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August 24, 2007
Four Bay SATA Port Multiplier Enclosure
A Review of the CFI Terabox+ Compact SATA PM Enclosure model CFI-B4043PM-SS
By Arthur Whalem
CFI Enclosure is shipping the Terabox+ compact 4-bay SATA PM enclosure model CFI-B4043PM-SS with eSATA host connection ($199). This 1-to-4 SATA port multiplier backplane design utilizes internal mounting rails that can accommodate up to four SATA hard drives. A single eSATA data port on the rear of the enclosure connects the mounted hard drives to a SATA PM compatible host adapter. The CFI-B4043PM-SS supports both SATA I and SATA II hard drives. This enclosure does not support hot swap trays but mounting hard drives is amazingly easy. The enclosure measures 10.4" deep, 7.25" high and 5.3" wide. The CFI-B4043PM-SS weighs 5 pounds 6 ounces empty and approximately 10 pounds 9 ounces with four Seagate 320GB 7200.10 SATA hard drives installed. The enclosure is compatible with Macintosh, Windows and Linux computers. The purpose of this review is to determine how the CFI-B4043PM-SS will perform with an Apple Mac Pro.
System Requirements
Requires a SATA PM compatible host adapter.
Supports Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux.
Supports up to four SATA 3.5" hard drives.
What's Included?
The CFI-B4043PM-SS includes the disk enclosure, a 47" eSATA data cable, power cable, hard drive screws and a four page users guide.
Rear Connections
The CFI-B4043PM-SS four bay enclosure has a power adapter plug on the bottom left side and an on/off switch immediately above it. An eSATA data port is mounted on the middle lower portion of the rear panel. This single connection utilizes a Silicon Image SiI-3726 chip to support 3Gbs transfer speeds, auto-negotiation and FIS-based high speed switching capabilities. At the top of the rear panel is a 80x80x25mm low noise exhaust fan. The illuminated exhaust fan blows warm air out of the rear of the enclosure. Three thumb screws on the rear of the enclosure secure the exterior cover to the sides and the top of the CFI-B4043PM-SS case.Interface
The CFI-B4043PM-SS is one of the smallest four bay SATA PM enclosures that AMUG has tested. It is also very quiet. A single 80mm fan pulls air through the enclosure over the power supply and the hard drives to keep them cool. The Silicon Image SiI-3726 port multiplier is built directly into the backplane which allows the enclosure to be compact and provides an easy hard disk drive mounting system.
Installing Hard Drives
Once the user removes the three thumb screws on the rear of the enclosure the metal cover of the CFI-B4043PM-SS can be removed. Next, open the front door of the enclosure and slide the back of the 3.5" SATA hard drive along the rails toward the backplane. Once the hard drive reaches the backplane, a slight push on the front of the hard drive will secure it to the backplane connectors. Now, install a thumb screw on each side of the hard drive to finish the installation. After the hard drives are installed the cover can be re-installed, the front door closed and the enclosure is ready for action.
The backplane provided inside the CFI-B4043PM-SS makes installing hard drives fast and easy. In the time required to install hard drives in trays for a typical hot swap system, I can install the same amount of hard drives in the CFI-B4043PM-SS. However, CFI-B4043PM-SS users will need to remove the exterior cover to change hard drive configurations, while a hot swap system is more convenient as it accesses the hard drives from the front of the enclosure.
Design
The exterior enclosure design of the CFI-B4043PM-SS is appealing. It provides activity lights for all four hard drive bays. Each hard drive activity light is green when the drive is inactive and blinks red when the hard drive is being accessed. An orange power light and a green host light turns on when the enclosure detects that it is connected to a host adapter. The enclosure has a nice silver aluminum finish that matches the color of the Mac Pro. Over 600 very small ventilation holes are provided on each side panel and about 2,000 ventilation holes are inserted in the rectangular shaped front door.The CFI-B4043PM-SS includes an internal rail mounting system aligned with a backplane for mounting four 3.5" SATA hard drives. The three sided exterior cover can be removed from the enclosure to access the hard drive screws. Inside is a SATA PM backplane, 150 watt power supply and a quiet 80mm cooling fan. These items work together to create the design of the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure. The small size, quiet operation, easy hard drive installation and the low price of the CFI-B4043PM-SS makes it an interesting option for mounting external SATA hard drives.
