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July 3, 2006
Quiet Full Size SATA Port Multiplier Enclosure
A Review of the new DAT Optic Sbox-P 5-Bay SATA Hard Drive Enclosure with Port Multiplier
By Arthur Whalem
As of July 1, 2006, DAT Optic is shipping a new version of the Sbox-P 5-Bay SATA hard drive enclosure with port multiplier ($485.95). The new Sbox-P features five hot swap hard drive bays mounted in a steel frame case with a silver aluminum cover. A single eSATA data cable is used between the SATA PM host adapter and the enclosure. The Sbox-P has an internal 200 watt universal power supply with an 80mm fan. In addition, the Sbox-P enclosure includes a rear 80mm case fan and each mobile rack hard drive tray has a 2.25" diameter fan mounted in the bottom. This enclosure supports both SATA I and SATA II hard drives. The new Sbox-P provides LED activity and power lights. It also displays hard drive temperatures and the drive tray fan RPM speed. Each drive bay has its own locking mechanism which supports a key. The enclosure measures 16.75" deep, 10.7" high and 7.5" wide. The Sbox-P weighs 16 pounds empty and 22 pounds with five Hitachi 160GB SATA II hard drives installed. The enclosure is compatible with Macintosh, Windows or Linux computers equipped with a SATA PM host adapter.
System Requirements
Works with any computer with an external SATA PM interface.
Supports Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux.
Supports up to five external SATA 3.5" hard drives.
Utilizes an eSATA connection.
What's Included?
The DAT Optic Sbox-P includes the disk enclosure, five 3.5" DirectAir SATA hard drive trays, drive mounting screws, drive tray keys, a power cord, a one meter eSATA data cable and a users guide.
Rear ConnectionsThe DAT Optic Sbox-P five bay SATA PM enclosure has a power supply fan on the bottom left side of the case. The 200 watt power supply sits in the bottom of the enclosure and is screwed to the rear mounting plate. On the bottom right side are power cord male and a female connectors. Just above that is the eSATA data cable access port. This single connection is able to transfer the data for up to five external hard drives between the SATA PM host adapter and the DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure. At the top left side of the rear panel is a 80x80x25mm exhaust fan. This exhaust fan bows warm air out of the rear of the enclosure. Three screws on the rear of the case secure the exterior aluminum cover to the sides and the top of the Sbox-P. You will also notice that there is no power switch on the rear of the enclosure as the power button is provided on the front of the case.
Interface
The DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure utilizes the direct air technology tray system. A 2.25" hole is placed in the bottom of each aluminum drive tray with a fan mounted on the bottom. The front panel LCD of each mobile rack drive tray displays the RPM speed of the fan.
The hard drive is installed in the direct air technology tray using screws on the side of each tray. There are three available screw holes on each side of the tray. I found that using just two screws on each side provides a very secure installation. Installing a screw in the small rear hole of each side of the drive tray first helps provide for an easy installation.
Typically, hard drive trays that require a side mounting are a little more difficult to install hard drives into than bottom mounting trays. However, the sturdy Sbox-P hard drive trays are designed so that they can stand on their sides. This thoughtful design allows this particular side installation to be fairly easy to accomplish.
Once the DAT Optic Sbox-P drive trays are installed in the enclosure and the unit is turned on, the mobile rack displays the hard drive temperature that the drive tray sensor detects. The RPM speed of the fan is shown just to the right of the temperature read out. You can easily set the temperature to read in Celsius or Fahrenheit. In addition, each tray has a temperature and a fan alarm. Using the default settings, the alarm goes off once the temperature rises above 45C/113F or if the fan speed falls below 1000 RPM. The user can temporarily customize these settings. However, the enclosure returns to the default settings upon pushing the reset button or restarting the enclosure.
In these tests the hard drives mounted in the Sbox-P powered up without requiring the drive bay to be locked. The green LED stays on all of the time that the enclosure is turned on. The red LED goes off when a hard drive is removed and turns back on once a hard drive is re-inserted. In addition, the red LED serves as a hard drive activity light.
If you look at the circuit board on the inside of the drive tray you can see the temperature probe on the top left side. The end of the probe is enclosed in a clear yellow film. The probe extends from the board so that it can lay on top of the hard drive just under the top aluminum cover. You could attach the sensor to the hard drive or just let it sit on top of the hard drive as I have done. As a result of the new extended temperature probe, temperature readings provided by the Sbox-P drive tray LCDs are much more accurate than ambient air temperature readings.
