OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies

John Miller wrote:
> Nate Duehr wrote:
>
>>> Bob wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... what I'm looking for is a drivebay / backplane
>>>> manufacturer that has 5, 4, 3 and 1 slot internal bays available
>>>> that use the *same* tray / housing / caddie.
>>>>
I've got about 4-5 rackmount servers using the Addonics 3-drive units.
They also make 4-drive and 5-drive units that look like they use the
same trays.
Pros:
- Just about the cheapest I've seen
- The cage has power buttons for each drive so that you can turn off
power to unused drives (or for simulating a crash to test your RAID?).
- The tabs that release the drives are smooth and *just* tall enough to
put a 1/2" Brother P-Touch sticker on the front for labeling.
- Built-in over-temp alarm with reset button on the front.
Cons:
- In order to fit the drives in that tight, you have to use the screws
that they provide you with (so, don't lose them) which have really flat,
really thin heads.
- There's a release-lock for each tray (which is good), but it's kinda
tricky to engage the lock without actually triggering the release lever.

I should note that the cons are very slight inconveniences... no big
deal at all.

Lately, I've been trying out StarTech's trayless cages and those work
nicely as well. No trays, no screws... you just open the door, slide the
drive in, and close the door. If you can operate a refrigerator, you can
operate these cages.

Both the Addonics and Startech have yet to fail on me... and I think
I've had the 4 Addonics in place for about 2 years now.

- Joe

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John Miller wrote:
> Nate Duehr wrote:
>
>>> Bob wrote:
>>>
>>>> Sorry for the OT post but I know a few round here are well informed
>>>> on the storage industry.
>>>>
>>>> I'm just about to migrate a bunch of PCs to SATA from IDE as the IDE
>>>> drive caddies are failing [0] and I already have my server and a few
>>>> PCs using SATA, what I'm looking for is a drivebay / backplane
>>>> manufacturer that has 5, 4, 3 and 1 slot internal bays available
>>>> that use the *same* tray / housing / caddie.
>>>>
>>>> The tray / housing / caddie doesn't have to be rugged [1] or cover
>>>> the whole drive, it would just be *really* convenient to be able to
>>>> move drives around at will.
>>>>
>>>> My search (below) hasn't helped much, has anyone round here got any
>>>> suggestions?
>>>> sata "removable (disk | drive | harddrive) (caddy | bay | drawer |
>>>> tray)" single multi
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>>
>>>> [0] I think all ATA removable bays take a bunch of liberties with
>>>> the standard anyway and these were cheap and are old
>>>> [1] which I suppose by definition means it's not a caddie
>>>>
>>> crickets, cicadas and frogs
>>> Alternatively if you can think of a better forum for this post a link
>>> would also be appreciated.
>>>
>> The folks on the Debian-ISP list probably deal with this type of
>> hardware quite a bit more than the average Debian home user on the
>> main user list?
>>
>
> Forwarding this to debian-isp, but I'll try to answer in the meantime.
>

Thanks for that, I'll check that list on the gooja view thingy

> Are your PCs rackmount, server-class towers, or regular consumer cases?
> The servers I've worked with have all had their caddies and backplanes
> provided by the case manufacturer; all the caddies have been
> interchangeable, but not between server/case manufacturers. I've not
> seen a server case manufacturer that also makes a single-drive hotswap
> bay. I haven't seen a desktop case with built-in hotswap, either.
>

I'm using a variety of consumer cases so I'm talking about the units
that slide into the CDRom bays, there are lots of them about but most
seem to do 3, 4 & 5 bay jobs that take up 2 or 3 half height drive bays
and utilise slim trays OR single drive bays that use a rugged enclosure
that isn't interchangeable with anything.

> >From Googling around, I found cooldrives.com, which advertises external
> drive enclosures. Perhaps something like that's an option for you?
> Also looks like Thermaltake makes a single-drive SATA hotswap bay, which
> could be useful Good luck to you in your search!
>

Cooldrives came up in my search as well and I could go external but for
the moment I'd rather not, our file server and my PC has 10 half height
bays (the whole front is CDRom bays) and various workstations have
between 3 and 5 bays, it just occurred to me that a lot of admin, tasks
would be so much easer if I could put any drive in any box.

Down \/ there Joe put me onto www.startech.com who have a tray less
system in 4 , 3 & 1 bay varieties which, assuming I can find them in
Singapore, will be perfect.

Thanks for you help.

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