External raid enclosure recommendations?

[Gohan]

Hi, I have a bunch of 1 & 2 TB drives sitting around and would like to use them for some sort of redundant backup. Ideally a Drobo would be nice but I only have around £75 to spend.

Any recommendations for a 2-3 disk enclosure? I have no experience with these so not sure what brands to trust (like StarTech ect)

I don't need NAS and speed isn't a real concern so usb3 or esata not really needed.

Any suggestions?

Cheers, Ryan

[caliston]

I'm contemplating a homebrew solution:

Buy a Lycom ST-132 RAID adaptor. This has ports for two SATA drives, and you can choose to connect it to your PC via eSATA or USB. It uses the Sil5744 controller (plenty of info on the net about that). The Sil5744 does various types of hardware RAID. About £25-30 (from Scan or a place on Tottenham Court Road called Yoyotech).

Then stuff the hard drives and adaptor in an old PC case (free). You have a homemade RAID rack. The advantage is you can rejig things as you like... switch from eSATA to USB if you want, use the drives in a normal machine, add other things to the case.

Here's a benchmark for the Sil5744 (it's the brains of the MobileStor case):
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...-review-9.html

If you can find a board with the Sil5734 I think that should support three drives. The chips cost about $5, but finding one on a standalone board rather than an enclosure seems to be tricky. Probably some enterprising Chinese company produces them,but often they don't tell you the chip in the advertising.

[ChaosSystem]

What about those "toaster" like USB dockable devices?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Shark...ATA-525-drives

[caliston]

Looking for other Sil5744-based devices this one appears to be Sil5744-based for £55:
http://www.storagedepot.co.uk/Enclos...c884/p523.aspx

I have no experience of it, but if the chip is satisfactory the only other considerations are mechanical - construction, fan noise etc.

[Gohan]

Thanks for all the input chaps.

Been thinking on this one and as reviews are rather thin on the ground for this sort of thing, I think I'll just build a file server out of spare parts for the time being.

Cheers, Ryan