I'm ? with the trend toward fewer drive mounts in cases. How will I ever fit all my drives in my next case?

[PianoPlayer88Key]

So I've been keeping an eye on what's been going on with cases over the last several months or year or more, and as the title says, I'm kinda disappointed in the trend toward having fewer drive bays in modern cases.  A few examples from well-known brands are pictured below.

 

          

 

I'm fearful as to whether I'll be able to get a case in the next few years that'll house all my drives.  

 

(The two 2.5" HDDs on the upper right are my dad's, though.)

 

I'm preliminarily considering upgrading (from my 4790K platform) when DDR5 and PCI-Express 5.0 are out in the early 2020s or so, depending on other factors as well.  Even if I were to get a new case sooner (that would actually fit where I want to put it) and move my existing system to it, I would definitely NOT want a server / rackmount style case.  Also I don't like frequently replacing motherboards - not so much due to purchase price, but because of the labor involved.  Same with cases and PSUs.

 

Of course I'd want the drives properly mounted in the case.  They're not in the example below; I had long since run out of drive bays.  I just now realized the SATA power cable is covering up the GTX 1060.  Moreover, neither my PSU nor my motherboard have nearly enough SATA connectors.

 

 

And it'd be nice to still have room for dual triple-fan GPUs, triple-fan thick push/pull rads, dual CPU sockets, etc, if at all possible.    And my current case is WAY too loud.  I can't record piano music and encode (2160p video) and stream live without fan noise blasting the microphone mounted under the piano keyboard (audio mike would be about where the USB mouse dongle is).

 

If I was getting a case now (I'm not), I like the aesthetics of the Fractal Design Define R5 or Arc Midi R2.  If it was possible to have 2 stacks of 3.5" bays in that case, it'd be nice.  Also a huge plus, or almost a requirement, would be toolless HDD/SSD trays, and the ability to swap drives without having to remove the cable-management-side panel.

 

Also, three of the 3.5" drives (HGST 8TB, specifically) don't have the proper screw holes to line up with the sleds in my current case.  (I had a topic on that here.)  I have to use 5.25" bay adapters to mount those in my current case.

 

Cloud storage isn't an option because .  But, if my internet was faster than  WITHOUT any data caps/throttling for the same $75/month my parents are paying now… But then, there'd still be privacy issues.   (No, I'm not referring to Luke's video posted to YouTube on Oct 11, 2015  )

 

Yes I know some of the drives are getting up there in age, but I'm still able to find a use for almost all of them.

 

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TL;DR: Any chance in the next 3-5 years of standard ATX tower cases (without flashy designs, but more like Fractal Design style) being available to house lots of 3.5" drives, WITHOUT needing a server / rackmount case?  Many modern cases are trending toward too few drive bays for my use case.  

[Guest]

The future is smaller, safer and more dense ;p

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Just now, Goku-sama said:

The future is smaller, safer and more dense ;p

But where am I going to put my eventual hundreds of TB of storage?  (Or will $/GB come down quickly on SSDs by then, while still maintaining quality, performance & endurance of SLC and MLC SSDs?)

[MorganO]

3 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

-massive snip-

why not get larger drives and condense everything down to fewer drivers?

[Angusticlavii]

Duuuuude its 2017

get dem solid states

[bughtoo]

Just now, KOMTechAndGaming said:

why not get larger drives and condense everything down to fewer drivers?

Speed, maybe he has raid 0 or raid 5 or something like that

[MorganO]

Just now, bughtoo said:

Speed, maybe he has raid 0 or raid 5 or something like that

can still do the same with fewer drives....

although I i dont know how much storage he has

[Jonathan Lemmens]

1 minute ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

But where am I going to put my eventual hundreds of TB of storage?  (Or will $/GB come down quickly on SSDs by then, while still maintaining quality, performance & endurance of SLC and MLC SSDs?)

If you are going to store that amount of data you really should be thinking about a NAS or server. Why don't you want one?

[bughtoo]

Just now, KOMTechAndGaming said:

can still do the same with fewer drives....

although I i dont know how much storage he has

Tell me how do you want to achieve the same Speed/Safety with 2 drives that u can with 5 drives? (this is just an example) 2 drives= Raid0 or Raid 1 that means 2x speed if one fails u are done, or 1x speed and if one fails u have it all saved. With 5 drives you have Raid 5 which is 2+2 in Raid 0 and 1 for safety, If one fails u are fine with 2x speed. 

