Question Recommendation - Case large enough to house two 3.5" drives and SSD

[rmaghir]

My PC that I built all the way back in 2011 recently died. It used a fairly large case and housed 2 mirrored 3.5" hard drives, plus a solid state drive (I ran the OS off of this) as well as a fourth 3.5" hard drive that I used for large, non-essential media files.

I would have built a new PC immediately in the days following the failure of the old one, but I became fixated on the idea of moving those mirrored storage drives into a newer case, and all of the build guides I saw online favored smaller cases with limited space for storage. This led me here, to ask this community for suggestions or ideas.

1. Can anyone recommend a good modern PC case with enough space for 2 3.5" drives and an SSD? (I can live without that fourth supplemental drive.)
2. Alternatively, should I just give up on the idea of housing mirrored drives and switch to an external backup drive?
3. Something else entirely?

I should mention, if it's not obvious somehow, that I'm not especially knowledgeable or adept at building PCs. It seemed like a fun thing to try when I did it, and I liked the ability to customize and upgrade everything. My current needs are fairly basic: I wouldn't mind being able to run most games (without feeling the need to have the Very Best hardware), and I will use the machine for work (office and statistical software). I would probably like to keep things in the $1.5-2.5 thousand range, though I could go a little higher if there's a compelling reason. If it makes way more financial sense to just buy a pre-built machine, I'll consider that too.

Any help/thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[USAFRet]

Alternatively, should I just give up on the idea of housing mirrored drives and switch to an external backup drive?

Having multiple 3.5" drives is one thing.
Mirrored is quite something else. And that is NOT, I repeat NOT, a good backup method.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Where are you located? What is your budget for a case? What is your preferred site for purchase? Besides your stipulation with storage drives, as there are a variety of cases, what sort of a form factor are you looking at?

This is one example;

Define 7

The Define 7 is the latest pinnacle of the renowned Define series, setting a new standard for what you should expect from a mid-tower case when it comes to modularity, flexibility and ease of use.

www.fractal-design.com

room for 7x3.5" drives and 2x2.5" drives, out of the box. A step down is this;

Define 7 Mini

The Define 7 Mini offers the same stylish appeal and many of the life-improving features of its larger siblings, in a streamlined form factor.

www.fractal-design.com

room for 2x3.5" drives and 2x2.5" drives out of the box.

 

[rmaghir]

Having multiple 3.5" drives is one thing.
Mirrored is quite something else. And that is NOT, I repeat NOT, a good backup method.

Can you elaborate? My practice was to routinely back up to external drives, so I always had access to one or two full backups in case of an accidental deletion or something like that. But I figured that a mirrored drive would preserve anything not on a backup in case of a storage drive failure. I would not be surprised to learn that there are more practical ways of addressing this concern.

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Can you elaborate? My practice was to routinely back up to external drives, so I always had access to one or two full backups in case of an accidental deletion or something like that. But I figured that a mirrored drive would preserve anything not on a backup in case of a storage drive failure. I would not be surprised to learn that there are more practical ways of addressing this concern.

Thanks!

Mirrored drives (basically, RAID 1), serve to let your system continue to run in the even of a single physical drive fail.
It is NOT a 'backup method'.

In my realm, Macrium Reflect Images to space on my NAS. Could just as easily be external drives.
Full drive images, followed by a series of Incremental images.

For your thought, internally connected HDD, mirrored or otherwise, are subject to many of the same things that might befall the rest of the PC.
Ransomware, nasty virus, etc, etc....your internal drives are just as dead as everything else.

 

[rmaghir]

Mirrored drives (basically, RAID 1), serve to let your system continue to run in the even of a single physical drive fail.
It is NOT a 'backup method'.

In my realm, Macrium Reflect Images to space on my NAS. Could just as easily be external drives.
Full drive images, followed by a series of Incremental images.

For your thought, internally connected HDD, mirrored or otherwise, are subject to many of the same things that might befall the rest of the PC.
Ransomware, nasty virus, etc, etc....your internal drives are just as dead as everything else.

Yes, thank you. I realize now that I didn't express myself well. I did in fact use separate backups, and the mirrored drives were being used because I had experienced physical drive failures in the past. I'm not entirely insistent on them.

 

[rmaghir]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Where are you located? What is your budget for a case? What is your preferred site for purchase? Besides your stipulation with storage drives, as there are a variety of cases, what sort of a form factor are you looking at?

This is one example;

Define 7

The Define 7 is the latest pinnacle of the renowned Define series, setting a new standard for what you should expect from a mid-tower case when it comes to modularity, flexibility and ease of use.

www.fractal-design.com

room for 7x3.5" drives and 2x2.5" drives, out of the box. A step down is this;

Define 7 Mini

The Define 7 Mini offers the same stylish appeal and many of the life-improving features of its larger siblings, in a streamlined form factor.

www.fractal-design.com

room for 2x3.5" drives and 2x2.5" drives out of the box.

Thank you! I'm in the US. I don't have a preferred site at the moment. I've used Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, and others in the past.

I'm entirely flexible when it comes to form factor. My main consideration right now is that I liked to have a dedicated storage drive with the OS running on a different drive, so as long as I can find a build to accommodate that, I'd probably be pretty happy with some compromise between size and practical access for upgrades.

It's hard for me to say what my case budget is exactly. I'm hoping not to go too far above $2,000 as an overall limit, and as long as I can run office software and ordinary games, I can allocate that amount however I need to. My hope is that that budget is appropriate for something slightly above average in terms of contemporary performance.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, thank you. I realize now that I didn't express myself well. I did in fact use separate backups, and the mirrored drives were being used because I had experienced physical drive failures in the past. I'm not entirely insistent on them.

If you have a good backup scenario, there is little or no need for "mirrored".
You can if you want, but it serves little actual purpose.

I've also had physical drive fails, and a full recovery from the overnight Macrium Incremental did the trick.