Spinning Up: 45Drives Arrives in Waterloo
Written By Alex Kinsella
When you think of globetrotting DJs spinning at events like Coachella or Ultra Music Festival, you might picture elaborate stages packed with lights, smoke machines, and massive speakers.
It’s what you’d see at a show from Canada’s own Deadmau5, with the addition of one other unexpected piece of equipment — the Dead Silent Server, a high-performance storage server designed by Deadmau5 in collaboration with Canadian hardware developer 45Drives.
Instead of powered fans and traditional hard drives, the Dead Silent Server is passively cooled with no fans and almost a terabyte of solid state storage. The server is another innovation in a long line of products, according to 45Drives’ account executive Josh Windsor.
“Deadmau5 has loved our equipment for years, and he came to us and said that in his studio, the microphones would pick up the noise from the fans and he’d have to remove it in editing. He asked if we could make something that didn’t make any noise, and that led our team to develop the Dead Silent Server,” Windsor said.
It’s what you’d see at a show from Canada’s own Deadmau5, with the addition of one other unexpected piece of equipment — the Dead Silent Server, a high-performance storage server designed by Deadmau5 in collaboration with Canadian hardware developer 45Drives.
Instead of powered fans and traditional hard drives, the Dead Silent Server is passively cooled with no fans and almost a terabyte of solid state storage. The server is another innovation in a long line of products, according to 45Drives’ account executive Josh Windsor.
“Deadmau5 has loved our equipment for years, and he came to us and said that in his studio, the microphones would pick up the noise from the fans and he’d have to remove it in editing. He asked if we could make something that didn’t make any noise, and that led our team to develop the Dead Silent Server,” Windsor said.
45Drives recently celebrated the grand opening of its Waterloo Region office at Catalyst Commons. The opening is a homecoming of sorts for the Sydney, Nova Scotia-based company. 45Drives, and its sister companies Protocase and Advanced Glazings were founded by University of Waterloo graduate Dr. Doug Milburn.
After graduating, Milburn and his wife launched Advanced Glazings to commercialize technology he developed during his PhD work to create windows with some of the highest R-values that still allow maximum light flow. You can see that technology in work at the Columbia Field House on the UWaterloo campus today.
Milburn then launched Protocase, a company that developed High Velocity Mass Customization (HVMC), a specialized manufacturing system enabling facilities to produce completely custom parts, enclosures, or systems within days rather than months.
“Advanced Glazings had a really great machine shop, and of course, when you have a good machine shop, everybody comes and asks you to make things,” Windsor said. “As a problem solver and an engineer, Doug wondered why it is so hard to get metal parts, so he got together with a friend who was a computer engineer to solve the problem.”
That work led to the launch of Protocase, which today counts Harvard University, MIT, SpaceX, Tesla, and NASA as some of its largest customers. It was another customer looking for development of a custom enclosure that started the idea for what would become 45Drives.
“We had a customer who offered cloud storage and needed a new enclosure designed. They literally came to us with a wooden prototype. The catch was it needed to house 60 drives,” he said.
The design was a success—albeit with 45 drives instead of 60. Windsor said the company wasn’t interested in the intellectual property for it, so the Protocase team decided to spin out the business in what would become 45Drives.
“If you go on YouTube, you’ll see there’s a massive presence of us,” Windsor said. “In the IT community, we’re seen as the best provider for things like a home lab — it’s basically a data server for your house.”
Today, 45Drives builds servers for home enthusiasts, enterprise customers, and musicians and video editors through its 45Studio division.
45Drives, Protocase, and Advanced Glazings share a five-building campus in Sydney and a manufacturing facility in Wilmington, North Carolina. Windsor said 45Drives and Protocase have been growing exponentially, and paired with tariff challenges from the U.S., opening another Canadian manufacturing site just made sense. That’s when Windsor, a lifelong Waterloo resident and recently retired educator and principal, got an offer from his old friend Doug Milburn.
“I went out to see Doug in Sydney last summer, and he said they needed a third manufacturing site. They talked about Ontario being one of the options and Doug asked me to start things here on the sales side,” he said.
