>>>>> "Bill" == Bill Hudacek <bill.hudacek@xxxxxxxxx> writes: Bill> My 2021 Sans Digital TR5UT+B held 5 SATA disks. I had an eSATA Bill> connection to the host box. It went belly-up a few weeks ago. Bill> After some careful searching, a good replacement seemed to be the Oyen Bill> Digital Mobius 3R5-EB3-M. Found it for about $300USD. Bill> It was plug-and-play replace. Drives were being addressed by Bill> UUID in Fedora so no issues at all. It came right up. Excellent! Bill> However, smart reporting looks horrible even compared to the Bill> TR5UT+B (which had its own issues). I think this all comes down to the eSATA bridge chip used in the expansion bay. Not much you can do about it. Bill> What RAID cabinets would be a better alternative? I have 5 Bill> drives but an 8-bay cabinet would work too. I think what you're looking for isn't really a "RAID Cabinet" but an "Expansion Bay", which has full SATA passthrough. If you have space inside your main computer, then I would look into an LSI Logic MTP Fusion SATA/SAS controller with 8 ports. Then you can use some of the "IcyDock" expansion bays inside which turns two or three 5.25" bays into 4-5 3.5" bays. Each bay has it's own direct connection to the controller, which is a good thing, since you'll have full access to the drives. The controllers are cheap on ebay, and you can even use multiple ones (if you have the room) to give even more redunacy and performance. Personally, I've been looking into getting a 4U server case with 12 3.5" hot swap bays, but they're all either A) out of stock or B) don't have USB3 ports on them. Life is all about tradeoffs. The problem with IcyDock and other bays like this is A) heat, B) poor fans, C) price, D) cheap handles, E) reliability. If you don't hot-swap often, then I think you'll be ok (as will I when I finally pull the trigger for my own setup) if you are careful when using them. I have a USB3/eSATA external case which holds five drives, but it flakes out if I put in more than two drives. Ugh! Doing this well can require spending some serious money. I personally just like getting a big huge case with lots of drive bays and plugging stuff in directly. It's my home system, so it can go down when needed. I'm not at the system, so getting you model number isn't easy. But look in the archives of this list, there have been good discussions in the past year or so on controllers and such. John
