May 28, 200917 yr Newegg has the Sans Digital TR5M-B 5 Bay eSATA enclosure for $179.99 until 6/3/2009 with promo code "EMCLSNW72". I'm using one right now for my newly built unRaid box and don't have any complaints yet. So if you've ran out of SATA slots on the mobo, this is an easy way to expand to another 5 drives. Just drop the pci-x into the box and hook up the enclosure. Fairly low noise as well with its massive fan in the rear pulling air through the case.
May 29, 200917 yr Hi, It sounds like this enclosure is supported by unRAID. The port multiplier support by unRAID - which release? What version of unRAID are you running? I'm looking for cheap ways to expand my disk arrays since I am running out of SATA port on my MB (The former official unRAID MB - ASUS P5B-VM DO) and also the drive space on my Antec case. Cheers, --Tom
May 29, 200917 yr Author I'm running the latest 4.4, but from my understanding, the latest 4.3. should work as well.
May 29, 200917 yr I am running 4.4 now. From my understanding, the way it works is that you basically plug-in the included pci-e card which has two eSATA port. Then connect one of the eSATA port to the enclosure. How is the disk write and read speed on unRAID? Cheers, --Tom
May 30, 200917 yr Author Write is always going to be limited by the Parity so that's not really a concern (15MB/s). Reading, I get about 40MB/s when copying from it which I'm pretty sure is the max of what the drive is capable of. With a quick test, copying 2 different files located on two different disks on the enclosure yielded a total output of 90MB/s. Once again, maxing the potential of the individual drives. The real speed of esata is suppose to be 300MB/s so it should be able to easily handle 5 drives even with simultaneous access.
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