Backplane/Hotswap Cage Recomendation please

[TSWired]

I have run out of internal SATA ports and HDD bays in my WHS case and I am looking for some recomendations. I planned to store my video collection from the start and have now filled the 5 HDD bays in the case and have 4 open 5&1/4 bays. I will also need a good/decent (hopefully not too expensive) SATA card to add 4 or so aditional ports. I was thinking along the lines of a 4 or 5 (3&1/2) slot cage that fits into 3 or 4 slot case opening.

 

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

Thanks

[diehard]

we like the Icy Dock products. Hopefully someone will chime in about those. I have the 4 bay external eSATA enclosure.

[shollz]

I was looking for the best bang for the buck earlier this year. I ended up with this

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994076

 

It works very well, with one exception. It is very noisy. But since my case is in the basement in a storage room with my network equipment it doesn't bother me at all. You could probably replace the fans if you wanted to.

[mrossco]

I'm with diehard, if you want hot-swappable, the icydock products are hard to beat. I've used several 5-in-3 converters that work very well, but they can get kinda pricey...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994028

 

If you can live without hotswap, then there are all kinds of drive cages that will meet your needs. Of this type, I've had good luck with Cooler Master drive cages. Again, they're well-made and they include fairly quiet fans. Since you're loading up a bunch of drives into a single case, the extra cooling should be welcome...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994028

 

As far as a PCIe SATA host adapter, things get a bit more difficult. I'm assuming that you either have PCI or PCIe 1x to work with. A PCIe card would be prefferred as it has a higher bandwidth, and I would make sure to pick one that implements the SATA II feature set, including NCQ. Both Rosewill (NewEgg house brand) and Adaptec offer decent cards that should meet your needs...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132018

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103105

 

Just note that if you try to push more than 2 drives on PCI and 4 drives on PCIe 1x, you will really start to notice performance degradation on those devices.

[TSWired]

Thanks for the info and recomendations, I have an ASUS P7P55D Mobo

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131404&cm_re=asus_p7p55d-_-13-131-404-_-Product

 

I have two x1 lanes and the secondary x16 lane open (according to the stats it runs at (@x4 mode, 2.5GT/s)).

[c0op3r]

I was looking for the best bang for the buck earlier this year. I ended up with this

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994076

 

It works very well, with one exception. It is very noisy. But since my case is in the basement in a storage room with my network equipment it doesn't bother me at all. You could probably replace the fans if you wanted to.

 

I can second this one, as I used the 4 bay unit in a friends build and the three bay unit in one of my rackmount units. Both worked out very well. The Icy Dock stuff looks great I just have not had a reason to purchase it yet, but given a reason and chance I will.

[SabatonFan80]

+1 on mrossco's recommendation of the Adaptec 1430SA cards.

 

I've got two of these in my servers and they work great. Both are actually hooked up to dual eSATA brackets since all my storage drives are external.