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 Iām 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 itās going to work 
Just bought it yesterday and itāll arrive tomorrow.
Iām testing one, thick, solid aluminum, solid ON/OFF, is OK (but itās 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 canāt 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 !!! Iāve 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 10-20āC.
Later playing around iāve 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, iāve 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 8tbā¦ that seems oddā¦
from what i understand there shouldnāt be any logical reason why most stuff would work with 16tb todayā¦
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 thatā¦
ofc that doesnāt mean that there isnāt a new thing to watch out for that limits one to 8tb drivesā¦
iām just not familiar with reason whyā¦ tho they maybe cheapen out on some sort of chip in the enclosure i suppose that makes above 8tb impossibleā¦
how AFAIK there should be any reason most 16tb drives cannot work if a 8tb drive works.
that enclosure looks very niceā¦ how much did you have to pay for that?
oh and about time to lol
costs 100ā¬.
Was deciding between buying a used Synology NAS for about 300ā¬ 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 āunlimited sizeā.
my endless migration is just about done alsoā¦ only been copying for ā¦ nearly 14 days straightā¦
gone quite well thoā¦ a bit slowā¦less than 2tb left so should be done tomorrowā¦ and not a hint of issues since i got the sas drives moved to their own dedicated part of the backplaneā¦
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 sureā¦
not that iāve ever actually used itā¦ but usb is after all created to be able to be disconnected and to support tons of different devicesā¦
would make sense if esata was more suited for the task and more stable for storageā¦
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 monthsā¦
sas connections thoā¦ and sas drivesā¦ wow they are so much better its basically unfairā¦
like did you know that when a sas cable breaks, it doesnāt matter ā¦ because one connection breaking will only give you less bandwidth and an errorā¦
ofc the cables costs so much extraā¦ but basically the freaking cables have redundancy lol
if i was to recommend an enclosure i would say non usbā¦ doesnāt hurt to have the option, but i would want something elseā¦ like esata or sff-8088 or something similar however i like 8088 for their metal brackets directly on the print boards and on the cablesā¦ thus you can basically trip over the damn thing and it will just floor youā¦
100ā¬ for 4 x 3.5" thats hard to beatā¦ ofc it does look like the esata only supports 3gbits ā¦ which should be fineā¦ i got 3 drives running on an old sata controller on my moboā¦ to my surprise it actually supports 6TB drives and thus most likely should do even 16TB drivesā¦ its freaking 10 years old ā¦
so yeah i think the 8TB limit is bs most likelyā¦ maybe a sales tactic to sell something more expensiveā¦ ofc i cannot promise itā¦ but i would almost bet on itā¦
there was a 2tb limitā¦ now there is no limitā¦ speed will most likely be the next limiting factorā¦ the hdds will become so large you cannot move the data out without it taking monthsā¦ or weeks.
capacity wise hdd controllers that can control more than 2tb should be able to control up to 16 exabytesā¦ or something ridiculous like that.
well my ich10 controller will do 3gbit like the esata of the āexclosureā kevink is gettingā¦ and that runs fineā¦ and thats a 10 year old chipā¦ and since it does 6tb it should also do like 20tb
giving me 6 more ports for hooking disk up toā¦ sadly my 2u rack case is pretty fullā¦ 
but yeah i would try and get as many disk in one enclosure as possibleā¦ because the cheaper it gets per unitā¦ i would want esata or better external rated cablesā¦
i would want a usb option and maybe a 1gbit nicā¦ofc that most likely ups the price a lot ā¦ because if you got a nic, then you have to have a processor, which needs ram and a mobo, ā¦ which ups the power requirementā¦ and then you would need ability to control the drivves locallyā¦ and yeahā¦ so esata might be the affordable way to goā¦
think ive seen some like itā¦ but for a case to mount in 2 or 3 bay of 5Ā½" or whatever cdrom wasā¦ but i think that was also like 300ā¬ā¦ so yeahā¦ HOW ABOUT NO
P.S did you know that you can almost get a 36bay DAS for thatā¦ OFC THAT WILL HAVE A BLEEP TON OF PITFALLSā¦ 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, iām 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 ā¦
I guess your motherboard chipset doesnāt support port multiplying. The card does.
esata is like the sata bus, you can split each cable into multiple cablesā¦ in fact there isnāt very fixed limits on just how many hdds you can connect on each bus lane / channelā¦
i think you will run into problems eventually thoā¦ like maybe 50-200 ishā¦ per controller
ofc bandwidth and latency will most likely become and issue much soonerā¦
but so long as you are not connecting a ton of drivesā¦ itās really not an issueā¦ the sata bus is usually pretty fast
