MP 1,1-5,1 Mini-SAS SFF-8088 enclosures

[wonderspark]

Is this the cheapest dumb-box enclosure around these days? It's a 12-bay HDD enclosure for connecting to my Areca RAID card. One of my 4-bay boxes died.

12 bay 6G Hot Swap Trayless SAS / SATA External Enclosure - J1206T

12 hot swappable SATA drives without the need for trays! Connects to the controller via 3 multilane SFF-8088 connectors. Perfect when your storage needs exceed the capacity offered by our 8-bay units but you don't want to incur the additional expense of an expander enclosure.

www.pc-pitstop.com

I used to get Sans Digital ones in 8-bay and 4-bay varieties, but they seem to have jacked up their prices.

 

[fhturner]

I got tired of having these crap-quality, over-priced boxes (specifically Sans Digital) fail power supplies and/or backplane boards, so I started acquiring and using some off-lease data center disk array enclosures. These things are way more robust, with multiple power supplies, multiple interface boards, and 12, 15, 24 or more drive bays. I’d recommend getting something like that from the ‘Bay.

 

[wonderspark]

I'm seeing a lot of rack-mount stuff on eBay, but trouble finding something similar to what I want. Got any links to an example? Ideally, connects with sff-8088, 12 bays.

 

[fhturner]

I like the EMC KTN-STL3, but it is a rackmount 3U disk shelf. Fifteen bays and only 14" deep, so not outlandish in size. Also the fan noise is not nearly as objectionable as many rackmount servers or arrays. If you’re dead set on a tower arrangement, I can’t help you though.

 

[wonderspark]

Thank you for the idea, but my home office isn't really compatible with a rackmount sitting on a bookshelf, hahaha!

 

[koreda]

Thank you for the idea, but my home office isn't really compatible with a rackmount sitting on a bookshelf, hahaha!

Can i inquire what you ended up going with? I'm shopping to utilize spare (external) mini-SAS SFF-8088 [housed on internal RAID adapter].
Kinda debating moding something akin to MaxConnect Optical Drive Bay Disk Mounting Assembly [SZ-MP2091OPT04] for 3.5 inch Hard Drives,

...with OWC 3.5 to 5.25 Multi-Mounts [x2] (albeit, most aesthetic deficiency, i.e. cabling), for approx $65. Or...

assembling/moding from CL/eBay/HWSwap parts: multi-bay enclosure

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Or new'ish one from Amazon:

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+ Mini-SAS SFF-8088 26P to 4 X SAS SFF-8482 29-Pin 1M Cable

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But your post pointed me to a couple of other DAS enclosures to spec, under $225 (more affordable [and reasonable for non-priority or deep storage JBOD/DAS] than HighPoint's counterpart 4/8 Bay SAS/SATA RS enclosures).

This Silverstone TS431S 3.5" multi-external enclosure (msrp $200) would be ideal (if not out-of-stock).

Any suggestions or point-overs would be much appreciated. thank in advance!

edit:
Ended up going w iStarUSA BPN-DE340MS 4-bay 12Gb/s HD miniSAS Backplane (SFF-8643) for $88 (c/o Prime Days); with new Mini-SAS HD sff-8643 to 8088 cable ($18 via Newegg).
Unfortunately I could only locate 8-bay SAS backplane for $30. As initially stated, You can't find a multi-bay SFF-8088 Mini-SAS enclosure for less than $200 $190 $182 (that's not SATAII or manufactured after 2011). So this 8643 4-bay is about the same cost as modding or building one.

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For anyone else inquiring into 4-bay mini-sas enclosure (to put their spare sff-8088 Mini-SAS port to use), the best availability is probably still going to be

• Sans Digital,
• PC PitStop,
• iStarUSA,
• RocketStor

there's the occasional one-off from those known NAS/SAN vendors, albeit, priced accordingly or three times as much as their non-network segmented counterparts.