« Articles / Krystal Overhaul

2026.04.22

I had to take Krystal: the downstairs box, down for a few hours last night to move it across to a new case.
The previous case was an Aerocool DS200, which was a good and useful chassis, but the soft touch rubber coating on the exterior had deteriorated.

I wanted a white case for the lounge with a glass panel, rather than just the acrylic window.

It is remarkably difficult to find a chassis now that has an optical drive bay in the front (this Fractal Pop XL has two stunningly enough) and takes more than two 3.5" disks.
This chassis takes four in theory, but you lose one mount point for each optical drive bay that's occupied.

While moving the drives across I managed to break the SATA connector on one of the WD Blues.
I found a repair service where they replace the SATA connector on the drive. I will see if it's any good.
The cost of an 8TB WD Blue is £100 more now than what it was 4 years ago, which is not a great sign for current economic and technical development.

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