Inserting drive trays into the DAT Optic Sbox-P requires that you push the trays past the cover door and into the backplane. The handle closes down as the SATA hard drive is attached to the mobile rack backplane. Once the SATA hard drive is mounted, the LCD panel displays temperature and RPM data and the fan in the bottom of the tray turns on. The Sbox-P interface is user friendly and allows the user to easily hot swap SATA hard drives. The power button on the front right bottom side of the unit allows the user to easily turn the enclosure on or off without having to reach behind the enclosure.
Design
The exterior enclosure design of the DAT Optic Sbox-P is basic. It has a silver aluminum finish that is a little lighter in color than the PowerMac G5. The enclosure provides a mounting bay for five 5.25" devices which are filled with 3.5" SATA hard drive mobile racks. A three sided aluminum cover can be removed from the enclosure to make internal modifications or repairs. Inside is a SATA PM, a power supply and five mobile racks. These items work together to create the Sbox-P enclosure. The drive tray LCD displays add a nice look to the Sbox-P and provide an alarm capability should the tray fan stop working or if the hard drive temperature exceeds 113 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Sbox-P enclosure has a large foot print of 16.75" deep, 10.7" high and 7.5" wide. It is too large to place on top of a PowerMac G5. In fact, it is almost as long as the PowerMac G5 and a little more than half as tall. This is the largest five bay hard drive enclosure AMUG has tested. It is about six inches longer than the Sonnet and WiebeTech five bay SATA PM enclosures. However, if you look at many of the third party SATA hard drive enclosures available for building your own five bay hard drive RAID, they are about this same size. Personally, I appreciate the smaller foot print of the Addonics Storage Tower, Sonnet Fusion 500P and the WiebeTech Silver SATA V, but each user will have their own preferences.
Looking Inside
The DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure is not designed for individual SATA hard drive connections. It requires a SATA PM compatible host adapter to work properly with your computer. Up to five individual SATA hard drives share a single cable using fast FIS (Frame Information Structure) based switching. SATA PM is very fast when you consider up to five drives share a single eSATA connection. As the SATA PM board is mounted at the rear of the Sbox-P, the enclosure could be modified to work as a direct connect enclosure by simply plugging SATA cables directly into the rear of the mobile racks. This modification would by pass the SATA PM board. In fact, the mobile racks could be removed and you could use any 5.25" SATA hard drive cage you might prefer. Pre-cut openings are provided in the back of the enclosure for different connectors. Just about any part of the DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure could be modified to work with many different components. While most users will probably never make these modifications, the design of the Sbox-P makes it highly customizable.
The SATA port multiplier installed in the Sbox-P is the SATAII-MP. It uses the Silicon Image 3726 SATA PM chip. The SiI 3726 is a 1-to-5 Serial ATA port multiplier designed to provide high speed connections between a single SATA host adapter and five SATA devices. In this review, firmware 1.0115 was installed on the Silicon Image Sil3726 Port Multiplier chip. Firmware updates are posted on the Silicon Image web site as improvements are available.Each drive bay of the DAT Optic Sbox-P uses a mobile rack for mounting a SATA 3.5" hard drive. If you remove the hard drive tray and look inside the mobile rack you will see the backplane board in the image below. The mobile rack LCD tray communicates with the backplane using the bottom left 6-pin connector. The green mobile rack LCD wire provides a circuit to turn on the LED power light on the front of the hard drive tray.
Exposed Backplane View
The DAT Optic Sbox-P mobile rack trays are easy to remove and install. The mobile rack design lines up the SATA hard drives very well with the backplane, so that very little effort is required to mount hard drives in the Sbox-P. The base of each mobile rack has a plastic door cover that automatically closes when the drive tray is removed.
Rear Backplane View
If you take the cover off of the DAT Optic Sbox-P and look at the rear of the backplane you will see the image above. Individual SATA cables connect to the rear of each backplane and four pin molex power plugs attach to the back of each mobile rack. The SATA cables connect to the SATA PM board mounted in the rear of the Sbox-P enclosure. In addition, the red LED hard drive activity lights are connected to the left side of the SATA PM circuit board. You can see the details of the SATA PM board in the image below.
If you take the cover off of the DAT Optic Sbox-P, remove all of the hard drive trays and look down inside the enclosure you will see that the hard drive bays actually take up less than half of the space inside the enclosure.
