Silent DAS enclosures?

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glas
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Aug 26, 2006 2:50 pm

Silent DAS enclosures?

Post by glas » Wed Nov 12, 2008 2:24 pm

Hi,

I concluded that there is no benefit of getting a NAS over a DAS if there is already a running PC that can serve as a host.

I'm trying to find a 4-6 bay SATA DAS enclosure
E.g.
http://www.cooldrives.com/five-hard-dri ... osure.html

In general it seems there is a huge choice out there. I was wondering if people here have preferences. Especially regarding noise levels?

Ralf Hutter
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Post by Ralf Hutter » Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:55 am

Something tells me that particular one won't be quiet at all.

FWIW, I'm doing DAS with four of the (early release, the ones with the quiet fans...) Antec MX-1 eSATA enclosures.

glas
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Aug 26, 2006 2:50 pm

Post by glas » Fri Nov 14, 2008 5:32 pm

I believe I found some more pictures about the case in aan application:
http://www.cooldrives.com/quswsa23gmuh.html

I would like the fact that all drives are in one box. I'm planning to use the Startech drive drawers.

I guess such a box essentially consist of a power supply and a fan. I was thinking about going the other direction of simply getting a PC case that offers a lot of bays in the front. However, so far I didn't get lucky either.

Otherwise, I'm thinking that the Addonics DAS model is probably the highest quality. Unfortunately, it comes only as a 4 bay model.

Ralf Hutter
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Post by Ralf Hutter » Sun Nov 16, 2008 6:41 am

glas wrote:I believe I found some more pictures about the case in aan application:
http://www.cooldrives.com/quswsa23gmuh.html
This spec list is the nail in the coffin of this particular external case:
* Enclosures has 1- 80-MM Ball Bearing Low Noise temperature controlled Power Supply Fan.

It also has one 80-MM Ball Bearing Low Noise Exhaust fan

* All Four Bays also have independent 20mm-ball bearing fans, to make sure hard drives have constant movment of cool air over and below the drive mechanism.

* Aluminum material construction
That's a total of six fans, none of which will be quiet (although you can at least swap out the 80mm fans for quiet ones), plus the almost-inevitably resonant aluminum case construction. Adds up to a recipe for noise to me.

glas
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Aug 26, 2006 2:50 pm

Post by glas » Sun Nov 16, 2008 12:19 pm

I agree. However, I could get the case without the drawers.

I found two more models:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/ ... nhance/e8/

http://www.amug.org/amug-
web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/eboxu/
(comes as a SATA as well).

Monkeh16
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Post by Monkeh16 » Sun Nov 16, 2008 6:17 pm


Metaluna
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Post by Metaluna » Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:03 pm

Many years ago I bought one of these enclosures (made by Mapower) from cooldrives or fwdepot or a place like that. It's designed for 5.25" drives so it's pretty huge, but it uses 80mm fans and a standard ATX power supply form factor (as far as I can tell, anyway, though the one it comes with lacks the motherboard cable for obvious reasons). I retired mine a long time ago when I stopped using SCSI but I believe it has some modding potential. You would probably need to mod or replace the power supply and fans with quiet alternatives, and possibly an eSATA port multiplier bridgeboard. It would be a little cleaner and smaller than adapting a regular PC case though. And the large bays mean you could suspend all the drives (there look to be mounting holes for at least one extra drive internally too).

xan_user
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Re: Silent DAS enclosures?

Post by xan_user » Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:00 pm

glas wrote:Hi,

I concluded that there is no benefit of getting a NAS over a DAS if there is already a running PC that can serve as a host.

I'm trying to find a 4-6 bay SATA DAS enclosure
E.g.
http://www.cooldrives.com/five-hard-dri ... osure.html

In general it seems there is a huge choice out there. I was wondering if people here have preferences. Especially regarding noise levels?
For me its NAS over DAS just for the quiet alone. Storing all those drives in the garage means I don't have to do any silencing on them.

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