4400/4200/4500/15000 SATA Adapters

[Phoenix32]

REF: http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=15515

I have one set of SATA Adapters for the Snap 4400/4200/4500/15000 available.


One of the guys who asked me for a set of adapters while I was doing the one run of making the SATA adapters backed out after I made the set for him (lame).

Thus, his set of adapters is now available to whomever asks for them first (and pays for them of course).

Get 'em before they are gone...



P.S. I made 18 sets total. 6 sets for myself, 6 set for a buddy of mine, 3 sets for the moderator here on the forum (blue68f100), and 3 sets for other users here on the forum. Thats it.

P.P.S. A 4400 with these adapters keeps up and slightly passes a 410, and a 4200 or 4500 with these adapters walks circles all around the 410, and keeping up with a 520. A 15000 with these adapters, well.... :-)

[sgt.baker]

Good to hear you have some available Phoenix. Are they $75 for a set of four or each? Does it include the sled, or is there a sled swap that happens?

My issue is figuring out if I want to dump between $75 to $300 (if $75 ea) on four empty sleds or putting that money toward a new retail box with no drives. While I hate to potentially throw a 4400 in the can, that DIY side of me just cant sit up and think of the possibilities.

I also need to consider the possibility whether the GOS 4.x can handle a 2TB drive or not correctly (4k sectors), as I cant afford to buy a Maint. Plan from Overland just to get the latest OS.

Haven't heard from any "satisfied customers" yet, so if there any out here, please speak up!

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by sgt.baker

Are they $75 for a set of four or each? Does it include the sled, or is there a sled swap that happens?

My issue is figuring out if I want to dump between $75 to $300 (if $75 ea) on four empty sleds or putting that money toward a new retail box with no drives. While I hate to potentially throw a 4400 in the can, that DIY side of me just cant sit up and think of the possibilities.

Originally Posted by Phoenix32

For the couple people who have asked;

The price for the modified adapters is $75/set plus shipping.

You will have to do 2 simple small mods to your trays yourself. Very simple (a child could do it).

That would be $75 + $10 s/h inside the lower 48 USA. $85 total for 4.

Originally Posted by sgt.baker

I also need to consider the possibility whether the GOS 4.x can handle a 2TB drive or not correctly (4k sectors), as I cant afford to buy a Maint. Plan from Overland just to get the latest OS.

Hmmm, I honestly have not tried with any GOS below 5.0.133. I would test for you, but I only have 1 set of 2TB drives and they now have lots of data on them. Which by the way is a Snap 4400 with 4x2TB drives.

Originally Posted by sgt.baker

Haven't heard from any "satisfied customers" yet, so if there any out here, please speak up!

None of the customers have received them yet (still in transit/shipping). And keep in mind, there are only 3 people from here on the forum getting them.

[Phoenix32]

Really?


Convert to SATA and make the SNAP run faster and sometimes cooler, with drives that cost less and have more storage.


Nobody?


Really?



...

[Phoenix32]

I don't want to be a Negative Nelly, but from the lack of responses on this, I am not sure anyone cares.

But, in case someone does, this is what it looks like inside a Snap 4400 with 4 x 2TB SATA drives using my modified SATA adapters.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by sgt.baker

.I also need to consider the possibility whether the GOS 4.x can handle a 2TB drive or not correctly (4k sectors)

http://support.overlandstorage.com/j...earchPage=true


There is the answer...

[[AfZ]PiMp J]

are these still available?

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by [AfZ]PiMp J

are these still available?

Originally Posted by willPower

Hey Phoenix,

Do you still have those adapters? I'm definitely interested in a set or two, so hit me up when you get a chance.


Thanks!

Will

I been thinking about how to answer this question to the two of you for several days now. I hope this answers things for you (and anyone else) on this subject. People can get upset at how I pass infomation etc, but at least I am honest and don't sugar coat everything.

This whole SATA conversion process reminds me a lot of the old children's fable about the little hen and her baby chicks making bread. She asked for help through the whole wheat growing process etc and so forth, but nobody wanted to contribute, but they were all ready to eat the bread when it was done.

At the beginning, I took on this project because people had asked for it here on the forum. Being the guy who was most likely to make this work (from here on the forum), I took it on in hopes of advancing things for the Snap servers and helping people out.