Energy Usage
According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure uses 13 watts when the enclosure is turned on but empty. Adding a single Hitachi 160GB SATA II hard drive increases the energy usage to 22 watts while idle. Once five Hitachi 160GB SATA II hard drives are mounted inside the enclosure the power usage increases to 55 watts while idle. When a five drive Hitachi 160GB SATA II 766GB striped RAID set begins copying lots of data the power usage rises to between 67-71 watts. Obviously, you can use any size 3.5" SATA hard drive with the Sbox-P enclosure but energy usage will be slightly different.Stability
A five drive striped RAID mounting stability test was the next test completed with the DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure. A Sonnet Tempo E4P SATA host adapter with firmware 2.03 and a PowerMac G5 2.5GHz Quad were used with the Sbox-P. Five Hitachi 160GB SATA II hard drives were used in a striped RAID set configuration. The hard drives were ejected and placed back in the enclosure in a different order. This test was completed twenty times. The striped RAID set mounted each time during this hot swap test. Usually the five drive striped RAID set mounted on the desktop within 9 seconds after that last hard drive was inserted. The Sonnet Tempo E4P firmware version 2.03 improves hot swap performance significantly. When comparing the same host adapter using the 2.02 firmware you will find that resetting the enclosure is required for many hot swap attempts. If you do not have 2.03 or higher installed on your Sonnet Tempo E4P or X4P I would definitely recommend this upgrade.Individual Hard Drives
When individual drives were mounted in the Sbox-P enclosure they were able to be hot swapped in and out with the power on. If all five SATA hard drives were mounted on the desktop and then were ejected and another set was installed they would usually mount within 9 seconds. The only time the Sonnet Tempo E4P with firmware 2.03 had problems was when one solitary hard drive was mounted in the enclosure. In that singular case, turning the power off and back on allowed the hard drive to mount. In every test, the PowerMac G5 2.5GHz Quad was never required to be restarted for a hot swap to be completed successfully.
CoolingIn the cooling tests, the DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure was tested with a 766GB striped RAID set using five Hitachi 160GB SATA II hard drives with a PowerMac G5 2.5Ghz Quad. The five drives were worked very hard duplicating a 4.2GB folder of video files up to twenty times simultaneously for 90 minutes. Hardware Monitor 3.7 was used to display the SATA hard drive temperatures. At the end of 90 minutes the Hitachi drives reported temperatures of 111.2 to 116.6 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 Sbox-P enclosure. After resting for an hour, the Hitachi hard drives reported temperatures of 104 to 109.4 degrees Fahrenheit. This data demonstrates that when the SATA hard drives are idle, the Sbox-P is able to cool the hard drives down using the DirectAir cooling method built into the mobile rack drive trays.
The SMART temperature data that the hard drives provide to Hardware Monitor may be a little different than the temperatures that the Sbox-P displays on the mobile rack LCD. This difference can vary between different hard drive brands and models. The probe provided with the new Sbox-P drive tray is excellent as it does not just record ambient air temperature. Instead, it lays directly on the hard drive. However, you should know that the temperature displayed by the LCD may vary from the SMART temperature data that Hardware Monitor will display. The factors that seem to impact the temperature readings are:
1. The size of the hard drive. Different brands of 3.5" hard drives can vary in size by a small amount. This impacts the amount of air in the tray and the temperature probes "fit" inside the tray.
2. The amount of heat generated by the hard drive which is passed to the exterior body of the drive can vary between models.
In the Hitachi T7K250 160GB hard drive test there was a variance of 3-10 degrees difference between the SMART data and the temperature probe readings. The body of the Hitachi 160GB hard drive does not seem to get as hot under heavy use as the SMART data indicates. This results in a larger difference in temperature readings between the two methods. However, when the Hitachi 160GB is idle the SMART data temperature readings and the Sbox-P LCD are much closer. You can see this reflected in the table of the test data below.
Hitachi T7K250 160GB Hard Drive Temperatures in Fahrenheit
| Location | After 90 min. | LCD Readings | After 60 min. | LCD Readings |
| Top Bay | 113 | 102.7 | 105.8 | 99.1 |
| Bay #2 | 111.2 | 108.6 | 104 | 104.3 |
| Bay #3 | 114.8 | 107.7 | 107.6 | 103.6 |
| Bay #4 | 116.6 | 110.8 | 109.4 | 106.1 |
| Bay #5 | 111.2 | 106.8 | 105.8 | 103.1 |
The same heat test was performed using five Maxline III 7V300F0 300GB SATA hard drives. The Sbox-P temperature sensor provided LCD readings that were closer to the SMART temperature data when using the Maxline III hard drives. The results of the test are provided in the table below.
