Areca ARC-4036 6Gb/s SAS/SATA JBOD Enclosure Review – Internals

We have received the unit and inspected the outer characteristics and now feel it’s time to take off the cover and see what’s under the hood.

This side of the enclosure is pretty straightforward and we are only including the view to show the slots on the drawers that the trays slide into. On the right the long horizontal slots in the drawers that the trays slide into allow air to flow above and below the devices. Bear in mind that the fans, located towards the rear of the unit, will be pulling air through these two banks of drawers. With the cover on the unit that is the only path for the air to take.

In the view below, we get a better view of the enclosure. Again the two banks of drawers where the trays slide in have the long slots down either side, allowing air to be pulled around both sides of the devices. Here the design is quite ingenious as you can see that the air is then drawn out around the enclosures circuit boards which houses the myriad chips and the LSI 28-port LSISAS2x28 expander IC. The SAS chip is truly the power behind the unit, allowing 2.0 zoning, self-configuration, table-to-table routing, and also there is an integrated PPC processor for SES-2 and enclosure management support. This allows you to control the enclosure from your operating system and to view important details, such as temperature, and also LED identification of devices.

This is a look directly into the bays where the drives are installed. The slots to either side allow the air to be drawn through there but you can see that they actually manufactured slots into the circuit board itself to allow air to pass there as well!  This displays Arecas total attention to detail. The circuit board is needed to plug in the devices and could have been quite an obstruction. Bear in mind that directly behind this PCB is the fans. Note the black connectors that the drives themselves connect to. These must be placed to exact standards for proper alignment with the drives. These single slots provide both data and power to the drives that are installed.

NEXT: CONNECTIVITY OPTIONS

~ INTRODUCTION ~ CONCEPTS AND USAGE ~

~ UNBOXING ~ INTERNALS ~ CONNECTIVITY OPTIONS ~ CONNECTING DRIVES ~

~ ENCLOSURE MANAGEMENT ~ TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL ~

~ SANDISK LIGHTNING RESULTS ~ PATRIOT WILDFIRE RESULTS ~

~ CONCLUSION ~

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