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It looks like you just stacked the drives on top of each other. Were they secured to anything? ...
First, nice work. Also, looking much cleaner than mine with all the cables.
I usually only have the two ATA-66 Drives at the very right (my actual boot drives), installed in the metal carrier. The others are just stacked, because I like to swap them out often and got tired of the screws. Well, I know that is not a good thing. I guess this could even hurt the drives(?).
If I would keep it that way often, I would probably mount them each to carriers. But then again, there are holes in the bottom of the case (stock) that get covered with the carrier. Don't know why Apple designed it that way, if they are covered anyway. There is, where your idea of using MDD cariers comes in, which I thought of, too.
Also, I usually do not have all the drives in. This was just for this test (or, when I need to tidy up space and want to easily compare drive content and be able to copy files at double speed, other than would be possible, if I just used external cases over FW400. Also with these first Macs, FW400 seems to be very slow at write speeds, hence preferring putting them all in and connect them internally via SATA.
If so, the ones on the very left under the speaker case get the hottest, which seems quite clear to me. But they only do, if they are constantly accessed. 6 at the bottom seems to be ok heat-wise, though. I also do not have it running longer than 8hours, when I do these things and some drives will cool down, when not accessed. Additionally and last, heat from one drive is equalized with the other, when one is not used, it then functions as a sort of cooler, taking the heat away a bit more quickly and above that, there is the fan.
I also would not run this without the 120mm fan put in front of the PSU "intake". Look at the picture again, it is hard to see.
No worries. I am rather certain that it is a Southbridge problem with those systems, and it may only affect the ATA-5 (ATA/66) portion of the I/O bus.
One flaw with the Highpoint cards: They tend not to be usable as boot devices. I wish that I could suggest a 'perfect' solution for you, but SATA did not exist (in production) at the time that MacOS 9.x was still in use. Thus, the only HW RAID cards that I can suggest for OS9.x are SCSI, and you will not want to devote the financial resources to making a >2TB SCSI RAID.
Are you not worried regarding thermal displacement, with nine mechanical HDDs in the case?
As you say "financial resources" is what I am not going to invest in that OS-9 thing. I have files, I know I will need under OS 9 on drives <1TB anyway. What I wanted to say with breaking the B-header of the 3TB drive is: if I boot into 10.4 the 3TB is seen. Then I boot into OS 9, the 3TB is not seen because of the SIL3124 card not having drivers for OS 9. If I THEN, boot back to 10.4 the files system will be damaged and at first it will take a very long time, till disk utility can even see it, to state the error. 10.5 helps here, since after waiting a lot it will come up with the message "blabla, you can use the drive still, but do a backup asap." (or s. like that).
So, although the card doesn't even work under OS9 it seems to be enough of a problem, to break the 3TB. (The Sonnet tempo 2port card, even damages the file system under 10.5, which is due to a restriction to 2TB, but then again, I wonder, why one can format it under 10.5 with the Sonnet card. The only save way is keeping it on the "PC" SIL3124 card with 4ports.)
On the heat question. Yes, I worry, hence I do not really run it that way (never more than 6 drives, and usually only 4, or even 2-3). I, of course, not recommend doing this without any indications (e.g. SMART, which is not sufficient, I know) available for the user, what temperatures he has in there.
[
robertdsc: Do you get SMART temperature readings for one or more of the drives? You can use istatpro. Would be interesting to know, with your setup.]
I even sometimes disconnect the drives or put them out (which is, as I understand not good for the pins, in the long run. Electricity loading up there, touching them ever so often, is another issue that may come to mind. Though I never had that issue). I tend to put out every drive I can, when I know, that I will keep it that way for a month or so, working on one thing. I even sometimes put out the second boot drive.
As a precaution, I always put in the big 120mm fan in front of the PSU, when I use 6 drives over several hours. (Which is loud, because I just not use a specifically picked fan).
You can see the temperature log in the linked post. (As thermal sensors I use the ATA-connected drives and two SATA-drives connected to a Macally SATA-card which is capable of giving SMART readings (which the Sonnet can't)).
I plan to investigate that a bit more and try several fans, along using a better temp-sensor device. (If I ever get the time).
