Norco is dead! Case recommendations for 20+ drives?

[Dizzy49 94]

Sadly Norco is dead.  No more 4220 or 4224 cases.  One of my backplanes went out on me (taking 3 drives with it), and a second is on it's way out.  Any suggestions for cases that won't set me back $1k+ ??

[Carlo 4330]

Probably not what you're looking for but I use a few of these
https://www.adorama.com/stusb3sata.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwpf2IBhDkARIsAGVo0D2e8bqCK2Q4SuzFU6GkwMHvzRujLrCTyPvsn4IKru1GKbi2FOtyrTMaAi2pEALw_wcB&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpf2IBhDkARIsAGVo0D2e8bqCK2Q4SuzFU6GkwMHvzRujLrCTyPvsn4IKru1GKbi2FOtyrTMaAi2pEALw_wcB&utm_source=adl-gbase-p

Basically an 8 bay hot swappable case with great cooling.  You can plug these into another computer using SATA or USB3 and they are rock solid.

[arrbee99 1560]

Newegg says it has 3 4224 cases

[Dizzy49 94]

31 minutes ago, arrbee99 said:

Newegg says it has 3 4224 cases

Yeah, I wouldn't buy them.  There is ZERO support, and aside from rails, parts are VERY hard to come by.

[arrbee99 1560]

Ah OK. Thought you were desperate for a replacement, but maybe not ...

[generiq 111]

Used Supermicro on ebay. Much better than Norco. Backplanes are abundant, cheap and easy to replace. And if you get a backplane with all drives wired, you only need one controller card for all of the drives. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by generiq

[Dizzy49 94]

49 minutes ago, cayars said:

Probably not what you're looking for but I use a few of these
https://www.adorama.com/stusb3sata.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwpf2IBhDkARIsAGVo0D2e8bqCK2Q4SuzFU6GkwMHvzRujLrCTyPvsn4IKru1GKbi2FOtyrTMaAi2pEALw_wcB&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpf2IBhDkARIsAGVo0D2e8bqCK2Q4SuzFU6GkwMHvzRujLrCTyPvsn4IKru1GKbi2FOtyrTMaAi2pEALw_wcB&utm_source=adl-gbase-p

Basically an 8 bay hot swappable case with great cooling.  You can plug these into another computer using SATA or USB3 and they are rock solid.

Yeah, if I go that route I'd get like a 2u case to put 8 drives in with a 12Gbit/s SAS connection.

[Dizzy49 94]

7 hours ago, generiq said:

Used Supermicro on ebay. Much better than Norco. Backplanes are abundant, cheap and easy to replace. And if you get a backplane with all drives wired, you only need one controller card for all of the drives. 

I just never know what to look for there.  I also don't know if I could move my existing mobo/processor into one of the cases.  I've heard a lot of good things about them.  I have owned a couple of their boards in older servers and things too.  I've got an i7-7700K that runs things really well, I don't want to downgrade the processor, and I don't want to pay for parts I"m not going to use. I already have a closet full of spare parts

[generiq 111]

55 minutes ago, Dizzy49 said:

I just never know what to look for there.  I also don't know if I could move my existing mobo/processor into one of the cases.  I've heard a lot of good things about them.  I have owned a couple of their boards in older servers and things too.  I've got an i7-7700K that runs things really well, I don't want to downgrade the processor, and I don't want to pay for parts I"m not going to use. I already have a closet full of spare parts

Well, you could get one of these. You'll need one of these to connect the front panel buttons to the motherboard. And if you wanted to modify the fans, you can replace the fan wall with what you have in the Norco and do something like this.

[generiq 111]

You can also take a look at this site for options.

https://www.theserverstore.com/

[Dizzy49 94]

46 minutes ago, generiq said:

Well, you could get one of these. You'll need one of these to connect the front panel buttons to the motherboard. And if you wanted to modify the fans, you can replace the fan wall with what you have in the Norco and do something like this.

LOVE IT!

[tenchiowo 6]

I am in the same boat you are in Dizzy, my 4220 has already lost one full backplane and half of another.. As for Norco yes they are dead and gone, the last response I had from them was back in 2020 and then nothing. Plus their CA warehouse with all of their hardware was put up for auction in March of this year. Here is a link to the auction site here as they still the pictures online of what was being sold at the time. My bet is that most of the NORCO cases that are still out in the market are cases that were purchased in bulk at the warehouse and the resellers are trying to offload them. 

My Norco 4220 runs quiet and cool and it will be hard to get a large case to be that quiet moving forward. I have a few supermicro 2u servers and they are always loud as can be as Supermicro has never been one to really make a quiet product by default. Yes you can start hacking the fans and look high and low for sq power supplies but the costs starts adding up just trying to build a quiet server case. If you are willing to stick with a 2u form factor I would look into getting a Dell Poweredge server instead with 3.5 drive bays anywhere from a 520, 720, or 720xd. Dell servers when running in normal operational mode are whisper quiet and you can always flash the perc raid card into a LSI IT mode to use regular drives and then install FreeNAS or if you want to go to the bottom of the rabbit hole you could do a XPEnology build. 

 

Hope this helps,