Maxline III 7V300F0 300GB Hard Drive Temperatures in Fahrenheit
| Location | After 90 min. | LCD Readings | After 60 min. | LCD Readings |
| Top Bay | 114.8 | 110.8 | 109.4 | 107.9 |
| Bay #2 | 114.8 | 112.6 | 109.4 | 108.6 |
| Bay #3 | 116.6 | 114.4 | 109.4 | 110.1 |
| Bay #4 | 118.4 | 114.8 | 114.8 | 110.3 |
| Bay #5 | 114.8 | 112.1 | 109.4 | 107.9 |
Based on my studies, I believe the Sbox-P temperature probe is very accurate. It sits right on top of the hard drive and provides a reliable reading. I tend to suspect an error in the calibration of SMART readings that are not consistent with the Sbox-P temperature probe. The Sbox-P drive tray temperature sensor is an awesome feature. It is easy to place the sensor next to the hard drive and then slide the drive tray cover over it to hold it in place. You can see the top drive tray cover pulled back and the temperature sensor in the yellow film displayed on the right side of the image below.
Acoustics
The DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure uses seven quiet fans. The main 80x80x25mm rear case fan is a Dynaeon model DF1208SL. It utilizes 1.44 watts, runs at 2200 RPM, and moves 28 cubic feet per minute. Another 80mm fan is located in the power supply and each drive tray has a small fan. The fans in the mobile racks run whenever the tray is inserted, whether a drive is in the tray or not. When the Sbox-P is running it produces a quiet wind noise. The Sbox-P enclosure quiets hard drive activity noise better than most enclosures that I have tested. This appears to be a result of using heavier trays and no ventilation ports are provided in the front of the enclosure.
If the Sbox-P enclosure is five feet away behind the PowerMac G5 Quad 2.5GHz, I can hear a steady quiet fan noise while the PowerMac G5 is in sleep mode. Once the PowerMac G5 Quad is turned on, I can still hear the quiet fan noise of the Sbox-P over the PowerMac G5 Quad. I would classify the DAT Optic Sbox-P as quiet but not silent.
I placed the Sonnet Fusion 500P next to the DAT Optic Sbox-P and operated both units at the same time. The fan noise produced by the Sbox-P is significantly more than the Fusion 500P. The only noise I hear from the 500P is a very slight wind noise. Next, I placed the WiebeTech SilverSATA V next to the Sbox-P. The SilverSATA V was substantially louder than the Sbox-P. As you would expect, the SilverSATA V is the coolest enclosure. The Sbox-P is about 10 degrees warmer than the Silver SATA V in the 90 minute test and the Fusion 500P is even warmer. You can modify the fan in the Fusion 500P to be as cool as the Sbox-P using a Vantec Stealth fan as shown in the AMUG review. You could also consider exchanging the rear case fan in the Sbox-P with a quieter model but it is already pretty quiet. It is hard for a seven fan (Sbox-P) enclosure to have less fan noise than a single fan (Fusion 500P) enclosure even with fan modifications.
Sleep
The DAT Optic Sbox-P was tested with the Sonnet Tempo E4P for sleep capability. While this is a function of the SATA host adapter its nice to know how the Tempo E4P, PowerMac G5 Quad and the Sbox-P will work together in sleep mode. The Tempo E4P supports sleep mode very well. You can put the Macintosh to sleep while the hard drives are mounted in the Sbox-P and they are active within a few seconds after waking from sleep. However, the hard drives and the fans do not spin down in the Sbox-P while the PowerMac G5 is in sleep mode.
RAID PerformanceA Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P host adapter using firmware version 2.03 was installed in slot 4 of a PowerMac G5 2.5GHz Quad, running Mac OS X 10.4.6. The DAT Optic Sbox-P five bay port multiplier enclosure with five Hitachi 160GB SATA II hard drives installed in it as a striped RAID set was used in this test. 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 the E4P. 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 how the Sbox-P compared against several other SATA PM enclosures with the same exact hard drives, host adapter and PowerMac G5 2.5GHz Quad.
