case DigitalV suggested but I know that once I populate the bays, I will once again look blank. I will then either have to dump the case or get another case and wait till I populate that one too. So the solution for me was to get something like the Norco 4224 and prevent this situation from arising from time to time. Looking at the pace at which the file sizes of the better encoded files are growing, it wont be long before our favourite movies come in file sizes of over 20GB or maybe even 25GB and this is not mere speculation. Also, I am not talking about the Blu-ray disc images here. So the question was what should I get. After browsing and googling around, I came across the Norco cases through the wonderful forums at hardforum.com
The idea of getting the hot swap bays will work but then it defeats the whole idea of having a storage server in the first place. I need this server so that I don't have to keep swapping drives when I need to watch something in the middle of the night and want all my digital media to be accessible at any given time at the click of a button.
I also understand that for us, it is not feasible to invest in 24 hard drives at once. Atleast this is the case with me. So I need a solution which allows me to keep adding to my storage pool without having to rebuild or reinstall anything. Something like what the current WHS offers. However, as many of you will be aware, MS has deicded to drop this functionality from the next upgrade of WHS which is currently known as Vail. So I think I will have to shift to FreeNAS which offers this functionality. Also, UNRaid has this functionality too.
Also, this system will be a 24/7 system and as is the case with most servers, it will sit in the basement or any place where the noise won't make a difference. There was an issue with the RPC-4220 which caused the hard drives in the chassis get too hot. However, this was more a case of lack of documentation than design flaw. This issue is documented
here. With the release of the RPC-4224, Norco has taken care of these issues also.
When I got a quote for the 4220 from KMD, it was about 30,000/- but this was a good 8-10 months back. However, I assume that the new case would come for about 25-30k inclusive of shipping. Add to this, the cost of other peripherals and we are looking at 50+ grands minus the cost of the drives.
Norco however, is NOT available in India. So we have to get it imported. However, the other option is to get a similar case from SuperMicro which is available in India. The case which is similar to the Norco 4224 retails for about
1000$ on newegg and comes with a redundant 900W Power Supply which alone would cost over 5000/- INR. This should be available in India through a few resellers who do Supermicro.
Get a decent server up and running and keep adding the drives as and you need it.
Now the power requirements for a 24/7 server would set you back by about 1000/- bucks for a fully loaded system (24 drives). This is for hard core enthusiasts and would serve you well for a long time. If you need more than 24 drives, the solution would be to get another RAID card and another chassis and connect it using the available cables and you have another 24 drives to play with.
Now coming to a few questions:
1. How to get the chassis for cheap?
2. Would Supermicro be an option?
3. How many would be interested?
More ideas would be appreciated.
PS: I have been trying to post this reply since morning. Sometimes the laptop screwed up, sometimes the ISP went down. You may find this post confusing as I lost track 3 times. Please post your questions and comments here and I will reply. You also need to take a look at hardforum.com. They have some showcase data storage servers and there Norco is a choice among many enthusiasts.
Goes underground?? With the money paid??
Already, I am using 2 x 512Kbps links from BSNL and using it with a Dual Wan mod of Tomato firmware on my Asus router and I do about 7-10GB easily. I think when BSNL upgrades us, 30-50GB will be a daily affair.
