Swappable HDs - SATA 3 & 4 bay enclosures/backplane

[scytale]

Hi, any advice for an out of date dinosaur on backplanes/HD enclosures appreciated

Some of these backplanes (shortlist below) only have one SATA mobo interface @ 150MB/s for 3 disks (port multiplier?) – will this act as a bottleneck?
Will I be able to boot from whichever O/S disk in the enclosure is switched on (i.e. no mobo/SATA/port multiplier issues)?
Are they noisy, can you swap/disable fan (my old 1998 system has 2 x 7200rpm IBM Deskstars without a fan)?

My usage will involve lots of disk activity, I think I will mostly be using 250GB Samsung Spinpoints - and guess a max of 2 will be “in use for r/w / copying at any one time.

As newbie BBS wont allow URLs but my short list is:

the very cheap Jou-Jye Black SNT-2131 3 from Scan Computers. Only one mobo connection (150MB/s ? - no info on Jou-Jye site and no response to query)
pros only one cable; cons - bottleneck?

Does anyone know if the Jou-Jye has a power button for each disk? A 2 speed fan?

or

the cheap Starmount 4 bay (direct from UK company) - 300 MB/s and 4 connections
cons 4 cables (airflow/fiddly to install/hogging mobo connectors )
pros - I know there will be no bottleneck, 2 speed fan, power button for each disk

Thanks

S

[arthurleung]

From Google, it does show there are 3 SATA connectors at the back, so you just connect the harddrives normally. It is just SCAN have the wrong specification.

Due to how a hotswap enclosure actually works, it is NOT recommended to disable the fan. Your Deskstars could do without a fan because it conduct heat through the hdd bay (which is essentially a piece of metal with large surface area, like a heatsink), which the enclosure doesn't have.

You can boot from whichever disk, but BIOS boot sequence may change when you put in a new disk. One way of getting around this is to connect 1 drive to the onboard chipset SATA, and 2 drives to the secondary SATA adapter (JMicron / Silicon Image usually). That way the BIOS always prefer the one connected to the chipset SATA.

Not so sure about the power button, I guess that is just the activity LED and not actually a button.

[scytale]

Thanks to Arthurleung whose jpg was for same model no, different brandname I've now done a search on ST-2131 without Jou Jye prefix which threw up a couple of reviews (details at bottom of post for those interested) and raised more questions/clarifications). Anyone got the Jou Jye?

Noise appear to be a big issue with this unit and it takes an unusual fan - can anyone recommend a quiet 80 x 80 x 20 mm fan? Some users are concerned about temperature.

If anyone knows for future ref I'm still interested in how/when SATA port multiplier wil affect performance?

I've seen a post saying Kingston is OEM and all brands look same but "brand X" ST-2131s seem to vary in spec some state 150MB/s transfer others 300MB/s and to quote from one review "another review...... shows a different backplane design - interesting". Huge price differences Geeks Com US$44.99, Servercase Com $85 (pic in Arthleung's post) elsewhere $140 - are they really the same spec?

Arthurleung thanks - you've answered my cooling qns, and the Servercase site states individual HD power buttons. This looks pretty standard for all ST2131 versions. I guess your right about 3 SATA interfaces - but Scan does state one and I thing i've seen back pictures on some sites showing only one connector - so I wiil email them as Jou Jye did not respond.

Reviews (as newbie can't post URLs):

gathering tweakers net /forum/list_messages/1022299
mijico ca
newegg - search for backplane - lots of user comments on their model ST 2131

P.S. my eyesight is going and I my mind is fading - how do I vote thanks - can't see anywhere to do it?