 

How do yo uachieve this with fewer drives? U dont

[MorganO]

Just now, bughtoo said:

Tell me how do you want to achieve the same Speed/Safety with 2 drives that u can with 5 drives? (this is just an example) 2 drives= Raid0 or Raid 1 that means 2x speed if one fails u are done, or 1x speed and if one fails u have it all saved. With 5 drives you have Raid 5 which is 2+2 in Raid 0 and 1 for safety, If one fails u are fine with 2x speed. 

 

How do yo uachieve this with fewer drives? U dont

where did i say 2 drivers? i just said fewer drive...... 

plus he never said HOW many TB he has which would affect the number of larger drives he requires....

[bughtoo]

Just now, KOMTechAndGaming said:

where did i say 2 drivers? i just said fewer drive...... 

plus he never said HOW many TB he has which would affect the number of larger drives he requires....

I said that as an example i even wrote it there the 2 drives.... And from what i read he didnt specify if he is running any raid, if he isnt then sure get less drives, if he is, then it is question of budget, not number of drives.

[Dujith]

12 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

But where am I going to put my eventual hundreds of TB of storage?  (Or will $/GB come down quickly on SSDs by then, while still maintaining quality, performance & endurance of SLC and MLC SSDs?)

I would suggest you keep your computer a normal desktop but move all the HDD's to a storage server.

That way you can move it to another room where the noise wont matter and you'll just need 1 cat6 cable between them. 

Edited August 11, 2017 by Dujith
Typo

[aakopa]

You could build high speed iscsi server using server case and placing it into another room. 

[porina]

High drive number consumer cases are a minor use case. It took me a while to settle on a Define R5 for my unraid box with 8x 3.5" bays. For my data size, I figure that is enough a 6 data + 2 parity arrangement, and if I need to grow capacity I would do so by replacing with bigger drives, NOT adding more of them. This also helps with removing older drives before they fail. Currently I don't have anything smaller than 3 TB used for serious long term storage. In the original pic there's an 80GB drive, bin it already!

 

If you really need a high number of drives (>10), splitting them between systems may be required.

 

Note: other high drive bay consumer cases included I think it was a Silverstone Raven, which was ugly to me. There was also a Lian Li that looked great (all aluminium), but the price tag was rather serious.

[JAKEBAB]

I agree op, this has really frustrated me especially when games like Forza 7 are going to 100gb. There should be a choice, removable hdd cages for the people that don't need/want them not just remove them completely. Anyway since this whole stupid trend has begun i've started looking at server chassis similar to Linus's home setup, you can get a 4U case relatively cheap these days.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

19 minutes ago, KOMTechAndGaming said:

why not get larger drives and condense everything down to fewer drivers?

I already got a few 8TB HGST NAS drives to back up stuff from the smaller ones.  I'll probably need to get another one or two in the next few months.

The smaller ones were going to be retired, but turns out I needed some of them for Windows backup clones.  (I couldn't boot off a clone from an 8TB drive due to MBR vs GPT issues.  There's more complications related to that, but I won't post about it here.)

 

For condensing to fewer drives, I'm waiting for 12TB, 16TB, etc. to be available at a reasonable price like .  

 

 

19 minutes ago, CaptainKieseI said:

Duuuuude its 2017

get dem solid states

Still too expensive per TB.

 

18 minutes ago, bughtoo said:

Speed, maybe he has raid 0 or raid 5 or something like that

No I don't have RAID (yet).

18 minutes ago, KOMTechAndGaming said:

can still do the same with fewer drives....

although I i dont know how much storage he has

Current raw storage capacity, not including my dad's 2 drives in a picture, taking out the dying 80GB IDE, but adding the M.2 SSD in my laptop, is 60.75 TB.  (That doesn't include other storage media like SDXC cards, etc.)

17 minutes ago, Jonathan Lemmens said:

If you are going to store that amount of data you really should be thinking about a NAS or server. Why don't you want one?

I had been thinking about it a while ago, but it would be for backup purposes - basically a duplicate of my main computer's storage, NOT for offloading things from my computer to be stored exclusively on the NAS.  And for now, I really don't have the physical place to put a second large system, especially not a horizontal form factor like a rackmount NAS or server.  (Also I wasn't wanting a server since I didn't think my use case warranted it.  I'm not hosting a popular website, I'm not running a 7-figures-a-month-profit business out of my home, etc.)

 

10 minutes ago, Dujith said:

I would suggets you keep your computer a normal desktop but move all the HDD's to a storage server.

That way you can move it to another room where the noise wont matter and you'll just need 1 cat6 cable between them. 

That would then mean I'd need THREE systems.  One to be my main use system, one to be my storage system, and one to be my backup system.

