New Inclose brand external drive cases, intended for SCSI drives but work for SATA with new sockets on back.

 

I received all of these for my systems, and they appear heavy-duty, with large cooling fans and power supplies. Far better than anything at the local computer stores.

 

SHIPPING is higher than the item price, but total is still a great price.

 

Case for 2 3.5" drives, (with mounting holes for 3 drives),  $2.99, or case of 6 for $11.99.

 

Tower Case for 9 5.25" drives, (with dual 300W redundant power supply included) $19.99.

 

Case for 1 5.25" drive, $2.99, or case of 10 for $19.99.

 

www.surpluscomputers.com

search for "Inclose" or "case"

 

 

 

Do they have the standard removable centronics style back plate?

 

If so then you can use the centronics style mountable bridge boards.

I.E. Port multipliers, and raid modules.

 

http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/pm_cc.asp

Very interesting store!  I see a lot of tempting items, but I am always very cynical about buying from a site I have never heard of before.  Can you vouch for them?

 

Very interesting store!  I see a lot of tempting items, but I am always very cynical about buying from a site I have never heard of before.  Can you vouch for them?

 

 

Not sure what a first-post vouch will gain you.  No disrespect intended at the OP.

 

 

Bill

The 9-bay tower has 2 68 pin plugs on plates with mounting holes that line up with 50-pin SCSI connectors. Hope I can fit 2 of the Addonics port multipliers in. Will try to post images.

 

I was hesitant about ordering from Surplus Computers, but their E-bay feedback was over 30,000 with 97% positive ratings over the last 9 years.

The product descriptions are not very complete. The 9-bay ad shows a picture of an 8-bay. Their E-bay listings have different prices from the web site. The 9-bay listing on E-bay shows that it includes 9 3.5" to 5.25" drive mounting brackets. The mounting brackets were not mentioned on the web site, and not included in the case I ordered from the web site.

 

I have 17 cases from them, plus a dozen Seagate Barracuda ES 750 drives and various other items. Very happy so far.

 

I have many various USB, E-Sata, and Firewire external cases, and don't like the light-weight construction and poor airflow of the current designs. A few weeks ago I leaned over my desk and put my hand on a new external case for support - heard an awful grinding squealing sound from the disk drive. Decided then to find some of the older style heavy duty cases you can literally dance on. Was ready to pay $100 per case, was shocked to find these so cheap.

 

Building 2 Unraid servers, 16 tb and 12 tb, for multimedia and video editing backup storage. Got 2 of the H800 cases from Tom and using some of these externals. Got the first server running yesterday. Looks great so far.

That's a pretty sweet deal.

With the 9 bay unit in theory you can get 15 drives in it with the 5 in 3 modules.

However practically you'll only get 10 unless you do some modding to the case.

 

Still a sweet deal.

 

I'm tempted with the 2 bay unit to use with the RAID0/RAID1/SAFE33/SAFE50 bridge board.

 

I was actually planning on using this addonics case so it matched my computer case.

http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast2.asp

 

The dual 3.5" case is my favorite, holds 3 drives, and 5 minutes with a vice and drill will 'adapt' pc e-sata plates to fit the back.

 

The single 5.25" case only has mounting holes from the bottom, OK for DVD drives but would be hard to mount removable single hard drive rack as power supply is on one side and the other side is not directly against a bracket.

 

The 9 bay tower power supply 12V rail is rated at 12A. Don't know if the 2 power supplies run in parallel when both are operating, if so might handle more current.

 

The Addonics 2-drive hardware raid board looks tempting to try, but I worry about it having a USB port. Various USB + E-sata external drive product feedback pages contain lots of problems with the E-sata connection. I have also had many problems with the dual interface externals on various Windows versions where the E-sata disconnects randomly or the power must be toggled off and on to get a connection after a system boot. The USB port always seems to work OK, but the transfer rate is just too low. Have ripped the drives out of several of these and they always work great with a direct connection to the E-sata port on the PC's. Hope Addonics does not have the same problems in their dual USB E-sata units.