Take the 2-minute tour ×

Thinking about maybe building my own NAS. I would go with Raid 5, and would like maybe about 6 SATA drives:

  • There a mini atx case that can hold this many drives (Non-Rack ideally)
  • What sort of power will I need?
  • Any way this won't be pretty loud?
share|improve this question

closed as off topic by DMA57361 Sep 2 '11 at 14:08


I would like to see an answer to this as well. I assume you mean 6 standard hard drives (not laptop drives)? –  James Watt Apr 28 '10 at 13:13
Ya, I was thinking 3.5 form factor –  Kyle Brandt Apr 28 '10 at 13:18
Or maybe silentpcreview.com/fractal-r2? –  Kyle Brandt Apr 28 '10 at 13:31
Related: Can someone suggest a mini-ITX motherboard that support 6 drives in a RAID? –  James Watt Apr 28 '10 at 14:46

5 Answers 5

Have you seen Lian Li's PC-Q08?

share|improve this answer
I'm doing basically the same thing as soon as WHSv2 comes out and I've been frantically looking for workable boards and cases. Here are a couple boards I've been contemplating: ZOTAC NM10-DTX Atom/Ion, 6 SATA ports, 1 x16 slot, 1 x1 slot Sapphire IPC-AM3DD785G Only 4 SATA ports but AM3 socket so it will take an AMD Athlon II X4 605e 45W TDP proc. Zotac H55ITX-A-E 6 SATA port goodness, all the advantages of the LGA 1156 chipset, overly power hungry i3/i5 required. GIGABYTE GA-2AIEV-RH Only AM2+ but will supposedly still support the AM3 605e, 6 SATA ports, PCIe x16 slot but only supports x8. –  user35475 Apr 28 '10 at 22:06
Plenty of other differences, some have Native Wifi, some have add on wifi via a mini PCIe slot, some support DDR2 others DDR3, different onboard GFX, support for 5.1/7.1+1, etc. I'm looking ideally for a true AM3 board with full DDR3 support, 6+ (7+ really but I doubt that will ever happen) SATA ports, DTX would be nice with an x1 and an x16 slot, 7.1+ support for streaming audio through a wifi home audio setup, descent integrated GFX would be nice too. Of course I'll probably never get most of these things but I can dream can't I? –  user35475 Apr 28 '10 at 22:55

I doubt it's what you're looking for, but most Mini-ITX boards will fit in a standard ATX case.
Most HD's pull around 10w+ each, so an normal Mini-ITX powersupply probably isn't going to cut it.

share|improve this answer
Actually the usual drives for home servers, LP models, take around 6.5W when seeking: silentpcreview.com/article1216-page5.html –  Zds Sep 2 '11 at 13:45

Even through some time has passed and you most likely already have a case I would recommend a Fractal Design Array R2 which I use for my Network Storage. It takes up to 6 3.5" devices and 1 2.5" device and just looks awesome.

share|improve this answer

If you can do with 4: Chenbro ES34069. I've never seen a mini-ITX chassis hold more than 4.

Edit: I stand corrected. The Fractal case in the comment above looks awesome.

share|improve this answer

If you are using picoPSU or similar, I recommend using low-power drives. Their performance is within striking distance from their 7200rpm counterparts, and their noise levels and power requirements are more modest. If you look at [table on this article], you can easily find LP drives that take 6.5W or less when seeking, compared to around 10W of 7200rpm drives.

share|improve this answer