I spent a huge amount of time on this project. If I wasn't retired, this project would have taken a very very long time to complete. It also took substantial amounts of funds that I just flat out can't really afford to spend, and risk to my own equipments testing things on them. In other words, this was not just something that was wham bam thank you ma'am all done easily. It is easy to do now, but not from the start.

During the project, I got very little encouragement or assistance. Some, but not much. Some of you might remember my frustration posts on this subject here and there in different message threads. Do you remember the responses I got also?

I pretty much shit-canned the project due to the overwhelming negative feeling it was giving me, even though it was near completion. I had already made it work for my own use, but not in a way that others could do it also at that point.

Then 2 good friends asked me to complete the project for them. Since they are good friends, I completed it for them.

Due to the costs and ability to make them cheaper in quantity, that and having to set up a press for the cutting and the other mods needing to be done, it was far better to do them assembly line, and cheaper.

I decided to post here since I completed the project and offer them if someone wanted to get in on it while I was doing a batch. Guess what I got? I got mostly crickets.... Only 3 people asked me about it and 1 of them backed out after I had bought his adapters. In other words, as usual, the response here on the forum was very underwhelming and one guy even stiffing me.

So please excuse me if I am a little bitter on this subject and less than forthcoming easily. I am also very aware that some people would like to get them to reverse engineer it all and go make profits on my work. Doesn't seem very fair to me after my risks, time, and money...

[Phoenix32]

Okay, with that all said, let's throw in a couple other things for thought.

I have more Snap Servers than I need or want and my wife is pushing me to sell some of them to help us out on our bad financial situation.

Right now today, I have a 4500 already upgraded and a set of NEW Samsung 1TB drives in it. I have this unit to sell. (make me a reasonable offer on it if you want it).

I also have a couple other 4500's and so forth I plan to sell. All will be SATA converted before they go out.

Now think on this a moment, With these units being SATA converted, that makes them special and better. This makes selling them much easier.

If I put out a bunch of these adapters, and worse, if someone copies my work, how much harder willit be for me to sell these units?

Anyone watched Snaps on ebay lately? Nothing is selling hardly.

So let me ask you two (or others) this very important question, and I am dead serious.

Given my financial situation, my need to sell some snaps, the shitty response I have had on this forum about it, what possible incentive do I have to provide any more of these adapters to anyone? Seriously, give me a good reason, I will listen.

For the record, I spent about $500 developing this conversion. When I sold some, I made a grand total of $40 on all three sets I sold (my buddies got theirs at cost).

Oh, and lets not forget, not one person who has gotten them from me has even bothered to come back here and do a good review of them, even though they are very happy with them.

So go ahead, answer my question above, I will listen... But no promises.

[[AfZ]PiMp J]

you have no real good reason, especially if the people who got them won't even review them (or aren't technically inclined to be able to do so)

to distance myself from those that gave you a bad taste in your mouth, i literally logged into the forum like a day before my post reviving this topic, having had no idea of your troubles in completing this project. in fact that last i ever knew it was you who cautioned against others using sata adapters because they would interfere with the timing for the hardware raid.

i am quite curious as to how these work but wouldn't dream of ripping off another person's idea, it's simply not my style.

to be honest, i myself was looking to unload the snap servers i had because i was tired of never using them due to diminished drive capacity, outdated architecture, and absolutely no chance to replace a failed drive since the ide drives are no longer being made. the security of a raid setup was negated until i saw your post. it is because of your post i am contemplating keeping my 4500 if i convert it to sata and offloading my ide 4400 (drives sleds and all)


have you thought about mass producing your product for overland or whoever even owns the brand now?

[willPower]

.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by [AfZ]PiMp J

i am contemplating keeping my 4500 if i convert it to sata and offloading my ide 4400 (drives sleds and all)

[AfZ]PiMp J, yours is the exact reason I started this project in the first place.

Because you may still sell your 4500 etc, and I need to thin my herd down some, you will have to wait a little bit and let me get that completed first. I really can't afford competition in that area at the moment. If you want me to, I will send you a message here, or if you give me an email address, an email letting you know when I can provide them.

Your cost will be my cost, shipping, plus somewhere around $20 for my labor (it is time consuing to mod them).

