Re: StarTech HDD drawers - opinions?

I have used several SATA caddy over the years...
o Best -- Storcase units, OEM for IBM to EMC
---- DX75 for hot-swap SATA
---- drive spin down delay so drive stopped before removal
---- onboard power regulators & soft-start for spin-up
---- industrial quality, designed for very high in/out cycle
---- more suited to shop-floor, military, heavy field usage
---- quality for an unfortunately very high cost
o Worst -- Startech aluminium, OEM for dustbins
---- abysmal quality aluminium, fractures, cracks easily
---- poorly designed interlock (casting tolerances)
---- unremarkable design for the high cost

Basically the Storcase DX75 is an off-the-shelf solution for
the likes of IBM EMC DELL HPQ and many others. The
retail pricing is somewhat high - unless your data is critical.
Losing launch s/w for Patriot could really spoil your day.

Removing a drive from a caddy before it has stopped is a
very bad idea - because a head crash is most likely. Indeed
power on & power off are the worst time to kick a PC :-)
Same goes for slamming drives home into a drive array.


Realise SATA hotswap requires support by all in the chain
o Intel 865 era mainboard are SATA-1 -- hotswap unsupported
o Intel 875 era mainboard are SATA-2 -- hotswap supported

So if your plan is hotswap verify OS/drivers/chipset support.


If your plan is a RAID-array, considering cooling
o Multiple drives dissipate N*10W basically
o Cooling is thus small, but SOME cooling is needed
o Typically most critical over motor-drive ic's on PCB


If your plan is multiple caddy, consider a RAID box
o These come in 3-drive in 2-bay or 5-drive in 3-bay
---- price is equivalent or better than individual caddy
o Cooling typically single 80mm fan vs lots of 40mm
---- cooling is better, maintenance is lower, noise is lower

By 3-bay I mean 5.25" bay (it's a cube shape).


The cheapest & best engineered caddy I found was the
SNT-135 for SATA. They are about 16-25ukp each,
black costing far more than beige. Alloy extrusion for
the caddy & housing, steel frame, ok tolerances, good
positive latch & latch-engagement-of-SATA-connector.
The only one I would consider against Storcase DX75,
in that it "did almost the same job at vastly less cost".


Plastic caddy are not particularly suited to...
o High insertion/removal cycles -- alignment can be poor
o Hot running drives -- cooling & heatsinking is limited


There is one other type of caddy - one that has no case
for the hard-drive, the HD slides down rails to a backplane.
An interesting design, but my concern is handling of a bare
hard drive - one bump & single point of failure is lost data.


If you plan on several drives, look carefully at the simple
RAID enclosures - can be more economic & better made.
Let the hard drive stop before removing (several secs :-)
--
Dorothy Bradbury


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: USB EXTERNAL HD CADDY CONUNDRUM!!!
    ... A friend has leant me a 3.5" HDD External caddy with a 30gb Maxtor HDD ... Most of the time it shows up OK in device manager under Disk Drives (as ... but it never shows up in My Computer or Disk ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Server 500
    ... Teriffic reply Rick, ... Another option would be to pick up more of the "right" caddy ... design, these were used in several IBM type-models, including the RS/ ... it has 6 9.1GB SCSI drives in Bay C, you may have your desired parts ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware)
  • Re: Looking for the "Unipod directory in Apps"
    ... to keep backup data in a physical location remote from the primary data. ... It may seem unlikely, but the RPC could be stolen, or both drives could ... What I'd suggest is to buy two backup drives. ... removable caddy systems for a 5.25" bay... ...
    (comp.sys.acorn.hardware)
  • Re: Back-up files
    ... both drives will be corrupted and I won't have any usable back-up ... I had a 500 GB Western Digital hard drive in an eSATA external caddy ... the second slot inside my computer and the thermal problem doesn't ... I looked at one like this before I bought my Antec caddy ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: A Sorry Tale of Deskstars & Drive Caddies
    ... > Some weeks ago I added a SATA drive Caddy to my desktop, ... I think you should have stopped and investigated about 3 drives ... equipment form an incompetent manufacturer (hard to find out, ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
Loading