SATA RAID Drive Cages

[Valkhorn]

How good are hot-swappable RAID cages these days? I'm in the market for a 4 or 5 drive cage that will fit into 3 5.25" bays for any tower computer or server. I'd like something that's durable and something that has a cooling fan in the back, as well.

I've found a couple that I'm thinking about:

iStarUSA 5 in 3:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215001

SuperMicro 5 in 3:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405

And here is an iStar 4 in 3 for less than $100:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121913

So does anyone have experience with these cages and can specify which brands suck and which brands I should look at?

Thanks!

 

[Blazestorm]

http://www.directron.com/bpu350sata.html

They work, not much to them The lock is a little iffy, you wanna hold the handle closed when you turn it, you gotta use your fingernails...

I only used 2 SATA for powering 5 drives... and the 2 SATA were actually from a single molex, so w/ the I-star/Athena Power ones, they can distribute power with 1 connection...

 

[TeeJayHoward]

I own two of the SuperMicro cages. It's my understanding that I own early revisions of the cages, so YMMV.

The HDD failure/activity LEDs are not functional. There is a place on the back of the cage unit to connect to your RAID card, and I believe the card needs to support the LEDs. The fan on the back is (I believe) a 92mm fan which has one setting: loud. But it definitely keeps the drives cool. On my server (Supermicro 4U), I have the fans removed, as there are 120mm fans directly behind the cages anyway.

The cage construction is solid, and well built. The trays... I'd give them an 8/10. I feel like I'm going to break the plastic fronts, but having dropped them, stepped on them, and lost them in a box during a move, I feel confident that it's just the feeling, and not the actual quality. The latching mechanism is solid. The design is simple, and works well.

There are a couple areas that I feel the cage could improve:
1) SATA power connector, or only 1 molex connector required. Currently, there are two molex connections required per cage.
2) 5-into-1-cable. Don't remember what these are called, but the cage doesn't seem to have any kind of a splitter, so I have five SATA cables going from my card/mobo/etc to my cage.
3) In-Cage-HDD-Activity-Detection. Apparently, the new ones don't require a card.
4) New face for drive trays. The existing one works, and works well, but it still "feels" cheap to me. I think it's that the "handle" that pops out is 1/3rd of the tray width, compared to the full-width handles of some of the competitors.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Despite how negative my review may sound, I'm definitely looking into picking up a third one when my 4U ends desktop duty and gets retired to closet-server.

 

[Valkhorn]

http://www.directron.com/bpu350sata.html

They work, not much to them The lock is a little iffy, you wanna hold the handle closed when you turn it, you gotta use your fingernails...

I only used 2 SATA for powering 5 drives... and the 2 SATA were actually from a single molex, so w/ the I-star/Athena Power ones, they can distribute power with 1 connection...

On the cheap. That might work for me although I just wonder how much noisier the drives will be in a cage than where I have them now (lined in silicon grommets)