45Drives is just getting started with Windsor’s second hire, and he said he expects the team will outgrow its current office space in Catalyst before the end of the summer. Finding the space was an unexpected surprise. Windsor had only known the building through Catalyst137, where his daughter worked at anchor restaurant Graffiti Market, but once he started looking for office space, Catalyst Commons quickly stood out.
“If you’re going to go get your own office space, then you have to put in networking infrastructure, get cleaners, think about coffee service and other things. But here, all of that is already done and there’s a culture that already exists with events and ways to get involved,” he said. “We were able to host our grand opening event in the atrium, and that flexibility is really important as we grow.”
From purpose-designed servers for DJs to on-demand custom manufacturing for some of the world’s biggest companies, 45Drives is spinning up its next era right here inside Catalyst Commons.
You can learn more about 45Drives at 45drives.com
Interview By Alex Kinsella
Have a story to tell? Reach out to the Commons Community Team for more info: admin@catalyst-commons.com
After graduating, Milburn and his wife launched Advanced Glazings to commercialize technology he developed during his PhD work to create windows with some of the highest R-values that still allow maximum light flow. You can see that technology in work at the Columbia Field House on the UWaterloo campus today.
Milburn then launched Protocase, a company that developed High Velocity Mass Customization (HVMC), a specialized manufacturing system enabling facilities to produce completely custom parts, enclosures, or systems within days rather than months.
“Advanced Glazings had a really great machine shop, and of course, when you have a good machine shop, everybody comes and asks you to make things,” Windsor said. “As a problem solver and an engineer, Doug wondered why it is so hard to get metal parts, so he got together with a friend who was a computer engineer to solve the problem.”
That work led to the launch of Protocase, which today counts Harvard University, MIT, SpaceX, Tesla, and NASA as some of its largest customers. It was another customer looking for development of a custom enclosure that started the idea for what would become 45Drives.
“We had a customer who offered cloud storage and needed a new enclosure designed. They literally came to us with a wooden prototype. The catch was it needed to house 60 drives,” he said.
The design was a success—albeit with 45 drives instead of 60. Windsor said the company wasn’t interested in the intellectual property for it, so the Protocase team decided to spin out the business in what would become 45Drives.
“If you go on YouTube, you’ll see there’s a massive presence of us,” Windsor said. “In the IT community, we’re seen as the best provider for things like a home lab — it’s basically a data server for your house.”
Today, 45Drives builds servers for home enthusiasts, enterprise customers, and musicians and video editors through its 45Studio division.
45Drives, Protocase, and Advanced Glazings share a five-building campus in Sydney and a manufacturing facility in Wilmington, North Carolina. Windsor said 45Drives and Protocase have been growing exponentially, and paired with tariff challenges from the U.S., opening another Canadian manufacturing site just made sense. That’s when Windsor, a lifelong Waterloo resident and recently retired educator and principal, got an offer from his old friend Doug Milburn.
“I went out to see Doug in Sydney last summer, and he said they needed a third manufacturing site. They talked about Ontario being one of the options and Doug asked me to start things here on the sales side,” he said.
45Drives is just getting started with Windsor’s second hire, and he said he expects the team will outgrow its current office space in Catalyst before the end of the summer. Finding the space was an unexpected surprise. Windsor had only known the building through Catalyst137, where his daughter worked at anchor restaurant Graffiti Market, but once he started looking for office space, Catalyst Commons quickly stood out.
“If you’re going to go get your own office space, then you have to put in networking infrastructure, get cleaners, think about coffee service and other things. But here, all of that is already done and there’s a culture that already exists with events and ways to get involved,” he said. “We were able to host our grand opening event in the atrium, and that flexibility is really important as we grow.”
From purpose-designed servers for DJs to on-demand custom manufacturing for some of the world’s biggest companies, 45Drives is spinning up its next era right here inside Catalyst Commons.
You can learn more about 45Drives at 45drives.com
Interview By Alex Kinsella
Have a story to tell? Reach out to the Commons Community Team for more info: admin@catalyst-commons.com