5 Drive Striped RAID SATA PM Enclosure Performance
 DATOptic Sbox-P HDT722516D |
 SilverSATA V HDT722516D |
 Addonics 5X1 HDT722516D |
 Fusion 500P HDT722516D |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 194 | 244 | 192 | 244 | 191 | 245 | 192 | 245 |
| 10% | 192 | 244 | 193 | 244 | 192 | 244 | 192 | 244 |
| 20% | 191 | 242 | 193 | 243 | 192 | 243 | 192 | 244 |
| 30% | 191 | 243 | 193 | 243 | 192 | 243 | 192 | 242 |
| 40% | 191 | 243 | 192 | 244 | 192 | 243 | 192 | 242 |
| 50% | 191 | 241 | 193 | 243 | 192 | 242 | 192 | 241 |
| 60% | 192 | 244 | 193 | 245 | 192 | 244 | 192 | 244 |
| 70% | 190 | 223 | 192 | 222 | 191 | 222 | 192 | 223 |
| 80% | 188 | 201 | 167 | 201 | 180 | 201 | 191 | 200 |
| 90% | 170 | 178 | 150 | 177 | 162 | 178 | 173 | 178 |
| Average | 189 | 230 | 185.8 | 230.6 | 187.6 | 230.5 | 190 | 230.3 |
| MSRP | $485.95 | $999.95 | $399.80 | $499.95 |
used with a PowerMac G5 2.5 GHz Quad in PCIe slot 4 with each five drive PM setup.
As you can see in the table above all four enclosures perform similarly. With about a two percent difference in performance between enclosures, this easily falls within the margin of error for this test. For all practical purposes the four enclosures provide about the same performance. It is clear from these tests that the hard drive model and the host adapter utilized will have much more of an impact on performance than which SATA PM enclosure you might select. This same test was performed in the Sonnet Fusion 500P review with Maxtor Maxline 300GB SATA I hard drives model 7L300S0. That RAID configuration performs about 4% faster with each of the enclosures. These examples demonstrate that while SATA PM enclosures perform very closely, using different model hard drives will usually change the performance results.
Discussion
The DAT Optic Sbox-P five bay port multiplier enclosure provides nice performance and great flexibility. While it is larger than the Sonnet Fusion 500P and the WiebeTech SilverSATA V enclosures, it is quiet and has easy mounting hot swap hard drive trays. As the Sbox-P utilizes a standard 5.25" mounting bracket for the mobile racks, it can be customized with different mounting options while the Fusion 500P and the SilverSATA V do not have this capability.The blue LCD on the Sbox-P mobile racks look nice and displays interesting user feedback information that most other enclosures do not provide. It is very cool to be able to view the temperature of the hard drives inside the Sbox-P without having to launch an application on the PowerMac to do so. The LCD also provides fan RPM readings which allow the user to verify that the drive tray fans are working properly. In addition, the hard drive activity lights and the power lights included with the new version of the Sbox-P work together to provide visual feedback for any trouble shooting that may be required.
The Sbox-P is quiet, provides easy to use hot swap drive trays and mounting options can be modified as it uses a 5.25" rack. It supports SATA PM or you can take the cover off and use it as a direct connect enclosure by plugging directly into the SATA "type L" connections on the rear of the mobile racks. In addition, the Sbox-P keeps the hard drive access noise quieter than my other enclosures while keeping the hard drives cool. All of these features add up to a very nice SATA PM enclosure with lots of customizable options.
Pros
Works with any OS with SATA PM capability.
Mounts up to five external SATA hard drives.
FIS-based Port Multiplier-aware hardware.
Single data cable for mounting up to five drives.
DirectAir SATA hard drive trays.
Provides hard drive activity lights.
Mobile rack LCD temperature display.
Quiet operation.
Power switch on the front.
Looks good with a PowerMac G5.
User-upgradeable firmware.
Easy access enclosure for modifications.
Mounts single drives or a RAID configuration.
Easy to use and install.
Cons
Too large to place on top of PowerMac G5.
Port multiplier may be slower than single cable per drive method.
DAT Optic Sbox-P gets 4 AMUGs out of 5!
The full size DAT Optic Sbox-P enclosure is quiet and provides a secure, well built environment for mounting up to five SATA hard drives. If your work space has room for this enclosure it will serve you well. The ability to install different drive cages into the Sbox-P and/or to use it as a direct connect enclosure while by passing the SATA PM board makes it more flexible than most of the other SATA PM enclosures AMUG has tested. As the performance of SATA PM enclosures is very similar you may want to make your selection based on cooling, acoustics and interface considerations that are important to you.
Contact Information:
DAT Optic Inc.1815 E. Wilshire Ave # 906
Santa Ana, CA. 92705 USA
Phone: (714) 558 1808
Info@DATOptic.com
Copyright 2006
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