Workstation case with individual drive lights?

[Atarres]

Hey all,

I'm looking for a case that has individual drive lights. Ideally one that can handle 8 drives. My reasoning is for drive monitoring to identify specific broken/failing drives for quick swap jobs. Anyone know of a case that can do this (not a server case?) If a server case is the ONLY real option in that regard, then I will consider that. But ideally a workstation would be better. I did some searching and either my google-fu is off or such a case is not currently available. Any help is appreciated.

 

[seang86s]

What size drives are you going to use? 3.5 or 2.5? You could get a case with a bunch of 5.25 inch bays and place an enterprise level hotswap chassis in there (Supermicro comes to mind). You'll then need an HBA or RAID controller that can do SES-2 to the backplane on the hotswap chassis so you get the proper LED function. The standard onboard SATA ports cannot usually provide this functionality.

To give you an idea, I currently have this: Supermicro | Products | Accessories | Mobile Racks | CSE-M28SAB-OEM in this Silverstone case: SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.- GD07 paired to an LSI 9265 RAID controller with a bunch of 2TB hard drives. This machine is my Windows Media Center HTPC. The drive activity, failure and identify drive functions all work.

 

[Atarres]

It would be a mix of drives. I generally have adapters to convert a 2.5 drive to a 3.5/5.25 slots. So in that sense agnostic, The HBA's I've already got so that's a non-issue. I suspected I would need such to make this work. Only drive connected to motherboard would be my primary drive anyway. I need to monitor the rest of the drives for data storage. Boot drive while monitored will be easy to know if/when it fails

Your setup is EXACTLY what I am looking for. But if I had to adapt 2.5 drives how would I adapt them into the supermicro? Near future I might want to go to SSD all the way. Currently just larger NAS drives running in my current setup.

 

[T_Minus]

I have Icy Dock 3.5" in 5.25" and they have their own lights, I have a 3x3.5 into 2x5.25 and a 5x5.25 in 5.25.

If your case had enough 5.25 use both for 8 hehe.

They have their own fans onthem too, and the fans are not silent like the rest of my mini-tower so keep that inmind.
It's a "loud workstation" type sound not a server/rack style sound fwiw.

 

[seang86s]

Your setup is EXACTLY what I am looking for. But if I had to adapt 2.5 drives how would I adapt them into the supermicro? Near future I might want to go to SSD all the way. Currently just larger NAS drives running in my current setup.

You could get this: Supermicro | Products | Accessories | Mobile Rack | CSE-M35TQB which takes 3.5 inch drives and if you want to put a 2.5 inch drive in the tray, use an adapter that positions the SATA/SAS connector properly for a hotswap backplane. You'll just need a case that has enough 5.25 bays. I have an older (discontinued) Corsair Obsidian 900D or 950D that is a full tower with 8 or so 5.25 bays in the front that would work for this purpose. I'm sure Corsair and some other case manufacturers have current full towers with similar setups.

 

[seang86s]

I have Icy Dock 3.5" in 5.25" and they have their own lights, I have a 3x3.5 into 2x5.25 and a 5x5.25 in 5.25.

Does the Icy Dock indicators work for drive activity and failure? On the budget SATA hotswap bays I used in the past, I could never get the LEDs to work consistently. Some HDs would trigger the LEDs on the hotswap bay, but most wouldn't. Back in the day when I used them, I would P-Touch label the serial number (or last few digits) of the hard drive to the front of the sled so I could identify which drive failed thru whatever utility the particular controller I used at the time (most would tell you the serial number of the active drives so it made it easier to find the serial number of the dead drive).

 

[Atarres]

Does the Icy Dock indicators work for drive activity and failure? On the budget SATA hotswap bays I used in the past, I could never get the LEDs to work consistently. Some HDs would trigger the LEDs on the hotswap bay, but most wouldn't. Back in the day when I used them, I would P-Touch label the serial number (or last few digits) of the hard drive to the front of the sled so I could identify which drive failed thru whatever utility the particular controller I used at the time (most would tell you the serial number of the active drives so it made it easier to find the serial number of the dead drive).

I like the labeling by serial idea! I use Stablebit Scanner to monitor the drives, but the same could be applied to my other setup as well! Some great ideas in here overall. I'll have to see how I can adapt it for my needs.

 

[Atarres]

I have Icy Dock 3.5" in 5.25" and they have their own lights, I have a 3x3.5 into 2x5.25 and a 5x5.25 in 5.25.

If your case had enough 5.25 use both for 8 hehe.

They have their own fans onthem too, and the fans are not silent like the rest of my mini-tower so keep that inmind.
It's a "loud workstation" type sound not a server/rack style sound fwiw.

If the fans are of a standard type I can always swap em out with quieter versions. I'll have to research that. I did that with a supermicro rackmount server case I have the bulk of my storage on and it's quieter than a workstation, the PSUs were also replaced with quieter models and I still have a nice amount of cooling with the setup regardless.

 

[Atarres]

I have Icy Dock 3.5" in 5.25" and they have their own lights, I have a 3x3.5 into 2x5.25 and a 5x5.25 in 5.25.

If your case had enough 5.25 use both for 8 hehe.

They have their own fans onthem too, and the fans are not silent like the rest of my mini-tower so keep that inmind.
It's a "loud workstation" type sound not a server/rack style sound fwiw.

I have the same question for the Icy Dock. If I can use an app to light up the drive lights, that's the bee's knees for me. Its the whole reason for the setup.