I'd like to see a review of some backkplanes that support a couple more drives that's still mountable in an ATX case. I'm looking to run RAID 5 or 6, ideally with a hot spare.

How about 2x5.25" bays hosting vertical 3.5" disks, maybe five or six? I prefer this setup to the standard desktop internal cages which are a pain.

gp-Just use more then one of the above-the raid is controller dependent.

And here it is: http://www.addonics.com/products/r [...] s35nsa.asp

Almost, its a 3x5.25" but you need that with 3.5" drives. 2x5.25" can only get you 3 horizontal 3.5" drives.

I saw this article and I though, Awesome this is going to be a great article that will apply to me (and enthusiast and a Small Business).

But then I noticed it's all about 2.5" hard drives instead of 3.5"...

FAIL

Sorry to be debbie downer, I just feel that the vast majority of people looking to add storage space would prefer the larger, cheaper, faster 3.5" form factor of the 2.5" drives.

I understand that SSD is changing things, but it still costs 10-100X more than 3.5"HDD, and 2.5"HDD still costs 2-5x as much as 3.5"...

I guess it would be more productive to ask for 3.5" backplanes than just being a dick.

Please can I see some 3.5" storage solutions? I'd especially like to see some of the drive bays supporting more than 4 drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] ne&x=0&y=0

for a list of backplanes out there

Having 40mm fans very close to rotating media is a very bad idea. Hard drives do not like the intense vibration from high speed fans.
Performance and reliability suffer badly. I would like to see the issue
addressed in a serious way, not just the obvious user oriented features.

Except when using, oh I don't know, laptop drives that are already built to withstand this kind of abuse, kind of a non-issue.

Also considering how hot many laptop drives get when on your lap, I don't think heat will be as big of an issue as you'd think if your case is cooled properly. My Stacker 830 would be a perfect fit if I threw one of these in my top bay, just fashon a air guide for the top fan to pull air from the first bay, turn the 40mm fans off and be happy!

Bought This - Returned it the next week: No stress relief on the connections and several came disconnected due to the fact that the SAS/SATA connections were only held on to the circuit board via the soldier holding the pins in place - Hey! I paid $40 for this backplane that was little more than 4 places to mount hard drives, what do you expect?

I'd like to see a similar roundup but with 3.5" HDD backplanes. There are quite a few that fit into three 5-1/4" slots and is a better compromise if you run a mid-tower...

Excellent review, however it seems like the backplanes that you choose to review all are approximately the same unit with a different brand pasted on... would like to see some more diversity in the choices.

Any word yet on the patriot, OCZ, or A-DATA versions of the mobile backplane ? I think any of those would work alot nicer in the desktop enviornment, as they fit neatly into a single 3.5" bay. There are also a number of chinese 2-bay RAID enclosures out there, but who knows the quality? I would really like to see a true round-up on those.

For those who don't see the point in 2.5" vs. 3.5", consider a ultra-fast OS/Program array, and a nice fast RAID 10 array for storage, and pretty soon you're running out of physical space in the average desktop case, not to mention competing for power with your high-end video card. While 2.5" drives are still a bit pricey for storage drives, a pair of 73GB 15K SAS and a dual RAID 0 enclosure for about $300 is certainly worth it ( or even 4x 36GB 15K for the same price ), as space requirements are simply not needed for an OS/program drive.

SuperMicro Backplane CSE-M28E2B for 8x 2.5"HD, 2x 5.25"Bay; Redundant 2x4xSAS port

http://www.span.com/catalog/produc [...] anguage=en

is there any internal enclosure fit two of 2.5" hdd into one of 3.5" bay?

Here's the RAID version from A-DATA....they also have non-raid versions I believe.

http://oc.adata.com.tw/1_product_d [...] SX1SUMAL-2

I have not found any reliable review on these type of things yet. There are a number of chinese versions off of E-bay which look to be identical and both Patriot and OCZ are promising their vervisions as well. I doubt these would get rid of the stuttering problems of low-end SSD's, but it would make for some nasty RAID-on-RAID action, spawning all sorts of bizarre set-ups.

Thanks for the info.
I found one for internal for two of 2.5inch to one bay of 3.5 inch.

http://www.acmemicro.com/estore/me [...] 390&step=4

I'll test this later today for our product test.