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I had maxed out my nearly 4 year old 8-bay Calvary enclosure (EN-CADA8B-SD) with 2TB drives and was beginning to have issues somewhere in the storage chain (eSATA port multiplier card, drivers, eSATA cables, Calvary enclosure, etc.). After troubleshooting off and on for a couple weeks or longer, I was ready to replace it with something less problematic that wasn't limited to 2TB drives. I didn't however want to spend half a grand for something that came with RAID functionality I knew I'd never use. For the time being, I wanted to continue using my existing drives and just replace the enclosure and connection to it. The enclosure was hooked to a Dell Inspiron 3847 (4th Gen Core i7, 16GB, running Win 8.1). Duties for the machine include Plex, Subsonic, DNS updating, Crashplan backups, Syncback backups from the web, and of course, storage. The machine sits out of sight in the basement, so going with something less pleasing to the eye was fine. I ended up going with a pair of Rosewill 4 drive cages and a couple of IO Crest SATA cards for connecting them to the Dell - which only has 2 PCI-e x1 slots and a single x16 slot. $45 for each of the Rosewills, and $34 each for the IO Crests and I was almost ready to go. The Rosewill cages came with SATA cables that were long enough to reach from the inside of the case to the cages sitting right behind the Dell. Power to the cages was supplied by an extra power supply I had lying around. A quick short from the green wire to any black one will make the power supply think it's hooked to a motherboard and power on. I used a paper clip to accomplish that. If you go this route, keep in mind you'll need about 10w for each drive to be on the safe side for power requirements. If you're interested in doing something like this, what you get is four drives worth of connectivity for about $80. There's no port multiplier functionality going on, one drive connects to one port on a card. If you have extra SATA ports, you can skip the card purchase. If you have extra molex power connectors for the Rosewill cages, you can go a little less ghetto than I did and skip the power supply lying on the desk. You are limited in performance to what a PCI-e x1 slot can handle (about 240MB/sec if I remember correctly), which seems fine, but remember, you're running four drives off of that, and 240MB/sec is theoretical. Real world performance will be lower. All in all, I definitely consider it a win. For not much out of pocket, I replaced the Calvary, gained the ability to use larger drives, and also the ability to buy another card and cage for a total of 12. Not bad for an initial outlay of about $160 out of pocket. Hope this helps someone out there looking to do something similar.

SIIG SC-SA0M11-S1 PCI-Express 2.0 Low Profile Ready SATA III (6.0Gb/s) 2-Port Controller Card (my personal favorite inexpensive PCI-Express eSATA card) Specifications: Speed: SATA 3 (6.0Gbit/s) Ports: 2 x eSATA Slot: PCI-Express x1 2.0 (~4 Gbit/s x 2) Chipset: ASM1061 OverallSupports Identify: Yes Supports SMART: Yes AHCI Driver Firmware: 0.95 AHCI ModeAHCI compatible: Yes (works out of the box with the default Windows AHCI driver) * Driver: 6.2.9200.16548 (6/21/2006)storahci.sys * Port multiplier support requires Asmedia driver. StableBit Scanner - Direct I/O Methods: AtaPassThrough Identify: Yes SDD: Yes SMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: Yes Power Mode: Yes StableBit Scanner - WMISMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: No Tested on Windows 8 64-bit. Asmedia Driver Firmware: 0.95 AHCI ModeAHCI compatible: Yes (works out of the box with the default Windows AHCI driver) * Driver: 1.3.4.0 (1/5/2012)asahxp64.sys Link: http://www.siig.com/download/search/?keyword=SC-SA0M11-S1 * Port multiplier support requires Asmedia driver. StableBit Scanner - Direct I/O Methods: AtaPassThrough Identify: Yes SDD: Yes SMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: Yes Power Mode: Yes StableBit Scanner - WMISMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: No Tested on Windows 8 64-bit.

Specifications: Speed: SATA 3 (6.0Gb/s) Ports: 6x Internal Mini SAS SFF-8087 Slot: PCI-Express 2.0 x16 Chipset: See Marvell 9485 SAS/SATA Controller Chip Firmware Firmware: 1.3AHCI compatible: No (proprietary driver required) Link: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-PCI-E_2_0_x16_Configuration.html Driver: 1.2.12.1023 (10/23/2012)rr276x.sys Link: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-PCI-E_2_0_x16_Configuration.html Performance SATA III SSDBurst: 481 MB/s Drive: Intel SSDSC2CT180A4 OS Tested: Windows Home Server 2011 SATA II HDDBurst: 171 MB/s Drive: Seagate ST3200045AS OS Tested: Windows Home Server 2011 SATA III HDDBurst: 459 MB/s Drive: Seagate ST2000DM001 OS Tested: Windows Home Server 2011

Rosewill RC-210 Internal SATA / eSATA PCI Controller Card Specifications: Speed: SATA 1.0a (1.5Gbit/s) Ports: 1 x SATA, 1 x eSATA Slot: PCI 32-bit 66 Mhz (~2.133 Gbit/s x 2) Chipset: SiL3512 See: SiL3512 SATA Controller Chip

Specifications: Speed: SAS/SATA 3 (6.0Gb/s) Ports: 2x Internal Mini SAS SFF-8087 Slot: PCI-Express 2.0 x8 Chipset: See Marvell 9485 SAS/SATA Controller Chip Firmware Firmware: 1.5AHCI compatible: No (proprietary driver required) Link: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-PCI-E_2_0_x8_Configuration.html Driver: 1.4.13.230 (03/20/2013)272x_1x.sys Link: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-PCI-E_2_0_x8_Configuration.html Performance SATA III HDDBurst: 360 MB/s Drive: Seagate ST3000DM001 OS Tested: Windows Server 2012 Essentials

SYBA SD-PEX40035 PCI-Express 2.0 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card Specifications: Speed: SATA 3 (6.0Gb/s) Ports: 2 x SATA, 1 x PATA Slot: PCI-Express x1 2.0 (~3.9Gb/s x 2) Chipset: Marvell 88SE9128 OverallSupports Identify: Yes Supports SMART: Yes Firmware Firmware: 1.0.0.1012AHCI compatible: No (proprietary driver required) Driver: 1.2.0.1006 (6/16/2011)mvs91xx.sys Link: http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=997&currentPage=2 StableBit Scanner - Direct I/OMethods: SmartIoCtl, ScsiPassthrough, ScsiPassthrough48, ScsiMiniportPortDriver Identify: Yes SDD: Yes SMART Status: No SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: No Power Mode: No StableBit Scanner - WMISMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: No Tested on Windows 8 Tested SATA ports only.

Koutech IO-PESA220 PCI Express x 1 Low Profile Ready SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card Specifications: Speed: SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Ports: 2 x eSATA Slot: PCI-Express x1 1.1 (~1.95Gb/s x 2) Chipset: SiL3132 See: SiL3132 SATA Controller Chip

SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2E PCI-Express x1 SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card Specifications: Speed: SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Ports: 2 x eSATA Slot: PCI-Express x1 1.0 (~1.95Gb/s x 2) Chipset: SiL3132 See: SiL3132 SATA Controller Chip