I am highly interested in using, contributing to, and improving this project.
My goal right now is to make a very similar (almost identical in idea) NAS, but the ability to expand from ~4x to ~12x 3.5" hard drives.
I know quite a number of people that are interested in pretty much the exact same setup.
My plan right now is to use the 5x SATA expander on M.2, and some (?) small PSU to power them. Due to the lack of available cases/tools/etc for this sort of thing from seeed, I have been thinking about using some HD enclosure with a backplane as another option, but the end result of a bunch of components laid out on the floor isn’t the best idea.
It’s important to always keep the larger 3.5" HD form - the smaller form HDs either aren’t typically used for such a task (the latency increase is completely irrelevant for a NAS, and 3.5" HDs are cheaper and have far more storage)
Is there any way to help on this project? I have been trying to make models to 3D print, but 1) it’s time consuming to do alone and 2) the model may not be sturdy and vibrate too much (reducing the HD life).
Is this going to be an official project, or is it a set of STLs to print out and try?