I noticed there is a shortage of affordable 3.5" hard drive racks, and those that are available are not really stackable. So I did what any problem solver would…
Introducing a custom designed and made (by me) enclosure made for four (4) or more 3.5" hard drives with great airflow, and the ability to mount an optional 80mm fan (fan not included) to cool down the drives even more! Sixteen (16) hard drive screws included to mount hard drives. No need to buy an overpriced hard drive cage that has poor airflow!
And if you need to hold more than four (4) drives, this rack is stackable, so you can stack this rack on top of itself. Each additional rack added adds support for three (3) additional drives. For example:
A single (1) set of racks gets you four (4) drive total capacity
Stacking two (2) sets of racks gets you seven (7) drive total capacity
Stacking three (3) sets of racks gets you ten (10) drive total capacity
And if you have any product requests that solve a specific problem in relation to Chia, feel free to post it here! I can rapidly design, create, and ship products that do exactly what you need and more!
That would power it. But to use that, you would have to run it from an internal connection. I assume this stack would be external, correct? Maybe I am picturing this wrong.
I pictured this sitting next to a computer powered externally and connected via USB or something … wrong?
The problem I’m trying to solve is people who have HBA cards or SATA expansion cards and hard drives laid out on a table and messy. Fans can fall over, hard drives take up too much space, etc. This simply makes it neat and orderly, as well as providing tons of space to build upward. Pretty much…
If these are PLA, I wouldn’t say that the fan is optional - PLA starts to soften at around 55-60 C and hard drives without adequate cooling can get to that, this is even more likely on a hot day.
Should be cooling drives anyway - but if you throw PLA supports into the mix it goes from important to essential.
This is a good thing, but agree with Wolf that power options would also be very useful.
Something external that can connect a lot sata power cords would be really nice to have for many I think.
I don’t at the moment, but just a tip if you want to expand selling chia stuff
This is what I use for external drives, to connect external SAS/SATA disks to SAS cards. For power, I have made a point of using the same modular power supply brand for all of my chia devices, so that I can put all of the molex modular cables that I don’t use in plotters/servers onto PSUs that I use for disks.
You can also get similar external cables with SATA power connectors for SATA disks, although I haven’t seen any for a while.
You can also pick up pretty cheap backplanes that have been stripped out of servers/enclosures, they typically have 1 SFF-8087 connector and 1 molex connector per 4 disks, I have a few of these, and planning to make similar 3D printed supports for disks (but in PETG rather than PLA).
If your hard drives are making it to 55-60c you’ve got longevity problems. Plus, that temp is from the internal temperature sensor, not one on the outside. I don’t think this scenario is realistic unless someone is really abusing their hardware. You wouldn’t want to run drives that hot for long periods of time.
I thought much the same until I saw this Reddit thread:
Probably doing something else wrong, like sticking them into a badly ventilated area - but I still prefer at least PETG personally for anything that goes in/near anything that gets hot, ABS ideally.
Good thoughts. The orientation of that print is not ideal for the stress of the HDDs. I print on a different axis to prevent inherent weaknesses like that. Also, no idea what the infill of that part is.
I also suspect you are correct on ventilation… I see a clip on fan in the background but it seems to be on a computer instead of the drives…
Seeing as how I’ve been running these personally for a few weeks to find issues, I’m really keen to find what would make them fail.
I guess it’s time to stress some HDDs and stick them in a non-ventilated computer case and see what it takes to make these fail!
Regardless I’m now doing a stress test between PLA, ABS, and PETG.
Obviously the ABS is such high temperature it won’t fail, but maybe it has some other property that is undesirable. Will do some testing with all 3 materials to determine and pick the best one as the final material here.
I think if you made it into a package with options. Then it could be an entire solution.
Options
Adapter card
Fan (with a way to hook it up to power)
Power supply / connectors
SATA extensions / connectors
And then show this setup next to a computer nice an clean. Showing how it is connected. I know you are targeting a specific setup. But for people like me that may consider something like this in the future, it just appears very limited without understanding the whole picture. Just a thought. Ignore if not interested.
I’d love to provide a package solution. However, planning out how much inventory I need is a concern. Additionally, in a package situation I would expect reduced price to the customer, which means I need to buy all of the electronics components in bulk to be able to give a low cost and pass it on.
I do know there is a need out there, but I don’t desire being stuck with a ton of HBAs and cables.
May look into this however.
I’ll work on an additional image to show what parts go best with my product.
An alternative might be to source a few sets of suggested accessories for various use cases on Amazon and provide those to your customers as affiliate links. That way your customers have a way of understanding the additional stuff they will need to get, an easy way to get it, and you make a little change on the transaction.
Edited to add: Heck, toss some affiliate links for hard drives on there too and make some real money!
