SPCR

Having myself an external eSATA enclosure with port multiplier (Lian-Li EX-50), I am wondering what the impact is of a single drive's failure on the other drives in the enclosure which uses a port multiplier.

There's an article that says this may impact operation of the other drives (while the failed drive remains connected in the enclosure):
http://www.zdnet.com/are-sata-port-mult ... 000011897/

I haven't tested this myself, as I don't have sufficient spare drives (nor broken ones) to simulate a drive failure on the operation of other drives. However, I'm now more hesitant to implement software RAID-5 in port-multiplier mode in my eSATA enclosure...

I really don't understand why they would use an 80mm fan. I've never encountered a quiet 80mm fan. 120mm is necessary to get really quiet (at 5 volts) and still move significant amounts of air. And why not mount the drives vertically and have the fan on the top or at the bottom? Doesn't heat rise or have the laws of physics changed recently?

Does anybody know of a thermal pad material that could be used on the bottom of a hard drive? That's where most of the heat comes off....on the circuit board side, never the smooth top. One could put aluminum on the top and the thermal pad on the bottom. Then you could completely enclose the hard drive banishing all that lovely whining noise and it wouldn't get hot. Think of the thermal pad that was mounted on your older CPU, only thicker and bigger.

Seems the same box is sold in Europe by Fantec:

http://www.fantec.de/produkte/speicherp ... _qb_35us2/