I ordered some "bare drive" Toshiba 3TB drives from Newegg a while back, got the drives in their plastic antistatic bags tossed into a cardboard box with some plastic airbags for the trip. A couple of airbags died and the drives bounced around, gouging each other. I took phone pictures, called Newegg's customer line. I emailed the pictures and was issued an RMA in an hour. The replacements arrived in four days, each in a specialized hard-plastic drive bubble carrier, and have since worked great. Newegg's shipment fulfillers are erratic, but they seem to make good on it.
On the Fractal Node 804: I have a very similar system just set up, with seven 3TB drives in RaidZ3. I moved one of the included three fans to pushing into the disk array from the front, leaving one pulling out the back. The disks sit at about 30-33C depending on positions in the hanging clusters. On an hour-long scrub none of the disks got over 37C in a 25C ambient room. The CPU temps got up to 44C. I was impressed at the disks only rising about 3C under scrubbing duties, presumably the hardest thing they'll be doing in real life. In my setup, a top fan isn't necessary at all. I was going to toss in a couple of Nexus 120mm's, but the three stock fans in the Fractal are plenty.
I used a supermicro X9 in this one and a Seasonic 400W 80+ gold. I don't know whether the X9 is staggering drive spinup or not (which I why I mention the mb at all) but the Seasonic 400W appears to start and run it just fine.
As a bit of kibitzing, do your photo files change any over time? Could you make do with archival backups of them, not rotating storage? If so, take a look at M-disc optical disks. They're the equivalent of DVDs, but use a different light-blocking media that is a non-organic mineral-oxides based stuff that is permanently altered by a hotter laser writing action. The provider says that accelerated life tests indicate multiple-century readability, far better than stock writable DVD stuff. I have moved some of my never-to-be changed images to this stuff. I guess I'll let you know in 200 years if I can still read them. :)
On the Fractal Node 804: I have a very similar system just set up, with seven 3TB drives in RaidZ3. I moved one of the included three fans to pushing into the disk array from the front, leaving one pulling out the back. The disks sit at about 30-33C depending on positions in the hanging clusters. On an hour-long scrub none of the disks got over 37C in a 25C ambient room. The CPU temps got up to 44C. I was impressed at the disks only rising about 3C under scrubbing duties, presumably the hardest thing they'll be doing in real life. In my setup, a top fan isn't necessary at all. I was going to toss in a couple of Nexus 120mm's, but the three stock fans in the Fractal are plenty.
I used a supermicro X9 in this one and a Seasonic 400W 80+ gold. I don't know whether the X9 is staggering drive spinup or not (which I why I mention the mb at all) but the Seasonic 400W appears to start and run it just fine.
As a bit of kibitzing, do your photo files change any over time? Could you make do with archival backups of them, not rotating storage? If so, take a look at M-disc optical disks. They're the equivalent of DVDs, but use a different light-blocking media that is a non-organic mineral-oxides based stuff that is permanently altered by a hotter laser writing action. The provider says that accelerated life tests indicate multiple-century readability, far better than stock writable DVD stuff. I have moved some of my never-to-be changed images to this stuff. I guess I'll let you know in 200 years if I can still read them. :)