>I’ve got a new project – an external HD case. I had 6 hard drives in my tower and really needed the power of my 700W for the rest of the componenets. Hard drives just need a warm cable, so to speak. So why not put them on the outside of the case? Well sure, there’s all sorts of reasons like dust and damage and heat.

I think I’ve thought of all that though being short on material and the means to create something like this, I’m a bit unsure how I’m going to work it all through.

For now maybe I’ll use some metal “gutter mesh” I have left over from my bumper screen I made for my Legacy. I had taken a rock directly through the intake area of the bumper the first few months I had the car – took out the whole A/C grate so I made a guard for those rogue CT highway rocks.

In any case it’s about 2 feet long and 6 to 8 inches high, originally meant to keep the leaves out of gutters. It’s got small enough holes where screws ought to hold and it’s bendable while still being (somewhat) strong enough to hold the hard drives.

The “prototype” if you will, is actually just 2 3.5″ bays of 3 slots each from 2 old computer cases. My plan is to put them side by side but there’s actually no room for that with my current setup. In order for the SATA cords to reach outside the tower, the whole arrangement needs to be pretty close.

So here is what I’ve got so far and in concept it works. I jumped a 250W power supply according to this ATX Power schematic. So it’s switched off the power supply itself and otherwise “always on”.

After speaking with my electrician friend at lunch he said that I had to be careful because without a load on the other end, running a “jumped” power supply would overheat if it couldn’t offload it’s power. The other thing to note is that a jumped power supply will also always run at full load, so that’s a constant 250W. Still better then a variable (with new energy star 80-rated) 1.3 Kilowatt power supply.

So here’s some pics, I’ll post more as it evolves/burns up.