Moving a rack?

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altano

Active Member
Sep 3, 2011
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Los Angeles, CA
Does anyone have any advice on how to transport a server rack hundreds of miles in normal house move? I'm going to take all the hard drives out and put them in road cases and move those in my car, but what about the servers? I'm going to have movers but I obviously don't trust them to pack these servers up into boxes properly.

I looked into getting a rack road case (e.g. https://www.guitarcenter.com/Rackmount-Cases.gc) but they're all too shallow for my storage server (26" deep). The deepest rack I could find was 24". I'm also afraid my UPS is too heavy for one of those.
 

BlueFox

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Oct 26, 2015
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I took mine over 1000 miles in the back of a Uhaul, full of servers at that. Didn't bother removing any hard drives or the likes. Whole thing was completely uneventful and I sustained zero damage. Just make sure you lower the feet so it doesn't slide around on the casters and screw the servers in tight.

 
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Blinky 42

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Aug 6, 2015
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PA, USA
EIther way works - I have left everything in the rack as-is before and also removed the drives and packed them separate in past moves.
Super important to strap the rack into the truck well so it doesn't move around, and fix/lock any casters. Be sure you have also screwed into place any of the sliding rails so the servers dong slide back and forth in the rack at all while in transit.

If you have a general idea of the route the truck will take and how bad the roads are going to be you can use that info to decide how far you go in packing everything up. If the road is a mess, I would err on the side of caution and pack the drives separate but leave the rest of the servers in the rack.
 

JSchuricht

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Apr 4, 2011
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When I move mine long distance, I take everything out, put the rack in a trailer then reinstall all the servers and strap it down. Same concept as the Uhaul truck but empty when loading to make life easier. Just be sure it is strapped down really good and don't put all the heavy loads on the same side.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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When I moved in 2020 I took all my servers out of my rack and transported them manually in my car but I was only moving 30 min away. May not be feasible for long distances. I had the movers just load the rack in their truck.
 
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