Can you put only hard drives in a case?

[slnorth]

I seem to remember a techie telling me I could put hard drives in a case with just a power supply but never got the info on how to hook it up.

Is this possible if I ran the cables from the case wit HD's to the main comp and plugged them into a IDE controler or a SATA controler?

I currently have 2 80GB WD 8mb cache in the comp and a 250GB of the same stats on an external USB.

I'd like to get some SATA's and run the OS on 1 and the other for video production work/rendering etc. I'd use the IDE's for extra storage. Seems a lot cheaper than using a rack or caddy.

Thanks in advance for replies.

[redwudz]

You could run your IDE cables to drives outside the case, sure. You could get interference into or from the cable, though. They're not shielded. And you would have to keep them short.

There are some SATA external drive boxes I have seen on the net.

It would be a lot neater, though, to get a tower case with sufficient hard drive racks and power supply. If you wanted removable HDs you could add mobile racks that can be pulled out. I have 4 HDs, 3 optical drives and a zip drive in my case. I also use one mobile rack for my backup drive.