Looking for server-class storage but just don't want to cough up the room for a towering rack mount? One modder has figured out a way to cram over 16 TB worth of storage into a small form factor (SFF) case. The entire step-by-step process, listed here, has actually landed sponsorship by the likes of NewEgg, Crucial, and others.
Designed by Will Urbina, the project is called Black Dwarf, and consists of a Quanmax KEEX-2030 ECX motherboard powered by an Intel Atom N270. The board also features a PCI-e x4 slot which was filled by a HighPoint Rocket RAID 2680 8-port SATA/SAS raid controller card purchased from Newegg.
As for the storage, Urbina used eight 3.5-inch HDDs, with an additional two 2.5-inch HDDs to be installed later. "In addition to being tasked with storing huge amounts of files on the system's 8 3.5-inch drives, this computer would also be running 24/7 running sharing files on Bit Torrent," he admitted.
To see how he created the Black Dwarf, check out the video--the first part of two--located below. The website also shows a pictorial step-by-step process as well as professional-looking shots of the finished product.
