Whaler_99

I am unable to determine if this one is trayless, is it? No - this one does have drive trays...

Does not amazon.com ship to the UK?

I think part of the issue is these are all "older" units where the SATA3 standard wasn't that popular yet, so there isn't any mention of it. I am pretty sure that you can use a SATA3 drive in any of these, as SATA3 is backwards compatible with SATA2. Now, will you get SATA3 throughput? Hard to say. I "think" most of the backplanes on these units are simply straight through connectors, as they all have to connect to a mobo or other controller. In this case you should get that extra performance. But, I preface with - hasn't been tested by me. Now consider, does it really matter in regards to speed/performance? When writting to an array, if writting to protected disk, you will be max out of on a 20 MB/s. Writing to say a cache drive? OK, faster, but still, you are limited by your network speed. Writing to the cache disk, maybe 80-90 MB/s? Reading data? Still limited by the network...

Very nice upgrade!

900 can hold three 5x3 - the 1200 can hold four. 900 has one 120mm rear exaust, the 1200 has two. 1200 has larger interior room and supports larger mobo's, but is a bigger case. So, if a 900 will do, then it should work fine. If you need more then 15 drives or want lots of room to work in, the 1200 is your ticket. Also, with more intake and exaust fans, it would hold that the 1200 would be cooler - but that also depends on what drives and how hot they run - that may not be true in the end. Shawn

Hey gang - quick update. I will be getting an Icy Dock MB153SP-B http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=153 to review and add to the comparisons we have with the other models. If you only have a couple of spare slots, this could be a great option for you. Cheers, Shawn

I would have to pull out my whole system to look, but, if you check out the pics, you are out of luck. The SM comes with the 92mm fan mouted in the fan holder. If you removed that and tried to mount a 120, you would definately cover the power and SATA ports. I would point out, cooling has been excellent on this unit with the stock 92mm. Shawn

Glad it helped. I don't know that there are offcial tests/reviews of that unit yet. One thing that has come to mind when i think about trayless versus trayed units is the issue of vibration. I have a single drive hot swap "trayless" unit, and I would assume the 5x3 would be similar. Slid the drive into the mechanism, door closes, "locking" the drive into place. My issue is the fact the drive isn't solidly mounted/secured. There may be a bit of wiggle room for vibration. Now think, if running 15 or 20 drives that way, you could have the most minor of vibration that introduces an occasional error when the disk is writting. I saw a video, where a guy in a datacenter yelled right in front of a large disk array. They were running monitoring software and such and you could see the impact. Yes, trayless are convienient. But for the number of times I need to pull drives in and out, I am going to use trays to make sure everything is secure. Just my thoughts on that... Shawn

On all the cages I used the screws provided by the supplier - hence why I say make sure you keep them all seperate and marked well. The thread sizes and depths are all different for each cage of course... Shawn

To run a 5x3 cage without a fan, make sure you have some pretty strong exaust fans in your case that can pull enough air flow from the front of the cage and across the drives. Also, cover up any other points in the front of the case where "stale" air may be pulled in, like an empty 5.25 bay - you want all the incoming air from the front of the case to be pulled through the cage(s). Shawn

Great review! To bad about the step backwards on the fan. Overall though, looks like a positive improvement over the original. Shawn

I just had to post this Peter - speaking of Thermaltake - spent the weekend building my new gaming system - with a Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow Edition. And the blue looks sweet!!

For my setup I am obviously running four different units, but next to the SuperMicro, the Norco are my next favorite. Great price and good quality solution. Shawn

Sweetness Shawn

Oh for the love of... I never even thought of that! Oh wait, I did - when doing some of the temprature testing, took 30 minutes to swap the drives in between trays... those tinny screws can be a real PITA. Anyone want to trade four slightly used cages from some trayless ones? But, honestly, I do like the look of the unit, very unique, and anyone who comes over and sees it, cannot help but ask what the heck it is. Then I get to ramble on about unRaid and streaming movies, centralized storage... the <geek> in me comes out... Shawn

Ahh yes, I think we all look at our "babies" with a bit of a twinkle in the eye... course mine has the god aweful look of four different cages... dare to be different I say. Shawn

I was thinking the same thing - the 60mm just seem very weird when you can go a bit bigger, get better air flow and be much quieter. I can only think there is some techinical issue with using the 60mm as some of their other cages use 92mm... Shawn

Great review PeterB - thx very much for that. I wonder how loud the system would be with all three of the fan assemblies on the threee cages intact and running. Also, replacing them with some quieter ones may be a pain - 60mm is a non standard size. Can you detail the fan connector for me, in case someone was interested in replacing them? Thanks! Also, maybe i missed it, with the cages installed and under pressure, how smoothly did all the drives slid in and out of the unit? Shawn

Thanks for the info Ramon - good stuff! Shawn

Well sure, I could JAM them in. But honestly, on mine, there was no way it would work. Have you looked at the pics I posted? Do you have the same backplane as I do? I know the Corsair plugs peice is pretty large, maybe thats the difference, Corsair adds more plastic or something to make the grip easier... Shawn

CREATED WIKI I created a Wiki article to allow us to pull everthing together. Rather then a new user sifting through pages of posts to find various reviews, still post them here as well, but also be sure to add them to the new Wiki section I created. That way we can centralize them. To add you review, go Here, click the link down under the heading "Benchmarks..." and contribute!! If you have already added something, please be sure to update the Wiki with your info. We can always come back here to comment on things. Looking forward to yours Peter! Shawn

Can you get the temp on the drive during your next parity check please? Be interesting to see how this may affect it. I run the stock fan with the one empty slot closed. The 4 drives in it right now are at about 30 C and during a parity check bump up to maybe 32C. Shawn

Got a good chuckle out of that last part. In my Antec 1200 I did get my SM cage to fit between the tabs I had left, like you said, every third set. But, it was REALLY tight getting it to fit. Shawn

What do you mean by this? See This. Essentially a Sata I has a throuput of about 150MB/s. Some of the fastest mechanical drives can saturate that bus speed, and it is known the newest SSD drives can pretty much saturate a Sata II bus as well. But, in unRaid, when writting to the drive with parity, even using a 7200 RPM drive, you get about 30MB/s or slower write speeds. Writting to a cache disk can get you 60 or so MB/s. So, in unRaid, a SATA I drive has enough speed/bandwidth.... to bad they didn't make 2TB Sata I. There has been other threads where the discussion came down to something like my SATAII drive is only running at SATAI speeds... but for unRaid doesn't really matter. This may make more of a difference say in a large RAID0 hardware based array, or for some application/usage that can really push the drive. If you check in This forum on drives and controllers, lots of good info... Shawn

So, are you stating that it does work, period, or that it does work, but not fast, at 6Gbp/s speeds, or something else. Course this thread isn't so much about benchmarking the drives, other threads for that. How are you measuring "speeds"? Shawn