Well I have been chasing for a while several 5 in 3 drive enclosures.

 

I have settled for two particular ones but I am more leaning towards the Icy Dock one.  However, I am having trouble sourcing them in Australia.  The Supermicro one looks just as good but I can't find a review on it anywhere, I understand the fan will be loud and that's fine.

 

ICYDOCK MB455SPF-B

SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B

 

Has anyone had any experience with either of these units and can held shed some light?  I am planning on purchasing four units to put into my CM Stacker 810.

 

Other thing is they are about the same price, Icy Dock cost more per unit (without shipping) but the Supermicro weigh more so cost more to shipping so that makes up the saving.

limetech settled on the Supermicro units.

I like the idea that you can replace the fans without any screws.

Many people on newegg replace them with quieter ones.

One persons review said he turned the fan the other way around to blow air out of the unit (interesting)

Blowing heat into the room (I may try this for the winter) 

Thanks Weebotech, yeah I saw that personal review about switching the fans around.  I was thinking about ordering from provantage.com because they ship to Australia for a reasonable rate.  However they won't ship Icy Dock to Australia some manufacturer restriction.  Wonder if I could buy the units off Lime Technology? Might poke them a email.

I have too been looking at possibly changing my one of my Coolmaster cages for a tray system. I want to be able to get a few extra trays, insert and manually mount the drive (not part of the array). These drives are my off-site backup. I thought I saw somewhere that unRaid doesn't support hot-swapping. Is this still not supported?

I've not had any problems with my Icydock 5-in-3.  My 4-in-3 died and caused several days of pain to recover the array.  So much pain I'm going to replace the 5-in-3 with normal drive cages and fans.  Cheaper and more reliable I hope.

Oh and one thing about the Icydock 5-in-3, the side of the cages have no notches so in some cases you will have to dremel / bend the case to make them fit.

I have too been looking at possibly changing my one of my Coolmaster cages for a tray system. I want to be able to get a few extra trays, insert and manually mount the drive (not part of the array). These drives are my off-site backup. I thought I saw somewhere that unRaid doesn't support hot-swapping. Is this still not supported?

 

I posted this yesterday.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215055

 

Might be good for removable backups.

 

As far as hot swapping, I think it is dependent on the controller.

unRAID does not support it as part of the array, Yet I have done this external from the array.

 

A point to consider, when doing this via SATA your drives can change position.

 

I faintly remember, adding a drive in a hot swap fashion with success, I left the ESATA unit in the machine.

Upon reboot, the drive was detected in a different position causing one of the other drives to be blue.

it had to be re-assigned before the array would start.

 

Even worse, it could cause a glitch in the controller and other drives may be affected. (this did not happen to me, but I remember reading about this somewhere).

 

For the record I'm replacing my drive enclosures with these :-

 

http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/042/scyhdsx4-detail.html

 

and front mounted fans.

I have too been looking at possibly changing my one of my Coolmaster cages for a tray system. I want to be able to get a few extra trays, insert and manually mount the drive (not part of the array). These drives are my off-site backup. I thought I saw somewhere that unRaid doesn't support hot-swapping. Is this still not supported?

While unRAID cannot handle hot-swap devices cannot as part of the protected array, you might be able to hot-swap SATA devices outside the protected array.  As you said, you can create file-systems on the disks that are not part of the array, and copy to them for off-site storage.  If your hardware supports it, you should be fine.  The disk should be detected when it is plugged in by the "udev" daemon process.

 

Your results using hot-swap SATA devices outside of the protected unRAID array will be interesting.  Please report back with the results...  Personally, I use a USB disk for my off-site storage.  It is not that much slower for the amount of data I typically archive.

 

Whatever you do, don't try a hot-plug with one of the devices assigned to the unRAID array... bad things might happen when you yank the disks out from under a system that is not coded to deal with it.  Also beware of SATA controllers using an IDE emulation mode... un-plugging a drive could lock up both "simulated" IDE channels and take a disk assigned in the array (on the other channel) off-line too.

 

Joe L.

Thanks guys, I didn't mean to go off topic. I will most likely have more questions about doing this hot-swap setup (new thread). I'm bouncing around a few ideas.

 

My backup system is sound [on windows], I'm just trying to make unRaid self-sufficient.

For the record I'm replacing my drive enclosures with these :-

 

http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/042/scyhdsx4-detail.html

 

and front mounted fans.

 

That's what I used. They work well -- as long as you have fans mounted in front. Lots of photos of my install here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2031.msg34915#msg34915

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6313&page=3

 

Nice little overview of the Supermicro enclosure.

I use the Chenbro SK33502 with a replacement fan.  It's been reliable and keeps my drives cooler than the lower bay of my Coolermaster 690 case.

Think I'm going to order some Supermicro enclosures from Provantage, they have reasonable shipping to Australia.

 

I'll let you know how I go.

Think I'm going to order some Supermicro enclosures from Provantage, they have reasonable shipping to Australia.

 

I'll let you know how I go.

 

I'm running the supermicros in mine. Stock fan was loud but can be made tolerable using a fanmate fan controller.

