External SATA RAID Boxes That Connect with eSATA?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jon Forrest
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J

Jon Forrest

I have a couple of Promise UltraTrak boxes that
are working great. These are boxes that use PATA
drives, contain a RAID controller, and connect to
a host using SCSI.

I'd like to upgrade these to something similar but
more modern, something with a RAID controller but
something that uses SATA disks, and attaches to
a host using a single eSATA cable. In other words,
the host sees a single large drive.

Are there any vendors that makes such things?

Cordially,
Jon Forrest
 
So which box satisfies the OP's requirement for
1) just one eSATA cable connecting the box to the mobo,
and
2) the collection of HDs looking like one big HD?

*TimDaniels*
 
For what it's worth I did use Google. I found a fair number of
SATA multi-disk boxes that attach to a SATA RAID controller on
the host via multiple SATA cables. I didn't find a single example
of what I'm looking for, which is a multi-drive SATA box with an
internal RAID 5 controller, that attaches to a host using
a single SATA cable. In other words, something just like
the Promise UltraTrak series, except with PATA and SCSI replaced
with SATA.

Jon Forrest
 
Jon Forrest ha scritto:
the host via multiple SATA cables. I didn't find a single example
of what I'm looking for, which is a multi-drive SATA box with an
internal RAID 5 controller, that attaches to a host using
a single SATA cable. In other words, something just like
Click to expand...

I encountered this one, which AFAICT does not have an internal
controller but attaches to a host using a single cable (depending on the
chosen model):
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast4.asp
 
Marco De Vitis said:
Jon Forrest ha scritto:


I encountered this one, which AFAICT does not have an internal
controller but attaches to a host using a single cable (depending on the
chosen model):
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast4.asp
Click to expand...

Some of these available from cooldrives too:
http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-raid1.html (look for: port multiplier)
(need a controller -RAID or not- that is compatible with port multipliers).
like so: http://www.cooldrives.com/sapciexracor.html (just an example)

They use this: http://www.cooldrives.com/cosapomubrso.html
You can probably even use it to convert the Promise SCSI boxen.
 
Jon Forrest said:
For what it's worth I did use Google. I found a fair number of
SATA multi-disk boxes that attach to a SATA RAID controller on
the host via multiple SATA cables. I didn't find a single example
of what I'm looking for, which is a multi-drive SATA box with an
internal RAID 5 controller, that attaches to a host using a single
SATA cable. In other words, something just like the Promise Ultra
Trak series, except with PATA and SCSI replaced with SATA.
Click to expand...

Like this: http://www.areca.com.tw/products/html/ide-sata-sub.htm ?
Only SATA-I though, that's less bandwidth than the Promise UltraTrak
 
Jon Forrest said:
I have a couple of Promise UltraTrak boxes that are working great.
These are boxes that use PATA drives, contain a RAID controller,
and connect to a host using SCSI.

I'd like to upgrade these to something similar but
Click to expand...
more modern,
Click to expand...

They are still very up-to-date, unless the internal RAID controller is poor.
Ultra133 and Ultra160 will do fine today, especially with parity RAID
levels.
something with a RAID controller but something that uses SATA disks,
and attaches to a host using a single eSATA cable.
Click to expand...

A multilane cable is still a single cable too and it isn't bandwidth limited
to 3Gb/s (or even 1.5Gb/s).
 
Timothy said:
It's interesting to see what some people will pay for what amounts
to a box, PSU, and a RAID card.
Click to expand...

It's also interesting to see what people will pay for what
amounts to a box, a motherboard, CPU, memory, and a disk drive.

Jon
 
Jon Forrest said:
It's also interesting to see what people will pay for what
amounts to a box, a motherboard, CPU, memory, and a disk drive.
Click to expand...


It's more interesting to see how low the prices for large hard drives
have gotten. Just two hard drives can get you a terabyte of storage
inside the PC.

*TimDaniels*
 
Jon Forrest said:
Almost, but not quite. Neither of these do RAID 5.
Click to expand...

Which is why I answered to Timmy.
Raid5 wasn't mentioned yet in your original post.
 
Timothy Daniels said:
It's more interesting to see how low the prices for large hard drives
have gotten. Just two hard drives can get you a terabyte of storage
inside the PC.
Click to expand...

So what are PC towers used for then, Timmy?
And add-in disk controllers?

One uses external storage for other reasons.
 
Jon Forrest said:
Port multipliers would probably work but they seem like a bandaid
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. RAID is more and more a software affair.
Port multipliers help in achieving arrays on a distance using software
RAID on the host with a minimum of ports and (hopefully) reduced cost.

Sure, if you want host independence it may be easier to have the raid
function in the external cabinet itself. But then how really host inde-
pendent can you be.
(Of course it would help if there was a universal disk file system and a
normalized RAID metadata standard to make it really host independent).
approach that will disappear once somebody comes out with what I'm
looking for.
Click to expand...

Port multipliers are mainly used to reduce cable clutter in systems that
use huge amounts of storage in JBOD fashion (do not need huge amounts
of bandwidth for a single transfer, like striped arrays do).
Striped arrays (of more than 2 drives) are probably better served with
multiple ports and multilane cables. Either that or go serial SCSI (SAS).
Though SAS is actually also multilane in itself (dual port) the two ports
can be combined to deliver 6Gb/s.
 
Folkert said:
Not necessarily. RAID is more and more a software affair.
Port multipliers help in achieving arrays on a distance using software
RAID on the host with a minimum of ports and (hopefully) reduced cost.

Sure, if you want host independence it may be easier to have the raid
function in the external cabinet itself. But then how really host inde-
pendent can you be.
Click to expand...

Right. My goal is to have a RAID-5 boxes that I can
move from server to server, if necessary. I like
to mirror RAID boxes using Robocopy at night so that
if one box breaks, I can easily and quickly replace
it with a fairly uptodate replacement.

Jon
 
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