Inexpensive 4 or 6 bay external SATA disk enclosure and a PCIe 2.0 x16 Low Profile HBA card

[Cathal]

Hi All,

I record a lot of amateur video in raw material, so I use FreeNAS to store all these TB. but I'm looking for an external disk enclosure, - preferably with high-bandwidth SFF-8088 multi-lane single-cable connection. I am not sure if USB3 is the way forward, or what do you say?

Do you have any suggestions for an inexpensive 4 or 6 bay external SATA disk enclosure and a PCIe 2.0 x16 Low Profile HBA card that works with FreeNAS?

My FreeNAS hardware:
HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 G2020T
4x4TB WD Red HDDs
16GB (2 x 8GB) PC3-12800E DDR3 UDIMM ECC
Storage Controller: Dynamic Smart Array B120i / ZM (not supported by FreeNAS)
Expansion Slots: PCIe 2.0 x16 Low Profile.

Hope that you can help

BR
Kristian

 

[marbus90]

USB3 is wonky with FreeNAS and in general isn't reliable. You might as well get non-ECC DIMMs...

I haven't heard of any "small" JBOD enclosures. They usually start out at 12 bays and are rackmount. Probably just get another Microserver and stack 'em.
If you really need all disks connected to a single box, you could look for a http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9207-4i4e.aspx and wire the new Microservers HDD bays to a SFF-8088 bracket.

 

[Ericloewe]

I searched far and wide for small, reliable external enclosures. I found nothing.

You'll find that most LSI HBAs and rebrands are low-profile.

 

[Cathal]

I searched far and wide for small, reliable external enclosures. I found nothing.

You'll find that most LSI HBAs and rebrands are low-profile.

I have found some online, but are not sure about the HW quality

Here is one:
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_enclosures/sas4bay.asp

 

[Ericloewe]

You know how I can immediately tell the PSU on that thing is crap?

It has a voltage selector.

Active PFC PSUs (read: any reasonably modern PSU) work from 100 to 250V (low-end units may not be able to handle full power at ~110V, but that's a different issue).