Well I decided to finally upgrade my home server since I'm running low on space and I don't like to delete anything. I'm a huge pack-rat even with my data.
What the system was:
- Abit AN-7
- Athlon XP-M 2500+
- 1GB DDR-400
- Netgear PCI Gigabit NIC
- 1x Samsung 160GB HD (OS)
- Rosewill RC-209-EX SATA RAID Controller
- 4x Maxtor 500GB HD (RAID 5 - storage)
- Antec Earthwatts EA500
What the system will now be:
- Jetway Flex-ATX Atom Mobo
- Atom 330
- 4GB DDR2-800
- Rosewill PCIe Gigabit NIC
- 1x Samsung 160GB HD (OS)
- 2x Rosewill RC-209-EX SATA RAID Controller
- 4x Maxtor 500GB HD (RAID 5 - storage)
- 4x Hitachi 1TB HD (RAID 5 - storage)
- Antec Earthwatts EA500
Now, the issue that arose was that I didn't have nearly enough space in any computer case that I had for 9 hard drives. That's a lot of hard drives! So I decided that the best (read: cheapest) way to house 9 drives was to build my own enclosure. To keep this on the cheap and build it with relative fast speed I decided to build it out of known cheap and fast building materials: MDF and aluminum. Both of these are easily attainable at any Lowes or Home Depot. It is also open air because I don't care if it's closed or not. Besides, open-air is less material therefore cheaper.
Bill of materials:
- 2' x 4' x 0.5" MDF = ~$6.50
- 8' L-shaped aluminum bar = ~$5
- 8' channel-shaped aluminum bar = ~$9
So without further ado you can see the beginnings of my creation and some details about the images:
As you can see, the measurements were drawn directly on the MDF because that's rather easy to read when cutting with a table saw. Overall dimensions of the back panel are 18" x 18.25".
Moving from left to right: mobo + psu area is 11", HD area is 5.75", and the fan area was 1.5". I left the area for the fans on the front in case I ever wanted to close it in then I'd have the fans coming directly to the front.

Hard drives are 5.75" x 4" x 1", and a 120mm can mostly cool 4 at the same time so that is the reason that the bays are 4 drives high. The bay on the left is 1 drive rail area short as you may notice. The channel-shaped aluminum needed to be 9' long for me to do this, unfortunately Lowes/HD don't carry lengths over 8' so since I didn't really need it then I didn't buy another piece.

Here you can see how it's held together. Those are just 1.25" wood drywall screws that I had in my house. The holes were all predrilled before inserting the screws though because MDF tends to split easily. The screws are countersunk into the MDF just by using a larger drillbit. The area for the fans was drawn using an actual fan and the circle to cut out was drawn using a roll of masking tape then cut out with a jigsaw.

The back side is kind of boring.

The only things that I'm really going to add to it now are an area to mount the PSU and mobo standoffs. Then I'm just simply going to attach it to the wall in my bedroom closet. That's already where my wireless router, gigabit switch, and cable modem are located.