 

In the end I swapped the fans for some nexus models and also undervolted with the fan controller

 

They're well built and work ok. I read somewhere they do staggered spin up of the drives in the enclosure which was a bonus to me but to be honest I couldn't tell you if they actually do that in practice!

 

Even with the undervolted replacement fan drive temps are fine. Although I only have 2 7200rpm disks in the array, the rest are 5400.

 

Only caveat I will give - for any drive cage - is to watch your case. Alot of cases have 'lips' in the 5.25 bays to guide devices in. They're designed for one device per bay so trying to put one device in that takes 3 bays can be problematic due to the lips interfering and you'll have to get jiggy with some case cutting or bending.

 

I had this issue with my centurion 590 but 10 mins with a hacksaw and some pliers sorted it out.

 

I still have room for another 5 in 3 and it will be a supermicro when I need to go there.

I've got 2 of the Supermicro's in my server (Antec 900 case), and they appear to work fine.  I'm using the stock fans (it's in my server closet, so nobody has to listen to it).  Soon as I need it, I plan on buying a 3rd, but I'm only using 9 of the bays at the moment..

 

For the record I'm replacing my drive enclosures with these :-

 

http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/042/scyhdsx4-detail.html

 

and front mounted fans.

 

I like that one alot.  How do you mount the fan though?

 

 

For the record I'm replacing my drive enclosures with these :-

 

http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/042/scyhdsx4-detail.html

 

and front mounted fans.

 

I like that one alot.  How do you mount the fan though?

 

 

 

I've got 2 of these spread over nine 5.25 bays (mounted vertically) :-

 

http://www.quietpc.com/ie-en-eur/products/caseaccessories/kama-bay-black

 

I'm pretty happy with the setup.  Drives are running 8-10 degrees cooler than they were in the Icy Docks.  ( 23-25 from 33-36 )

I am currently using three of the Supermicro - not an issue with them and I like 'em. I am about to order another, big thumbs up! for standard non-tray use I used the Coolermaster cages. $20 and they had a fan mounted in front. Swapping out drives was a hassle and they may have only fit the Stackers but they were CHEAP! About to pull some of th elast of tem out today.

1) No one seems to have said they do anything similar so I thought I'd mention that I'm using the IcyDocks *without* fans in my prime unRAID server, i.e., with the fans taken off completely. It's in an Antec Nine Hundred case, which has a big honking fan on top. I tape everything shut, except for the front inlet, and use just the top fan at medium speed, which means that all airflow goes in the front->HDDs->MB->CPU->out the top.

 

2) My second unRAID server is a bit of a patch-job, with the MB attached on the outside of a TeraTower, formerly an external USB enclosure. It's got 7 HDDs on the inside that are cooled by a single slow-moving 120mm fan in the same in->HDDs-> out fashion. [i call it "albert", btw, from unstein = un[RAID]+[Franken]stein ]

 

3) I use basically the same set-up as in 1) for a reasonably high-powered workstation (with a passively-cooled 9500GT).

 

= Neither of these 3 have heat problems, and my point is that proper airflow does not require moving lots of air at high speeds: for my money, backplane fans are all but irrelevant, at least when the HDDs do a lot of sleeping.

 

 

 

As a side-remark, I've found that having the backplanes is convenient but given how rarely I've taken advantage of that convenience, I would probably buy an Antec Twelve Hundred case if there were to be a next time, and not bother with backplanes, at least if and until that becomes too inconvenient.

2) My second unRAID server is a bit of a patch-job, with the MB attached on the outside of a TeraTower, formerly an external USB enclosure. It's got 7 HDDs on the inside that are cooled by a single slow-moving 120mm fan in the same in->HDDs-> out fashion. [i call it "albert", btw, from unstein = un[RAID]+[Franken]stein Wink]

 

This would make a great addition in the pimp my rig thread.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2031.0

mrp: seeing as you are in Australia perhaps look into the Norco SS-500 units which are available from Techbuy in Sydney.

 

I have three of these units, which i imported from the US before techbuy started stocking them, in a LianLi PC-A17b case. I've replaced the stock 2900rpm 92mm fans with Noctua 92mm NF-B9's which are pretty much silent at 1600rpm. I picked mine up from mwave via their ebay store for US$70ea plus US$100 for postage for all 3 modules.

 

http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/125634/HDD_DRIVE_BAYS/Norco/SS-500.asp

 

A good review on the SS-500's can be found here http://www.wegotserved.com/2009/02/21/hands-on-norco-ss-500-backplane-hot-swap-module/. The site also does a comparison which includes the IcyDocks here http://www.wegotserved.com/2009/03/08/round-up-a-final-look-at-my-backplane-hot-swap-module-reviews/

 

Main reason I went with the hotswap modules is if a drive dies i dont have to pull apart the machine to work out which drive it is. I can just power down, slide out the tray and replace and power up again.. no need to pull the whole machine out, open it up, remove whatever mounting mechanism is holding the drives etc..

 

Yes I am a fundamentally lazy person