Quiet 6-Drive External SATA RAID Enclosure

blafarm · Post by **blafarm** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 11:10 am

I'm need to build a very quiet 6-Drive External SATA RAID Enclosure that will be directly connected (DAS) to a 3ware RAID card in my PC.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Baloubic · Post by **Baloubic** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 12:14 pm

I can't see it happen ;/

sgtpokey · Post by **sgtpokey** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 12:20 pm

Some ideas:

The 8-drive monster, or my prefereence would be 2 4-drive stacked on top of each other:

http://www.atechfabrication.com/

He's a well-respected custom manufacturer to the AV community... email a question and he'll respond...

blafarm · Post by **blafarm** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 10:36 pm

Thanks for the suggestion. I've run across this site before -- but not seen this particular product.

http://www.atechfabrication.com/product ... age_8x.htm

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that the heat generated by 8 hard drives can be dissapated by that cabinet or those rather small heat sinks (especially since the drive carriers seem to be mechanically isolated from the cabinet).

I'd hate to cause the premature death of 6 or 8 expensive drives.

sgtpokey · Post by **sgtpokey** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:23 am

haha,

Yeah I know that that raises concerns, but from my own enclosed passive builds, I'm quite comfortable with his design.

I'm actually purchasing his 4-way next month as I upgrade my HTPC setup.

You can try emailing him regarding testing he's done or testing his customers have done. He answered all my questions way back when I was deciding between fanless cases. (did not go with his in the end, I went with mcubed)

blafarm · Post by **blafarm** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:56 pm

You know, that's the problem. I can't find a review of the 8 Drive Monster anywhere on the web -- and he doesn't seem to be able to provide me with any benchmarks.

So, I'm stuck not knowing if I'm dropping a lot of money on an enclosure that might run too hot for my drives. If I had a little more confidence in his technology I'd probably go for it -- but everything I've read about the drives I plan to use suggests that they want/need more than average cooling and I'm just not sure his case is designed to deliver that.

RDaneel · Post by **RDaneel** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:37 am

Another vote here for A-Tech Fab, my HTPC case is an absolute dream (now called the 3000 model iirc). Amazing work and great design. If they say it will cool the drives, I tend to believe the claims, but I'd also want to verify that with testing (and a money-back promise!)...

zouav · Post by **zouav** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 5:17 am

Hi,

have a look on this thread at avsforum : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... ight=Atech

It should answer some of your questions about fabrication and temps on his mass storage devices. Also lots of feedbacks from users.

There is also a mac user site review which is focused on mass storage where you can find some infos : http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/ ... views.html

I am myself looking for this kind of storage solutions. I noticed the Sonnet Fusion 500P which quietness is apparently quiet good : only one 80mm fan and swappable.

Hope this can help

P.S : Excuse my english, i'm not a native speaker.

blafarm · Post by **blafarm** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 10:52 am

Thanks everyone for the input.

Boy, even for AVS - that's a long thread. Unfortunately, nothing conclusive about the 8 drive enclosure.

I found Sonnet's Fusion 500P too and was impressed. I started to question my original plan to use a high-perfomance 3ware card and DAS - and to migrate to their PM host card. But when I realized that RAID 5 was impossible, I circled back to the 3ware approach and continued my research for a quiet enclosure.

That led me to the Firmtek SerTek/2eEN4. You'll probably want to read these reviews before pulling the trigger on Sonnet (especially the comparative chart in the middle of the first page). Firmtek seems to run hotter - but it is very small, extremely quiet and has a direct backplane mount which I am attracted to as I'd like to faithfully adhere to the SATA spec . I'm going to put it to the test to see what the thermals are with 750GB drives in my real world usage pattern.

Anyway, here's some stuff to read if you're interested.

http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/ ... tek/1eve4/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/ ... tek/2eEN4/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/ ... mtek/2en2/