Re: OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies
Joe Emenaker wrote: 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. FWIW, I had a particularly bad experience with a pair of 3-drive cages from Startech; the LSI Megaraid controller would mark all 6 drives as FAIL within about 2 hours, from a cold start. Once warmed up, the failures happened within ~10 minutes. Not only did the Startech bays not work anywhere near according to spec, I received a grand total of 1 response to the first of a string of messages to their tech support, about six weeks after I sent the request. I replaced them with a pair of Icy Dock (sorry, don't recall the company name) cages, and they worked fine for several years. I've only just recently had trouble with mistaken failures again, most likely triggered by far too many power failures in a short time. :/ -kgd -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies
On Fri, Dec 07, 2007 at 02:52:28AM -0500, 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 fx crickets, cicadas and frogs /fx 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. 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. 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! Also look at addonics.com Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies
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 fx crickets, cicadas and frogs /fx 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. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies
Joe Emenaker wrote: 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. You complete star, book marked both of them, StarTech does tray-less bays in 1, 3 4 drive capacities, no 5 as yet but it may come or I may not need it, assuming I can find them in Singapore they will be perfect. Thank you for your help. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies
On Dec 5, 2007, at 2:39 AM, Bob 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 fx crickets, cicadas and frogs /fx 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? -- Nate Duehr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies
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 fx crickets, cicadas and frogs /fx 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. 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. 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! --John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: SATA Backplanes drivebays and caddies
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 fx crickets, cicadas and frogs /fx Alternatively if you can think of a better forum for this post a link would also be appreciated. Thanks -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
