new Shuttle system

[MSE OP]

I've downsized my rig from a full server tower to a small toaster sized box. Had to go without a second optical and raptor drive. So it now has two hard drives, 200GB and 74GB, and a brand new dvd burner, two sticks of ram, agp video card, athlon 64bit processor, wireless adapter
the shuttle came with a 8-1 media card reader but I took it out so I could put a second hard drive in.
Took me a long time to figure out that my old dvd burner was giving me problems, when it was installed I would get a "NTDRL is missing" error message at bootup and not be able to do anything, replaced that and good to go, also the 200GB drive wouldn't work on its own so thats why I need the raptor drive in so the computer will work, both are SATA so I don't understand why the 200GB doesn't work on its own but whatever. Biggest fear is overheating but if it does then I'll fork out the money for one monster drive but right now I will live with it the way it is.
I did all this so I could have a computer at the base where I stay for training. Couldn't convince myself to get a laptop since I would get next to nothing for the parts that I already have so did the next best thing and got a computer that is easier to move around.

[MSE OP]

heres a pic of what it looks like

what can I do to mod the outside of it

I do have two ultra violet cathodes but they are a little bit longer then the case, anything I can think of requires cutting the metal cover, I don't have the tools for that, like putting a fan on the top or another idea is to have a carrying handle

[lbjgh]

Sweet Buick... I have thought about building a Shuttle for my next system but I keep doing the incremental upgrades not the complete system at once thing... the Shuttles seem to make so much sense.

[Lsv]

nice stuff, i like the shuttle idea but never liked cramming all that stuff into a tiny package, i prefer m-atx motherboards for building small machines that can still pull off massive performance (since most m-atx boards only sacrafice pci slots)

though after reading some on performance shuttle boards don't lose alot or any performance compared to normal pc's

[MSE OP]

nice stuff, i like the shuttle idea but never liked cramming all that stuff into a tiny package, i prefer m-atx motherboards for building small machines that can still pull off massive performance (since most m-atx boards only sacrafice pci slots)

though after reading some on performance shuttle boards don't lose alot or any performance compared to normal pc's

are there any m-atx boards that would take the components I have? s754 cpu, agp video card, sata drives?

edit: btw, how long will two hard drives and a optical drive last when packed into such a small space, one of them is 10,000 rpm, I must be playing Russian Roulette.

[MSE OP]

Instead of playing Russian Roulette I've found a good deal on a 400GB drive on ebay.
I have put one of my Raptor drives up on ebay and its at $150 with a day to go. Once I get this new 400GB drive installed I can sell the other Raptor and even the 200GB drive and have easily covered the cost of the new mega drive. I've got about 300GB worth of data right now and would like to have some room to grow so need at least 400GB drive.
Backups can only realy be done with an identical drive as dvd aren't practical, I would need at 100 of those and it would take forever to create. Even transfering 400gb to one drive to another would take about 5 hours at 1gb per minute.

[MSE OP]

Price on 400GB Western Digital drive came to $330, thanks in part to a $80 fee from UPS, that must be the duty fee for getting over the boarder, thats highway robbery, $35 US shipping fee + $80 cdn duty fee. If I had gone with NCIX it would have cost me $355 so its a difference of $25, not much but at least its something.

[MSE OP]

I've got the 400GB drive working now, shows up as 372GB, 28GB lost to hard drive manufactures long standing practice of not correctly measuring drive space of 1024mb for 1 gb, instead they use 1000mb to a gb

[MSE OP]

update on things, system is running great
according to the APC power backup unit, I'm using 181 watts for everything in my sig, very nice
41 minutes of up time if the hydro goes out

[jamie]

Nice..
I've always wanted a shuttle case..
I have to much hardware to put in 1 though..
Still I like the SFF cases..
I still would like to get a backup APC for power outages not that it happens alot or anything, just because i want 1..lol

[MSE OP]

Nice..
I've always wanted a shuttle case..
I have to much hardware to put in 1 though..
Still I like the SFF cases..
I still would like to get a backup APC for power outages not that it happens alot or anything, just because i want 1..lol

you could fit everything in your sig in a shuttle system