John R Pierce wrote:
>,
>>
>> Yes, I looked into this and I was looking for a solution with a large number of drives, but at a good cost point.
>>
>> So you are saying a full fledged PC with an 8-port sata mobo is a better solution.
>>
>
> yeah, its cheaper to go direct connect internal jbod. make sure the
> drives get plenty of airflow, don't pack them too close together.
>
> a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA
> drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run
> about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these.
>
> example of one of these,
> http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU0
>
> if you get a motherboard that has a 2nd x8 or x16 slot, you can put an
> x4 PCI-express card in that for lots more SATA/SAS channels if you feel
> the need to really expand. I wouldn't put more than 4 SATA ports on a
> PCI-E x1 slot.
There are other brands/sizes of those trayless hotswap enclosures too. I've
used a unit from Startech and swapped one of the drives out of a raid weekly for
an off-site rotation without any trouble for over a year now. You do need a big
tower case that could take 5" drives all the way down, but it's nicer than
having cables and power off to an odd-sized external box and very handy to not
have to open the case to trade drives once it is set up. If this is a
single-user PC or even a media server for a few people at once you probably
don't have to worry about extreme speed issues and would get along fine with an
8-port PCI-X or -E card.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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