Any recommendations for trusted 3.5" USB enclosures?
Would be nice to have UASP + SMART and all Aluminum case (better heat disposal) and up to 16TB !
Recently i bought this one. It have UASP, but no SMART. One side aluminum, other plastic 
https://www.raidsonic.de/products/external_cases/external_cases_35/index_en.php?we_objectID=3029
For half year using this one. Also UASP, but no SMART. No problems detected, but all plastic
What are your choices, experiences and recommendations?
USB enclosures tend to fail me after some time so I’m going to try an ESATA enclosure (which has USB3 too) for 4 HDDs:
https://www.fantec.de/en/products/storage-devices/external-hard-drives/35-inch-external-hard-drives/produkt/details/artikel/1695_fantec_qb_35us3_6g/
But it looks like a german product, not sure you find it anywhere else.
Not even sure how well it’s going to work 
Just bought it yesterday and it’ll arrive tomorrow.
I’m testing one, thick, solid aluminum, solid ON/OFF, is OK (but it’s only up to 8TB)
Maybe the next one will be like this: (not only up to 8TB)
As for reading SMART from this enclosure - the same computer, Linux MINT can’t read it (out of the box), Win10 and Hard Disk Sentinel reads without a problem, where I have Openmediavault connected and gives SMART values without any problems
You right !!! I’ve almost forgot this important parameter. Need up to 16TB
In hot weather, you can use something like this under the disc (this is just an example):
I prefer passive cooling for such a type devices. Will send some photos later.
I found these passive coolers/heat sinks/cases for RPi:
They reduce CPU temp about 10-20’C.
Later playing around i’ve put old CPU cooler on the top, and noticed, that it makes things even better 
In this graph i just removed CPU cooler from RPi and later placed back. You see how the temp increasing and going down, when CPU cooler placed back:
Seeing this change, i’ve put some old CPU coolers on the aluminum HDD enclosure. They are warm, means doing their job as well
No extra noise, no need a power, as well free of charge.
why only 8tb… that seems odd…
from what i understand there shouldn’t be any logical reason why most stuff would work with 16tb today…
there was that 2tb limit because of the was it 16bit data allocation tables, which got fixed as is now like 32bit which supposedly should be smooth sailing into the exa bytes or something riddiculous like that…
ofc that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a new thing to watch out for that limits one to 8tb drives…
i’m just not familiar with reason why… tho they maybe cheapen out on some sort of chip in the enclosure i suppose that makes above 8tb impossible…
how AFAIK there should be any reason most 16tb drives cannot work if a 8tb drive works.
that enclosure looks very nice… how much did you have to pay for that?
oh and about time to lol
costs 100€.
Was deciding between buying a used Synology NAS for about 300€ and maybe selling my current PC and this enclosure. But if it works with eSata, this one looks like the better option.
Yeah definitely about time lol Have to bring that 3rd node back online before they introduce downtime dq xD
Could not aswer to you about the limitations. Just looking on Amazon right now, some enclosures says 8Tb max, other 10Tb, while the one i have (Raidsonic) says “unlimited size”.
my endless migration is just about done also… only been copying for … nearly 14 days straight…
gone quite well tho… a bit slow…less than 2tb left so should be done tomorrow… and not a hint of issues since i got the sas drives moved to their own dedicated part of the backplane…
the 512n drives also seem to run much smoother but not really easy to test when having extensive traffic
@kevink @node1
i would trust esata 10 times more than i would usb thats for sure…
not that i’ve ever actually used it… but usb is after all created to be able to be disconnected and to support tons of different devices…
would make sense if esata was more suited for the task and more stable for storage…
ofc i would perfer SAS but look where that got me with my sata drives and sas drives mixed maybe causing me endless headaches for nearly 4 months…
sas connections tho… and sas drives… wow they are so much better its basically unfair…
like did you know that when a sas cable breaks, it doesn’t matter … because one connection breaking will only give you less bandwidth and an error…
ofc the cables costs so much extra… but basically the freaking cables have redundancy lol
if i was to recommend an enclosure i would say non usb… doesn’t hurt to have the option, but i would want something else… like esata or sff-8088 or something similar however i like 8088 for their metal brackets directly on the print boards and on the cables… thus you can basically trip over the damn thing and it will just floor you…
100€ for 4 x 3.5" thats hard to beat… ofc it does look like the esata only supports 3gbits … which should be fine… i got 3 drives running on an old sata controller on my mobo… to my surprise it actually supports 6TB drives and thus most likely should do even 16TB drives… its freaking 10 years old …
so yeah i think the 8TB limit is bs most likely… maybe a sales tactic to sell something more expensive… ofc i cannot promise it… but i would almost bet on it…
there was a 2tb limit… now there is no limit… speed will most likely be the next limiting factor… the hdds will become so large you cannot move the data out without it taking months… or weeks.
capacity wise hdd controllers that can control more than 2tb should be able to control up to 16 exabytes… or something ridiculous like that.
well my ich10 controller will do 3gbit like the esata of the “exclosure” kevink is getting… and that runs fine… and thats a 10 year old chip… and since it does 6tb it should also do like 20tb
giving me 6 more ports for hooking disk up to… sadly my 2u rack case is pretty full… 
but yeah i would try and get as many disk in one enclosure as possible… because the cheaper it gets per unit… i would want esata or better external rated cables…
i would want a usb option and maybe a 1gbit nic…ofc that most likely ups the price a lot … because if you got a nic, then you have to have a processor, which needs ram and a mobo, … which ups the power requirement… and then you would need ability to control the drivves locally… and yeah… so esata might be the affordable way to go…
think ive seen some like it… but for a case to mount in 2 or 3 bay of 5½" or whatever cdrom was… but i think that was also like 300€… so yeah… HOW ABOUT NO
P.S did you know that you can almost get a 36bay DAS for that… OFC THAT WILL HAVE A BLEEP TON OF PITFALLS… so be sure you know what you are doing or be ready to start digging.
As always you are very detailed 
Of course esata much better. But in this case, i’m looking enclosure for RPi. There some workarounds to attach SATA HDD to RPi, but in this case i probably will trust more a standard USB enclosure, then very specific controller made special for RPi
But for bigger nodes, i use LSI-9211-8i, have 4 of them
Hello, you already have this enclosure?
Does eSata work for all four drives?
yes I got that enclosure and it works great so far. Had to get a new esata card but now it works stable over both usb and esata. 4 drives independently usable (I have 3x8TB and 1x3TB).
What card is this? I have one eSata port on the motherboard and I can only see one disk from this enclosure …
I guess your motherboard chipset doesn’t support port multiplying. The card does.
esata is like the sata bus, you can split each cable into multiple cables… in fact there isn’t very fixed limits on just how many hdds you can connect on each bus lane / channel…
i think you will run into problems eventually tho… like maybe 50-200 ish… per controller
ofc bandwidth and latency will most likely become and issue much sooner…
but so long as you are not connecting a ton of drives… it’s really not an issue… the sata bus is usually pretty fast