Energy Usage
According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure uses 0 watts when the enclosure is plugged in but not turned on. When the enclosure is turned on with no hard drives installed it uses 10 watts. Adding a single Seagate 320GB SATA II hard drive increases the energy usage to 20 watts while idle. Once four Seagate 320GB SATA II hard drives are mounted inside the enclosure the power usage increases to 42 watts while idle. When a four drive Seagate 320GB SATA II 1.16TB striped RAID set begins copying lots of data the power usage rises to between 49-52 watts. Obviously, you can use any size 3.5" SATA hard drive with the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure but the energy usage will be slightly different.
SATA PM Host AdapterThe Apple Mac Pro supports a large number of SATA PM compatible host adapters that can be utilized with the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure. Apple Mac Pro 4-port controllers have the advantage of providing the highest RAID performance. Up to four CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosures can be connected to a single 4-port card, which can support up to 16 SATA hard drives. Mac Pro host adapters that fall into this category include the Addonics ADSA3GPX8-4EM ($199), the DAT Optic eSATA_PCIe8 ($189), the NORCO-4629 ($189.99), the RocketRAID 2314 ($200), and the Sonnet Tempo E4P ($299).
A low cost SATA PM controller solution is also available for Mac Pro users. This option includes 2-port SATA host adapters that are based on the Silicon Image SiI-3132 design. These cards provide good performance with individual hard drives, but SATA PM RAID performance is limited to approximately 125MB/sec. Users looking for a high performance RAID solution will want to stay with the 4-port controllers discussed above. However, if the user wants to add the 4-bay CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure to a Mac Pro system while using just a bunch of disks, the SiI-3132 option will work fine. SATA host adapters in this category that AMUG has reviewed include the Addonics PCIe 2-Port model ADSA3GPX1-2EM ($39.99) and the FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E ($99.95).
CoolingIn the cooling test, the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure was tested with a 1.16TB striped RAID set using four Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives with a Mac Pro 2.66Ghz. The four drives were worked very hard duplicating a 4.2GB folder of video files up to twenty times simultaneously for 90 minutes. The enclosure was used with a Sonnet Tempo E4P so that Hardware Monitor 4.2 could be used to display the SATA hard drive temperatures. At the end of 90 minutes the Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives reported temperatures of 122 to 127.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
The next process of the cooling test was to leave the enclosure turned on with the hard drives mounted for an hour, but with no usage other than temperature monitoring. I wanted to see how well the hard drives might cool down inside the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure. After resting for an hour, the Seagate hard drives reported temperatures of 118.4 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The ambient air temperature was 84 degrees Fahrenheit during this test.
By looking at the cooling test data, it is clear that the CFI-B4043PM-SS cooling design is not able to provide enough airflow across the hard drives to keep them under 120 degrees during the AMUG 90 minute heat test. This type of issue can appear if the enclosure airflow system is not tuned for maximize cooling. Taping the side air ventilation holes closed, causes more air to enter the front of the enclosure and pass over the hard drives. However, the CFI-B4043PM-SS SATA backplane design provides limited air ventilation ports between the hard drives. This can impact the amount of air that moves across the hard drives. The result is warmer running hard drives when the enclosure is used for an extended period of time.
The stock fan in the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure is an 80x25mm model ARX FD1280-S3012E DC brushless fan. During the cooling test, the stock fan was replaced with a Vantec SF8025L 80X25mm Stealth fan which provides 27CFM and a low noise factor of 21dBA. I wanted to see if a higher RPM fan could improve the cooling results. The Vantec Stealth fan data is provided on the right side of the AMUG cooling test table shown below.