BTW, they work in the 4400 also... In fact I love my 4400 that I have 8TB in. Excellent unit. I have always liked them due to their low noise and low power requirements.

Approximately how many "sets" will you need? (planning purposes)

Originally Posted by [AfZ]PiMp J

have you thought about mass producing your product for overland or whoever even owns the brand now?

Not really, for several reasons. 1) A company like that is more interested in selling new units than upgrading older units. They would want to bury it instead. 2) This is not a true R&D with a complete new design and producton and so forth. That type of cost would be far from $500. More like in the $15,000 minimum for proofs, documentation, royalties, etc etc etc. This is more of a Scratch Mod that can be done by enthusiests.

[Phoenix32]

Will, reading your message made a number of things clear to me. 1) You know very little about this project. 2) You know very little abut me. 3) "Seem" to know very little about hardware R&D. And 4) Have either not been on the forum that long (even in the background lurking), have a bad memory, or that you have just been skimming messages.

Let me address #4 first. Being that I have been here a long time myself, I suspect it is the "not been here that long" (even lurking) since it only has been a short time that I have seen you posting messages. But I also suspect you do not truly read, but rather skim a lot of the messages here. That is the conclusion I have come to anywise. Because, IMO, you would otherwise not have the problems of #1 and #2.

#3 is based on the concept that I clearly said I had $500 invested in this project. Anyone with operational knowledge of hardware R&D would know the costs of development in the manner the content of your message suggests would be in the double digit thousands of dollars, not $500. This was clearly more like a scratch mod for enthusiests, not a full blown market product.

Now for #1 thru #4, all kind of clumped together and reply to your message.

Considering I am an engineering technician (R&D), then trust me, I know R&D of new products has always been a time consuming and financially-straining process. I really didn't need to be told that. In fact, it kind of felt a bit condescending of you to me, but then if you knew me, you would have already known that.

As for QA, it has not been tested to true manufacturing levels, but it has been tested very carefully and to a very great extent by more than 1 person in both home and corporate environments. FAR MORE than most mod projects ever get tested by leaps and bouds. It works.

This WAS NOT a business adventure as you suggest. This goes back to your knowlege of the project over time. In fact, it is/was EXACTLY what you said it wasn't. It was supposed to be a Mod developed for enthusiests by enthusiests, to be freely used by all conected to it. If you knew anything about me and my posting on this forum over the long haul, you would know I do not do this to make money and have deleloped many things over time here on the forum where people had a need and did not charge them anything for it unless they wanted me to do the work for them. I have spent an unimaginable amount of time testing things people wanted to know about, figuring out problems, and quite often risking my own equipments in the process for the whole dollar amount of ZERO. With that said, I live on a low fixed income. If something someone wanted was going to cost me money, I relayed those costs to them if they wanted it (parts, shipping, etc). And if I had to touch their equipment to do it, I charged them a VERY MINIMAL amount of labor. When I say minimal, I would say things like $10 to $20. Not the hourly wages a basic technician would even charge. So yes, if you are not getting it yet, I was a little bit offended that your message kind of made me sound like a leech try to make money on this community.

But back to the project. Yup, it was "supposed to be" a Mod developed for enthusiests by enthusiests, to be freely used by all conected to it. But there is the rub. People wanted it, said they wanted it, begged for it, then when I started it up, got left hangin' holding it all. There was no help. There was no other "partners" to share the information or documentation with. I found myself all alone rapidly, absorbing all the costs in $ and time. In other words, most people seemed to want it handed up to them on a silver platter without any involvement in the costs or time to do it. THAT is why I got very frustrated at it, and eventualy dropped the project after I had developed it enough for my own uses. If not for a couple friends pushing me, I would have never completed it for others to use at all. BUT they did and so I did. I could have kept my mouth shut and just done if for them, but I felt I would offer it up to people here on the forum also since so many people had said they wanted it, and I also figured I could recover a "VERY LITTLE" amount of my costs in doing so. Not make money or take advantage of anyone, just recover a little bit of lost funds. I see nothing wrong with that at all. In fact I think I was being nice and generous to even offer it up at all after how it all went down.

