Antec NSK 3480 Extra Harddrives?

spcrClox · Post by **spcrClox** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 4:02 am

Hi guys, looking at a Antec NSK 3480 but the onl thing putting me off right now is the lack of space for harddrives.

I see some of you suspending harddrives etc in other cases, would this be an option for this case to get maybe 3 harddrives towards the bottom of the case somehow?

Infact lack of motherboard tray and harddrive cage is really putting me off, if i could get the harddrives in somehow that they are easy and quick to remove that would be great.

EDIT:
I can get my hands on the bottom hardrive tray from the antec P180 if that is of use? Not sure if it will even fit anywhere!

victorhortalives · Post by **victorhortalives** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:21 am

Depends on the sort of hard drives.

Difficult to get 3x 3.5in drives there, but not so difficult to get 3x 2.5in drives. What you would have to is to put 2x 2.5in drives vertically against the front facia and put the 3rd on the bottom.

I currently have a 2.5in in a Scythe box (so 3.5in in size) against the front facia and a second 2.5in (SSD so no box) on the bottom.

If you used a MiniITX board then you would have more free space from the bottom upwards.

" bottom hardrive tray from the antec P180 " - don't think that will fit anywhere.

spcrClox · Post by **spcrClox** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 9:13 am

victorhortalives wrote:Depends on the sort of hard drives.

Difficult to get 3x 3.5in drives there, but not so difficult to get 3x 2.5in drives. What you would have to is to put 2x 2.5in drives vertically against the front facia and put the 3rd on the bottom.

I currently have a 2.5in in a Scythe box (so 3.5in in size) against the front facia and a second 2.5in (SSD so no box) on the bottom.

If you used a MiniITX board then you would have more free space from the bottom upwards.

" bottom hardrive tray from the antec P180 " - don't think that will fit anywhere.

Hi, thanks for the input. Would you be able to post up a picture of that setup please?

What way did you fix the harddrive to the font?

I wonder could some 2.5inch drives be fixed to the side panel door in some way?

SLOTh · Post by **SLOTh** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 9:22 am

while not necessarily silent:

Velcro is your friend for 2.5" drives

victorhortalives · Post by **victorhortalives** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 9:46 am

Glad to help.

I can't post any pics BUT I can point you to where I got the idea.

Look at Porkchop's post in this thread : viewtopic.php?t=19147&postdays=0&postor ... &start=240

It's on page 9 towards the bottom, the second photo. It's also in a 3480.

You need to take the front off and run 4 long bolts through the corner points of the front fan grills. Two at the top of the top one; two at the bottom of the bottom one.

Then get some electrician's small connectors (8 in total for 2 drives) with loop heads for threading knicker elastic (or another elastic rope) through.
These are the sort of things to look for : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_connector
Look at the pic next to the heading : Blade connector.
Look at the two top left with black and brown wires. You can buy the end bits in DIY shops.
At the point where the cable joins the connector (in the pic), there's usually a hole where you can use a normal computer drive support screw.

Screw four of these connectors into the corner support holes on each drive with normal drive support screws (at the points where you would normally attach the drive to a support frame).

Cut 4 lengths of elastic. Run one length through the top two loop heads (one on each side of a drive) and twist round the top two bolts.
Repeat for the bottom two. This will give you one drive supported vertically against the front.

Push the drive towards the front. This will give you enough "bolt length" to support another drive infront of the first one.
I don't think there's enough space to do this with 2x 3.5in PLUS you want to make sure the 2 drives don't touch each other.

The side doors come off and there's no way to fix anything to them.

There's always the top chamber with space also for a drive. It gets pretty crowded in there with a DVD drive AND power cables etc.
I didn't put any drives in there as I replaced the PSU with a Silverstone passive - so no cooling in the top chamber for me.

baconandeggs · Post by **baconandeggs** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 2:12 pm

you could use three hdds without any mods.

two 3.5in hdds one at top bay and one on bottom. then a 2.5in drive in the 3.5 floppy bay using a convertor

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 3:00 pm

Any drive you attempt to put in the lower chamber will be sitting over the motherboard region. You can do it, but it may make things a bit cramped if your the type to re-arrange things inside your system often.

Personally id say go with external storage via network attached or eSATA. Use a single internal drive for the OS/Programs, and if you need large amounts of storage use external drives.

For just OS/Games/Programs with an average sized mp3 music collection you can easily do it with under 100gb of storage. They make up to 2TB HDD's now, i really cant see the need for more than 1 drive in a system unless your doing a RAID array.

I use this case with a single 80gb SSD drive with 40gb of space to spare.

spcrClox · Post by **spcrClox** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:13 am

Really nice info guys.

I have four 3.5inch drives currently at only 1.2tb in total.

Going to order this case today and will just hold off buying drives untill i get it to see the real amount of room i have to play with.

Not so sure why the external setups for harddrives are so very expensive.

I like the idea of Velcro!

And thanks for that detailed info victorhortalives, that looks really impressive. Going to have to try all these ideas when it comes!

Thanks

piglickjf · Post by **piglickjf** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 11:05 am

I havea 3480 also, and have found that you can fit 3.5" drives horizontally between the front of the case and the front of the mobo if you hang them "side to side" instead of "front to back" like normal (with my mobo, at least - hope that description makes sense). It's a tight fit, and actually rigging up something to get them to hang there can be tricky, but it's doable.

I have one there (in the spot where the floppy drive cage would be) just hanging in an elastic "sling" that I rigged up by threading the elastic through the various holes in the bottom of the upper bay. It's not pretty, but it works. If you don't have a fan up front or some extra-long graphcis card, etc. and with a more creative/ingenious system you could easily fit several more there if you really wanted to.

The only downside (other than the trickiness of working out a system to hold them in place) is that they're pretty much out of any airflow up there, but the temps of my HD hanging there are only a couple degrees cooler than my primary HD which is up top with the PSU, so it doesn't seem too bad.

PigLick

baconandeggs · Post by **baconandeggs** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 12:48 pm

photos?

piglickjf · Post by **piglickjf** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:59 am

baconandeggs wrote:photos?

Of my setup? I don't have any right now. I can try and take some when I get a chance, but no promises. Like I said though, it's pretty messy, so I don't know how eager I am to show them off, lol.

PigLick

SteveRCE · Post by **SteveRCE** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:43 pm

SLOTh wrote:while not necessarily silent:

Velcro is your friend for 2.5" drives

Not only fabric velcro, but a more secure method would be the plastic velcro you can find at any hardware/hobby/fabric store. Only advisable for case floor mounting, wouldn't trust my data to the glue applied to it if gravity comes into play