Century Outs 10-bay 3.5-inch SATA Drive Tower

[btarunr]

For those with appetite for terabytes of storage space, Century Japan announced the CRST1035EU3 "Sky Tower" external HDD enclosure. The enclosure stands tall, ten 3.5-inch SATA bays-tall, with lockable caddies. It uses USB 3.0 and eSATA interfaces to communicate with a host, and an external power supply. Cooling the unit is a 140 mm 1400 RPM fan with a maximum noise output of 34 dBA. The enclosure makes the host identify each drive as an independent mass-storage device, as it lacks RAID functions. Measuring 179 x 385 x 330 mm (WxDxH), the enclosure weighs 6 kg (dry-weight). Slated for late-September, it is priced at 36,800 JPY (US $470).



Source: Hermitage Akihabara

[pokazene_maslo]

Not even JBOD support?

[(FIH) The Don]

was so happy to see that price, until i saw the not RAID support -.- FUUUUU

[Jacez44]

This sounds awesome for FlexRAID, unless I missed something.

But only if you're planning to fill it up with 3TB drives.. 500$ is pricey.

[Jizzler]

^ That's what I thought at first, that the high cost was for additional electronics to support 10 drives over USB 3.0 or eSATA. 10 port cases usually have two separate port-multipliers/eSATA connections to the host computer.

But after looking at the source:

Select switch is provided in each bay HDD, you can select the HDD you want to use.

Seems that it's more like a HD jukebox? Not a bad idea for archival data. I have a fried that currently stores all his 20MP+ RAW photos and HD video on external units. Buys a new one when the previous unit is filled.