 

 

One thing I was thinking re: RAID:  I'd be split between wanting ZFS so I could have deduplication, checksums, and the other stuff that FreeNAS implements for data integrity (but requires X GB/TB ECC RAM), or UnRAID, which I hear doesn't stripe data across disks so too many drive failures don't take out the entire array.  (If UnRAID supported the ZFS features, AND could do it on like an LGA771 era Xeon with 1 or 2 GB RAM, I'd strongly consider that.)

4 minutes ago, porina said:

High drive number consumer cases are a minor use case. It took me a while to settle on a Define R5 for my unraid box with 8x 3.5" bays. For my data size, I figure that is enough a 6 data + 2 parity arrangement, and if I need to grow capacity I would do so by replacing with bigger drives, NOT adding more of them. This also helps with removing older drives before they fail. Currently I don't have anything smaller than 3 TB used for serious long term storage. In the original pic there's an 80GB drive, bin it already!

 

If you really need a high number of drives (>10), splitting them between systems may be required.

 

Note: other high drive bay consumer cases included I think it was a Silverstone Raven, which was ugly to me. There was also a Lian Li that looked great (all aluminium), but the price tag was rather serious.

I like the Define R5, and the Arc Midi R2.  (I almost wonder if it'd be possible to mount a 2nd stack of bays where the bottom fan mount normally goes...  I also am aware of the Rosewill B2 Spirit, that case has 13x 3.5" bays.

 

This also helps with removing older drives before they fail. Currently I don't have anything smaller than 3 TB used for serious long term storage. In the original pic there's an 80GB drive, bin it already!

I was about to because of this happening, but one day when I plugged it in several months ago it spontaneously resurrected itself.  I copied everything I could off, then a day or 2 later it started clicking again.  But, if I could revive it on command, maybe it could be used for this?

I wonder how much longer the 250GB IDE next to it (in the pic in the op) will last...

 

[mopman94]

Worst 'look at how many hard drives I have' post ever!

 

Condense them into drives with more storage and get yourself something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Dual-Bay-Function-Tool-Free-FD2002/dp/B00N1KXE9K/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1502447182&sr=1-1&keywords=Drive+bay

and just slot in the drives as and when you need to get something on or off them.

[For Science!]

I know right?

 

[r3loAded]

Never seen a case to accommodate that many drives but good luck with finding one. I would really want to see one (for real - no trolling).

 

In the mean time this would be the only one that came in my mind with regards to space for a couple 3.5" drives (be quiet! Dark Base PRO 900).

[CatXice]

10tb drives are a thing????

[PianoPlayer88Key]

One thing that has come to mind a few times over the past few months or so ... is the idea of re-purposing that build in the OP as a storage/backup/NAS, and using my laptop (i7-6700K, 40GB RAM, 256GB+1.05TB SSDs, GTX 970M) as my "daily driver".  (Except, the GTX 1060 is considerably faster, although steam streaming / lag would more than negate that advantage...)

 

 

8 minutes ago, CatXice said:

10tb drives are a thing????

Yes, but for more $/TB.  For example, an 8TB HGST NAS is ~$259, or $32.38/TB.  A 10TB Seagate Ironwolf is $339.99, or $34/TB.  It does add up.  Also for now I prefer HGST drives.  I used to use WD, as evidenced in the OP photos.  I'd consider switching brands as long as it's highly reliable.  The 2TB Seagate 2.5" drive that was in my laptop has been accumulating bad sectors, so I pulled it out of service.  The 1TB MX300 SSD has taken its place.

Edited August 11, 2017 by PianoPlayer88Key

[Sauron]

You could replace them with 2 10tb drives.

[SCHISCHKA]

you have a shit load of old drives that you say equates to 60TB raw. How much are you actually using?

I could count the raw storage of all the drives i have collected over the years but this would be pointless.

I use old drives in a USB3 dock. The storage I actually need in my pc is only around 200GB, the rest of my data is better offline.

Think about that, why do all your drives need to be on all the time? what a waste.

[bughtoo]

1 hour ago, CatXice said:

10tb drives are a thing????

Yeah they exist already, around 350-400$ for one

[bughtoo]

1 hour ago, r3loAded said:

Never seen a case to accommodate that many drives but good luck with finding one. I would really want to see one (for real - no trolling).

 

In the mean time this would be the only one that came in my mind with regards to space for a couple 3.5" drives (be quiet! Dark Base PRO 900).

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-d8000/ here you go a case for 20 HDD 

 

2 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said: