Mesh RAID Mod

Today you will be creating a mesh RAID box to house external hard drives. It is very easy and fast to make, and can bring unused old hard drives to life again. Let us begin...

You will need:

- Mesh box
- 2+ hard drives with external enclosures
- Sheers
- Packing tape

First, start with a simple, metal, mesh box that will fit how ever many hard drives you want to put in it. I picked up one that can fit at least 5 drives at my local art supply store for around $25, pricey, but well worth it later on. Anyone looking for one exactly like mine, I couldn't find it online, so the brand is Design Ideas and the name of the product is Hinged Media Box-Silver. It is 8.4" x 10.9" x 6.4". If you really can't find anything, drop me a line and I will buy one for you and ship it for $35. I found a few on here.

So you have your mesh box. Now you need to, if you already don't have them, buy a few external drives and enclosures, I recommend Firewire ones, even if they are a bit more money. Any of these will work, just make sure you get the right size. There is 2.5", the notebook drive size, and then there is the standard 3.5", what's in most desktops and what I used in this mod.

Now put your HDs in your enclosures and hook them up. Screw them in if necessary. I ended up taking the outside of my enclosures off, giving it a cool metal industrial effect while improving air flow.

Then take your sheers, I used some old gardening ones that looked like this, and cut a hole big enough to fit all the cords you have to in through the lower back of the case. Feed the cords through. Hook up your drives. Use packing tape to reinforce them if needed.

On to the final step. Open disk utility, in the Utilities folder. Find one of the 2+ drives you want to create the RAID with and select it. Select the RAID tab at the top. Name your RAID. Select Mac OS Extended as the volume format. Select Striped RAID Set as the RAID type. Add the other drives you want to use in the RAID by dragging them to the box at the bottom. Click create.

Now you have a super fast custom RAID box that you can use to install OSX on and have ready if your computer HD decides to give way, or fill it with backup files, or even both. There are unlimited possibilities.

Photos:

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