[nycbug-talk] Rackmount eSATA Enclosures

[Isaac Levy]

Hi Mark,

I've used the Sans Digital enclosures, but not rackmount stuff.

I've used the non-raid variants of this at home,

http://www.amazon.com/Sans-Digital-TowerRAID-TR5M-BP-Enclosure/dp/B003X0BJB8/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339775278&sr=1-5

This stuff looks kindof cheap, this rackmount box could be awesome- or could end up being terrible waste of time.

--
BIG WARNING:
The Sans-Digital stuff with various hardware RAID options are absolute trash, friends have bought those with terrible results- (even when not using the HW raid features).

CHEAP CAN BE AWESOME:
The stuff I've used, (over USB- with FreeBSD and MacOSX), has been as good as USB is… slow and adequately reliable for Tb+ green/slow/cheap drives.

I've even toyed/tested them with ZFS volumes, however, the speed of the single bus from the device makes them terrible for any actual ZRAID pool use- (unless I guess you split spools across multiple containers, which gets silly for me to live with- e.g. "which drive is in which sled?" hyjinks).
A single slow drive as a ZFS pool works just great, (with all the other ZFS features), and for 2-3tb slow/cheap drives, it's far more pleasant to live with than UFS- (formatting takes *forever* with UFS here, for starters...)

I really love their little enclosures as simple, slow cheap SATA drive sleds.

Hope that helps-

Best,
.ike





On Jun 15, 2012, at 10:47 AM, Mark Saad wrote:

> Hi Talk
> Has anyone had any experience with this drive shelf in FreeBSD
> 
> Sans Digital Rackmount eSATA External Hard Drive Enclosure ER104CT
> 
> http://amzn.com/B00365DWBK
> 
> I want to get one and I am open to other options.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Mark Saad | mark.saad at ymail.com
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