Seagate 7200.10 320GB Hard Drive Temperatures in Fahrenheit
| Stock Fan | Taped | Vantec 80mm | Stealth Fan | |||
| Location | After 90 min. | Rest 60 min. | 90 min. | Rest 60 min. | After 90 min. | Rest 60 min. |
| Top Bay | 122 | 118.4 | 122 | 116.6 | 116.6 | 111.2 |
| Bay #2 | 127.4 | 122 | 125.6 | 118.4 | 120.2 | 113 |
| Bay #3 | 127.4 | 120.2 | 123.8 | 116.6 | 118.4 | 111.2 |
| Bay #4 | 127.4 | 120.2 | 125.6 | 118.4 | 120.2 | 113 |
| Power Supply | under bay #4 |
Taping the side air ventilation slots on the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure provided some additional hard drive cooling. Taping the side openings and replacing the stock fan with the Vantec model SF8025LStealth fan inside the enclosure provides additional cooling capabilities. The Stealth fan introduces a very small amount of additional wind noise. However, the additional airflow provided by the Stealth fan reduced the hard drive temperatures by 5-9 degrees under these test conditions.
It is nice that the stock CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure is very quiet. However, if the user plans to install four SATA hard drives and utilize them for extended periods of time, they may want to consider replacing the stock fan with the Vantec model SF8025L Stealth fan. On the other hand, the Seagate environmental temperature tolerance is as high as 60C (or 140F). Based on that fact, some users may consider the stock CFI-B4043PM-SS cooling system adequate.
Acoustics
The CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure uses a single quiet fan. The stock rear case fan is an ARX FD1280-S3012E 12v DC 80mm LED fan. This single fan exhausts warm air out of the rear of the enclosure, which brings cool air in through small ventilation holes in the front sides and the front door.
If the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure is five feet away on top of the Mac Pro 2.66GHz, I can hear a very slight quiet fan noise while the Mac Pro is in sleep mode or turned on. I would classify the CFI-B4043PM-SS as very quiet but not silent.
RAID PerformanceThe CFI-B4043PM-SS and the Sonnet Tempo E4P SATA PM host adapter were used in this test. The Sonnet Tempo E4P host adapter was installed in slot 4 of a Mac Pro 2.66GHz, running Mac OS X 10.4.10. The CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure was tested with four Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives installed in it as a striped RAID set. DiskTester 2.0 10GB read and write tests were performed using a run area test so that this article could display how the RAID performs with this combination. DiskTester is a Terminal application that measures the combined performance of a volume and the Mac OS X operating system. Using the command: ./disktester run-area-test --chunk-size 128M --test-size 10G --delta-percent 10 DriveName, puts DiskTester to work testing how the RAID will perform when empty, 10% full, 20% full and so on. The table below displays the results with both Seagate 320GB and Maxtor Maxline 300GB model 7V300F0 hard drives.
CFI-B4043PM-SS Performance With Sonnet Tempo E4P
 CF-B4043PM Tempo E4P Four Seagate ST3320620AS |
CF-B4043PM Tempo E4P Four Maxtor Maxline 7V300F0 |
CF-B4043PM Tempo E4P Two Seagate ST3320620AS |
CF-B4043PM Tempo E4P One Seagate ST3320620AS |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 215 | 217 | 210 | 239 | 148 | 127 | 73.1 | 71.5 |
| 10% | 217 | 216 | 210 | 241 | 148 | 126 | 73.2 | 73.1 |
| 20% | 217 | 217 | 211 | 239 | 141 | 127 | 72.4 | 71.5 |
| 30% | 217 | 218 | 210 | 239 | 140 | 127 | 69.8 | 68.9 |
| 40% | 218 | 219 | 211 | 239 | 134 | 128 | 67.1 | 66.3 |
| 50% | 217 | 221 | 211 | 233 | 128 | 124 | 64.1 | 63.2 |
| 60% | 217 | 223 | 211 | 228 | 121 | 119 | 60.6 | 59.8 |
| 70% | 215 | 218 | 206 | 209 | 112 | 111 | 56 | 56 |
| 80% | 205 | 199 | 194 | 199 | 103 | 101 | 51.4 | 51.4 |
| 90% | 179 | 176 | 177 | 180 | 91.5 | 90 | 45.5 | 45.3 |
| 100% | 147 | 148 | 154 | 156 | 73.4 | 73.4 | 36.9 | 36.8 |
| Average | 206 | 207 | 200 | 218 | 122 | 114 | 60.9 | 60.4 |
| MSRP | $199 | $199 | $199 | $199 |
As you can see in the table above, a four drive striped RAID set can provide average performance over 200MB/sec. The CFI-B4043PM-SS performs well with JBOD or RAID configurations.
