I've built a couple of these. One minor drawback compared to something more expensive: The drive bays can be a little "sticky", since they aren't built to super-precise tolerances. Worth it for the price, though.

You can also try a 48 port chassis if you really want to up the spindle count without costs going too high:

http://www.rackmountpro.com/product.aspx?prodid=3204&catid=259

The biggest choice you'll make is SATA controller card. Cards I've used:

3ware 9650SE: - good Linux support - on the slow side for random access

Areca 1230, Areca 1680: - binary blob Linux driver - seems to be faster than 3ware for random access

Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (3 with SW RAID): - others have had good luck with it - I experienced system lockups that I couldn't resolve, so I never used them in production

Andrew

--- On Wed, 9/16/09, Daniel Roizman droizman@gmail.com wrote:

http://supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/?chs=846 ? it's no backblaze but 24 drives, redundant power and choice of backplane feels less risky than the backblaze route.? thanks to everyone's feedback, I'm trying to up the spindle count and this seems to be a cost effective route to it.

? ?

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