HDD Cage mods

[ottothecow]

In the process of modifying a case to accomodate a large server mobo, I have to remove the original HDD cage.

Could someone point me to some mods out there where people built new cages (both creative designs and simple/practical designs woudl be appreciated) for their HDDs. I know I have seen some out there on modding sites for relocating drives or adding more but I cant seem to find anything specific now.

I am planning on mounting it to the floor of the case like the PC-60 cage but other options will be considered.

 

[Zap]

How many drives will you have? I've mounted drives on the bottom of the case and also on the case side panel. HDDs have mounting holes on the bottom and it's easy to just drill two holes and use two screws (diagonally) to mount a drive. I did just that to mount a total of SEVEN hard drives in a mATX case.

 

[mshan]

Sunbeam Whereever PCI rack

 

[ottothecow]

The PCI slot seems like kind of a strange place to mount some HDDs rather than in front of the dual 120mm fans at the front of the case.

I have multiple drives so I would rather have them be in a sort of rack that is easily swappable. I also plan to isolate the vibration of this rack from the case (possibly using the rubber standoffs that ship with the zalman HDD coolers). I have a fair amount of space on the floor of the case up front...just looking for ideas for an elegant solution to using that space for drives.

 

[Wild1]

How about starting with one of these to save some work
EX-23
EX-34
Holds 3 or 4 drives and has bonus of fan to keep the drives cool.
These are made for mounting in the 5.25" bays but you could just discard the Al front

 

[Zepper]

Evercase sells their lever-release drive racks (2 HD per rack) separately. They mount wherever there is room and you only have to drill two holes for the base mounting screws. You can get the optional drive isolating cushions for the racks there too. The racks and dampers are the 3rd and 4th items in the "Optional Parts" list toward the bottom of the page. You have to call them to place a parts order as there is no e-commorce on their web site.

.bh.

 

[ottothecow]

but no homebrew designs eh?

 

[Zepper]

You could always google on- Hard disk bracket plans - and see what pops up... AFAIC, there's no percentage in reinventing the wheel. But it's simple to bend cut and drill sheet aluminum into whatever one needs...

.bh.