The CFI-B4043PM-SS four bay SATA PM enclosure provides an excellent value. Most SATA port multiplier enclosures with a backplane design and hard drive activity lights are substantially more expensive. The CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure allows users to purchase a SATA PM 4-bay enclosure for less than $200. This provides a new price point for users looking for an inexpensive SATA port multiplier capable enclosure. In addition, Installing 3.5"
SATA hard drives inside the CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure is a simple task and the enclosure is very quiet.The CFI-B4043PM-SS does have some limitations. The enclosure does not support hot swap hard drive trays. In addition, the stock fan may allow hard drives to operate quite warm (120F+) with extended operation. However, installing a higher RPM Vantec Stealth fan can reduce temperatures. Installing the Vantec only takes a few minutes and costs less than $15 for the fan and the required "Y" power adapter.
The CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure provides SATA PM users with a new low cost solution for mounting up to four hard drives. This option should allow more computer users to enjoy the benefits of SATA port multiplier configurations.
Pros
Works with any computer with a SATA PM controller.
Mounts up to four external SATA hard drives.
Single eSATA data cable for mounting up to four drives.
Easy thumb screw access for mounting hard drives.
Mounts single drives or a RAID configuration.
Installing Vantec Stealth fan can improve cooling.
Can support USB using Addonics USB 2.0 to eSATA Adapter.
Backplane can support hot swap without a tray system.
Clean and neat backplane mounting system.
Provides hard drive activity lights.
Easy to use and install.
Small footprint.
Quiet operation.
Inexpensive.
Cons
No power switch on the front (only on back).
No hot swap drive tray capability.
Low RPM stock fan may cause hard drives to operate warmer than when mounted inside a Mac Pro. However, they may still be within the hard drive manufacturers temperature specifications.
CFI-B4043PM-SS gets 3.5 AMUGs out of 5!
The CFI-B4043PM-SS is an inexpensive 4-bay SATA PM enclosure that looks good with the Mac Pro, provides hard drive activity lights and includes an easy to mount SATA backplane design. In addition, the CFI-B4043PM-SS cooling fan can be upgraded with minimal effort. This feature allows the user to customize the cooling characteristics of the enclosure to meet their individual needs. Users that do not require a hot swap tray design will find the value proposition provided by the 4-bay CFI-B4043PM-SS enclosure is very compelling.
Contact Information:
CFI Enclosure USA, Inc.
4543 Enterprise Street
Fremont, CA 94538 USA
Phone: (510) 226-8899
http://www.cfienclosure.com
support@cfienclosure.com
Copyright 2007
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG). Visit AMUG at www.amug.org for news, discounts and friends. JOIN AMUG!
Additional Resources
AMUG Addonics PCIe 2-Port model ADSA3GPX1-2EM Review
AMUG FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E Review
AMUG Sonnet Tempo E4P Review
AMUG DAT Optic eSATA_PCIe8 Review
AMUG NORCO-4629 Review
AMUG Sonnet Fusion 500P SATA PM Enclosure Review