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2 of these controllers: http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata9000.asp with this case: http://www.chenbro.com.tw/product/product.jsp?p=3& s=304&pid=62 and you can have SATA 250GB X 24 = 6TB of storage. That or buy a bunch of 9.1GB SCSI drives, and a lot of arrays - and you'll end up with a fairly cheap storage solution, and one heck of a horrible power bill.

If you, like me, can't afford the Chenbro, try the Compucase. It's cheap, takes a whole lot of drives (I have 8 in mine with easy room for 3 more). It has 12cm fans right in front of the drives so they keep really cool. Not much noise either, provided you use quiet drives (I have 7x160MB Seagate Barracudas and a 200GB on the way).

It really isn't true that anything associated with audio gets an automatic 500% markup.

I recently built a new workstation, and decided to built it in a rackmount case this time. I though it would neaten things up a lot to get my (rackmount) UPS and extra battery, server, switch, and all those pesky little boxes (firewall, cable and DSL modems, etc.) into an enclosed rackmount case. (That way, most of the cable runs are inside of the case...)

After looking at surplus racks and not finding anything that I would have in my home (my office is in my dining room) I decided to splurge and buy a brand-new rack cabinet.

I wound-up with a Middle Atlantic Products WRK-24MDK "presentation enclosure system" which is a 30" deep 24U enclosed cabinet.

At about $800, it was less than similar products designed for the server market. (Which, IMO, has by far the highest markups!)

There are somewhat more affordable choices available from Middle Atlantic, if is doesn't have to be quite so pretty. Particularly if you want a full-size cabinet. They also make some pretty nifty cabinets intended for in-wall roll-out installations, which are popular in home theatre applications.

One thing you have to watch-out for with audio racks is depth. Most audio equipment is not very deep, and most enclosed racks for the audio market are not going to be deep enough for most servers.

The cheapest way to go, if you are handy, or having custom furniture built anyway, is to just buy rackrails for a few dollars and build them into something.

The next-cheapest is to use an open rack rather than an enclosed rack. These are commonly used in corporate server rooms where individual-cabinet security is not needed. Severs typically sit on center-mounted shelves rather than actually being mounted from the ears.

And, yes, you can pretty easily find full-size and smaller racks on the surplus market (I found several locally) but they can be rough.

Keep in mind that 1U servers are VERY noisy! (The smaller the fan diameter, the more the noise, for the same volume of air moved.) This is a consideration if this is in your home or even in your office if it is in a work area. If you are a build-it-yourself type, get 4U enclosures and add your own motherboard.

I used a Chenbro RM412 case, which comes with a hot-swap SCSI backplane, and takes extended ATX mother boards.

I added a 4U shelf for all of the little boxes, and got a new low-cost rack-mount gigabit switch. (An SMC 8508T)

It really isn't true that anything associated with audio gets an automatic 500% markup.

I recently built a new workstation, and decided to built it in a rackmount case this time. I though it would neaten things up a lot to get my (rackmount) UPS and extra battery, server, switch, and all those pesky little boxes (firewall, cable and DSL modems, etc.) into an enclosed rackmount case. (That way, most of the cable runs are inside of the case...)

After looking at surplus racks and not finding anything that I would have in my home (my office is in my dining room) I decided to splurge and buy a brand-new rack cabinet.

I wound-up with a Middle Atlantic Products WRK-24MDK "presentation enclosure system" which is a 30" deep 24U enclosed cabinet.

At about $800, it was less than similar products designed for the server market. (Which, IMO, has by far the highest markups!)

There are somewhat more affordable choices available from Middle Atlantic, if is doesn't have to be quite so pretty. Particularly if you want a full-size cabinet. They also make some pretty nifty cabinets intended for in-wall roll-out installations, which are popular in home theatre applications.

One thing you have to watch-out for with audio racks is depth. Most audio equipment is not very deep, and most enclosed racks for the audio market are not going to be deep enough for most servers.

The cheapest way to go, if you are handy, or having custom furniture built anyway, is to just buy rackrails for a few dollars and build them into something.

The next-cheapest is to use an open rack rather than an enclosed rack. These are commonly used in corporate server rooms where individual-cabinet security is not needed. Severs typically sit on center-mounted shelves rather than actually being mounted from the ears.

And, yes, you can pretty easily find full-size and smaller racks on the surplus market (I found several locally) but they can be rough.

Keep in mind that 1U servers are VERY noisy! (The smaller the fan diameter, the more the noise, for the same volume of air moved.) This is a consideration if this is in your home or even in your office if it is in a work area. If you are a build-it-yourself type, get 4U enclosures and add your own motherboard.

I used a Chenbro RM412 case, which comes with a hot-swap SCSI backplane, and takes extended ATX mother boards.

I added a 4U shelf for all of the little boxes, and got a new low-cost rack-mount gigabit switch. (An SMC 8508T)

No need to weld anything. Check the Yeong Yang cube case (02 serie), or the Chenbro server line. Plenty of room in any of those (up to 12 5 1/4 bays in the SR101).

But I think the original poster asked for a case with bays not only facing in front, but also either up or on the side (so his cables would go in different directions and be less cluttered).

For that, one of the small P4 cases recently featured on Slashdot might be useful, as a secondary case, or any minitower for that matter.

Try checking audio equipment stores for the rack. You can get a 12U rack that rolls under a lot of desks that is a little bigger than a lot of server cases. My brother-in-law and I are planning on using one of these for his 3d animation setup. We are going to use a 5U case for the graphic workstation and 7-1U dual 1Ghz boxes for the batch rendering. This whole setup will roll right under his desk. It isn't much bigger than the Chenbro Net cube case he is currently using.