TSWired Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehard Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 we like the Icy Dock products. Hopefully someone will chime in about those. I have the 4 bay external eSATA enclosure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shollz Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrossco Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TSWired Posted October 4, 2010 Author Share Posted October 4, 2010 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)). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c0op3r Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SabatonFan80 Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 +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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now