Very helpful information! I remember the deathstar days, but that was when they were IBM Deskstars and only 9GB.
If I'm going to spend the money, I would prefer to go with enterprise SATA drives. I have several ES and ES.2 I could use if I had an adapter.
I did order an inexpensive adapter last week using a Jmicron chipset, which "looked" like it could fit on the sled with minor modifications if any were even required. I won't have it until Wednesday.
willPower, I would be interested on the adapters you've had success with.