# Hard Drive Caddies and alike # Zdenek Styblik # ## Pre-word Let me share subjective experience with caddies which, I hope, you find usefull. If you need more detailed info, just e-mail me. I can be vague, so- ## Vipower VP-5010LSF-B-133 ## 2010/Jul/27 @ Zdenek Styblik ## ## caddys bought ~ summer 2009 Although this caddy looks all great and neat, I can't recommend it. We've bought two caddys initially, however both are gone. Two for the same server, to be precise. After some months of service, one of disks started to show errors and "disappeared" from system. Usually reloading disk (pull out/in) did the trick, but where is the "fun" in that? Since it's Maxtor-Seagate, we've thought it's HDD's fault, but it turned out it is not. We've replaced the caddy and left the other one alone - we've thought we had bad luck on piece and the other one worked just fine. I must say I regret we did. After three-four months, the other one follows and causing the very same pain as the previous one. So, did we have a bad luck on piece again? I seriously doubt it. The problem might be in SATA cables which you can't replace as they are soldered in (or whatever). Otherwise the caddy looked just fine, it was not the cheapest on the market - well, one can't even look at price when picking up things these days :( ## ICY DOCK IB-169SK-B, RaidSonic ## 2010/Jul/27 @ Zdenek Styblik ## ## caddy bought 2010/March These were brought as a replacement for VP-5010LSF-B-133 and they just work. Design is quite simple and there is actually no caddy at all. You just put HDD inside where is something that could be called a "backplane". But don't get me wrong, I take it as a plus. Simpler things should be more reliable than complex ones. Anyway, SATA cabel is detachable, which is good. Actually, you have to buy one - it doesn't ship with the caddy (or may be we wanted "better" cable than shipped). So far so good. The con here is fan connector and fan itself (from what i've read). Fan is powered from an extra three-pin small connector and you "must" use Molex-SATA-fan reduction which is shipped. I still don't like the idea, sorry. And the second, fan is said to be noisy. That I can't confirm, because we haven't connected the fan, as far as I know or remember. Although, it might explain higher temperatures. Speaking of temperatures, these get like 49 C on the roof in very hot summer day (without fan turned on). I think it won't be anything extra compared to Vipower, yet it's okay - "normal". For comparison, HDDs placed in Zalman ZM-2HC1 Heatpipe HDD Cooler have ~ 46 C on the very same location. ## Zalman ZM-2HC1 Heatpipe HDD Cooler ## 2010/Jul/27 @ Zdenek Styblik ## ## bought ~ I don't remember This is not exactly a caddy, but HDD cooler. We've bought one or two of these in hope to cool down HDDs. Looking back, I'm not sure if it's been worth of money at all. I mean, we've expected miracles that didn't happen. Also, this product is not being sold anymore, so I don't have to hypotetize about buy or not to buy. You get some degrees of Celsius down, but it's more like 2-5 C. I've been a bit disappointed. Although, Zalman worked and works to this day. I haven't done any measurements nor I can't tell if both HDDs in router have Zalman. I'll check it out and update document. Review at frostytech.com [1] confirms this as they state temperature difference without airflow assistance is "only a few degrees", but ZM-2HC1 helps to silence HDD vibrations. Not much usefull for server, is it? :) Links: --- [1] FrostyTech.com, 2010/Jul/27, http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1588