Addonics Storage Towers? Good/Bad?

[gaikokujinkyofusho]

I have been looking everywhere for reasonably cheap (cost wise) esata/usb, 4bay, RAID 1 storage solutions and while there are some undisputedly top notch options out there they seem to start at $500 on up and none seem to support 2tb internal drives.

I happened upon one post in the smallnetbuilder forums about Addonics (it is still hardly talked about on that forum). Their mini storage tower seems to be about the form factor I need, the $200 price range is ok and the option of integrated RAID 1, port multiplier, eSATA, and USB seems just about right. But I can hardly find any reviews about these storage towers.

So has anyone tried either the “Storage Tower” or the “Mini Storage Tower” from Addonics? I would be curious to know about any of the configurations, how they run especially the quality (parts etc did anything break prematurely).

Any comments or experiences shared would really be appreciated!

Cheers

-Gaiko

 

[Mercutio]

I've used other products from Addonics. They generally only put their badge on high quality products.

The thing I'd be interested to know about that particular product, is what SATA chipset it's using. I've seen similar products that use the very low quality and (in my opinion) unreliable Sil chipset. This device looks similar to other products I've seen that have a Sil chip, and that is something that would make me wary, as I have had several low-end Sil-based cards fail.

 

[gaikokujinkyofusho]

I've used other products from Addonics. They generally only put their badge on high quality products.

The thing I'd be interested to know about that particular product, is what SATA chipset it's using. I've seen similar products that use the very low quality and (in my opinion) unreliable Sil chipset. This device looks similar to other products I've seen that have a Sil chip, and that is something that would make me wary, as I have had several low-end Sil-based cards fail.

Thanks Mercutio, i had no idea about the Sil chipset, i will try contacting thier tech support and seeing. Thanks for the input!

 

[gaikokujinkyofusho]

I've used other products from Addonics. They generally only put their badge on high quality products.

The thing I'd be interested to know about that particular product, is what SATA chipset it's using. I've seen similar products that use the very low quality and (in my opinion) unreliable Sil chipset. This device looks similar to other products I've seen that have a Sil chip, and that is something that would make me wary, as I have had several low-end Sil-based cards fail.

Hi Mercutio,

Did you happen to have the SiI3132, SiI3112, SiI3114, or SiI3512 chipsets? I have been following up on your comment and noticed that the above chipsets were known issues but i haven't found too many other common issues. I did check and most of the chipsets used by Addonics are SII (Silicon Image) but then again they are used by HP and some other big name (making me pray that these are more the exception than the rule since i still haven't found many other options). Just out of curiosity, and since i am a noob to the sata chipset arena, what are some more reputable sata chipsets out there?

Thanks!!

-Gaiko

 

[Mercutio]

I don't exactly recall any more. I've marked the brand away as junk hardware at this point and I've tried to avoid it since having a number of bad experiences.

To elaborate slightly, I had difficulties using inexpensive 4-port Sil controllers as straight-up SATA controllers while running softRAID 5 arrays on Windows Server or with Linux LVM, and with maintaining consistency of "hardware" RAID1. After seeing the issues with several cards from three different cards, in both Windows and Linux, and both as RAID and as plain old SATA controllers, I tossed those cards and bought some more reliable hardware.

I know Sil has that eSATA concentrator hardware but after having the experiences I did, I'd personally give it a pass.