And here are the mounted drive caddies:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im...2009/10/20.jpg
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And here are the mounted drive caddies:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im...2009/10/20.jpg
I really wish I had taken pictures of the step by step when I put one together. There is too much Excitement & Adrenaline with me wanting to get it up and going. I then don't take the time to Take Pictures.
It looks like a great plan with your hard drives. I have to keep it simple around here. If I did a setup like yours I would confuse my wife. She has trouble downloading something and knowing where she downloaded it to. If I stored on a different drive she'd never get it. So I keep it simple. She even has trouble installing software sometimes, but it's not as bad as the downloads.
Well with 6 hdds, folks do get lost with my rig.
But naming them sure helps me out a lot.
I've used caddies for years. Can't remember the last time I mounted a hard drive internally. I use two of them and run the top cable to IDE 1 and the botrtom cable to IDE 2 (or SATA 1 & 2). I use a convention where the top drive is the Master drive and the bottom drive is the Slave. I then put my operating systems on there own Master drive and pop them in as wanted. Complete isolation is wonderful. I keep one large drive jumpered as Slave and pop that in the bottom to do Image backups of all systems when desired, then remove it and store it---it doesn't sit inside running all the time putting wear and tear on it. Critical files and pictures I keep backed up on CD or DVD also. I keep a couple of spare drives in caddies for experimenting with OS's and other odds and ends. I find this method very flexible and convenient. Always build a new system this way.
That's good to hear that it works well for other folks. I've got an extra caddy that I'm going to install in my Core 2 rig, which is going to be my secondary PC, then I can swap drives between them if needs be - transferring Media Centre files can be a pain even over a gigabit LAN.
Mrs SS has just got my old AMD X2 rig to replace her ageing Dell. It's in an entirely different league to what she has had before (and has Vista instead of XP), so I've got some teaching to do, and she's got some learning. At least I've been able to set it to back up her docs, so I won't have to spend hours trying to recover disappeared Word documents that are needed urgently for her university course, like I did the other day :rolleyes:
I think I may just add 1 of those to my computer and store our photos on it. I do back them up on DVD but it would be nice to have 1 drive just for that purpose. Right now we have 4 desktops and 4 laptops and photos on all of them. I could share photos from 7 of the computers and then I can move them to the caddied drive at my convience.
Like I said, my wife is the main problem around here. My daughter isn't much better than the wife. If I could get them to save things where they are supposed to be saved it would be easy, but since they don't it's not! Think I'll give the caddie idea a go in one of my open bays.
BTW, Are there any specific caddies that are better than others? What type do you use and why?
I think they are probably much of a muchness really, there is very little to them, especially the trayless SATA ones. I like IcyBox because of the build quality - they also claim a minimum of 50,000 drive insertions before you wear the contacts out, which should be enough :D
These are the trayless ones:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/IcyBo...D-Black-Colour
And these are the trayed ones:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Icybo...uminum-Plastic
bugspop1--I don't know where you're located but here in the US I've always used Kingwin and have never had a problem with them.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&searchbtn.y=0
Sorting out the cables:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im...2009/10/17.jpg
More cable management. I always find getting the cables tidy is the most time consuming bit of a build, and I usually end up throwing away as many cable ties as I use!
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im...2009/10/16.jpg
Bit of a delay on the final pics rest of the build, this one wanted to fight me a bit and I ran into a problem or three :( However, everything is now back on track, and Windows 7 is in the process of being installed (for the second time).
Thanks for the links for the Racks. I will have to purchase 1, 2 or one of those 4 drive 3 bay racks. Not sure what I'll go with yet, but I'm sure I want one.
I can finally finish this off now. Here is the old and (what I thought was) the new:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im...2009/10/10.jpg
This is trying to figure out why the big case fan in the top won't run, and all the 12cm case fans are running very slowly:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im.../2009/10/8.jpg
Here I'm running the fan on a bench power supply, to show that the fan works:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im.../2009/10/9.jpg
And the answer was, in big "Duh" moment, that Antec, in their wisdom, saw fit to use Molex fan connectors that aren't keyed, so they can be fitted either way round. Yours truly, had connected red to red, and hooked up every single fan to the 5 volt rail :rolleyes: :o :o