I could go on all day with this one but I think I have said enough to make my point. Your conclusions were WAY OFF TRACK, and if you knew me, the history on this project, etc, then you would have known all this. But you don't. Obviously.

I was offended by your rmessage, but I will give you credit for one thing in it. You said, "seemed" and "seems" a lot. Meaning to me, it was your interpetation of the situation, not as a fact, which it wasn't.

Originally Posted by willPower

Another reason people may not be interested in buying these from you is because you're very confrontational and like to post messages they sent to you privately in public forums.

Now this one really pisses me off from you. This did not used to be the perception for a very long time (years), but ever since this one ass-hole started crap over and over with me and started saying how confrontational I am over and over and over, it has become a stigma that is percieved no matter how I type things. Feels like high school crap to me. People hear it enough, then they start believing it, and then they start seeing it because it is what they expect. It's called the Pygmalion effect, look it up. You see what you expect, self fullfilling prophecy. I thought better of you than this, but I was wrong.

FOR THE RECORD, I do not confront people unless they are spouting crap as facts that I know are not facts and have evidense to prove it. OR, if I am attacked, I will rain down fire and brimstone in return. PERIOD!!! Never ever have on this forum. PERIOD!!!

Look at your own message to me and tell me it was not confrontational. So of course that is what you will get back. But oh yeah, I am the bad guy because I came back at you like this. Funny how peope forget whom "Confronted" whom first. My message to you two was not confrontational, it was an expression of my feelings on this subject and why. At least I was honest. Can't say the same for some people around ths forum.

But, if people post false information, theories, or speculative things here as FACTS, then I feel it is my duty (and the duty of ANYONE here who knows it to be incorrect) to confront it as NON FACT to protect those who may not know. THAT is where I confront people, and then only if I know and can prove it to be non fact.

NOTE: The Pro Cooling Owner, Admin, and Snap Server Forum Moderator must know all of this and agree or I would no longer be here. DUH!

And honestly, there is a big difference between offering somethng to someone and trying to sell something to someone. I offered up some of the Adapters for people to have. I really could not care much less if anyone ever buys them or not.

Originally Posted by willPower

Have you considered filing a patent to protect your design? You might want to look into this since you're going to be making money off of these.

For starters, it is not my plan (nor has it ever been) to make money on these. That and it is a mod, not a full R&D deveopment costing thousands of dollars, thus I would be infringing on others intelectual property. Not my style.

I hope I made my points.

[willPower]

.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by willPower

I'm not all that interested in the BS drama that goes on in this forum (and there is a lot of it here, more than what I would have expected; didn't you say that you were leaving and never coming back a couple months ago?)

Me either, which is why I have not been here very much (I used to come here several times a day). I did try to get away, but I still get emails when someone sends me a PM (like you did). That and the fact that I have several friends here who contact me and ask me to look into certain items here and there.

Originally Posted by willPower

I hope you at least break even on your investment, and when you finally, do, I hope you will consider making the specs of your adapters public. I'm still interested in buying a couple sets from you. The price is definitely on point, and blue68f100's recent review of them shows that they work great. It would be stupid to pass this offer up.

I am a long ways from breaking even on it and probably never will, but who knows. I am not that worried about it anymore.

My question to you is; Why do you want them? Personal Snap Server use? To sell your Snaps? To reverse engineer? Curiosity? Etc...

As for the review, I hope and welcome anyone who got a set of them from me to post their review/opinions on them here, good or bad.

[Phoenix32]

[AfZ]PiMp J and willPower,

You both need to send me a PM or email with your PayPal address and how many you want (sets of 4) so that I can send you an invoice to pay for them.

[Phoenix32]

Maybe neither of the guys really want the SATA adapters? I have heard nothing back from either one.

[LarryInCa]

Phoenix32,

Don't get too discouraged by the responses (or lack thereof) that you get. Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished!

I've gained an immense amount of knowledge about the SNAP appliances from you, and others like you on this forum. I seriously doubt that I would have been able to find anybody that I could engage to provide me with the information that you and others so freely give away.

Unfortunately, I fall into the lurker and infrequent forum visitor category. But when I do visit, I always find something interesting -- like this thread.

I don't know enough about what you're offering to say yes I could use them, or no thanks. But I'm fairly certain that after reading your thread at http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=15515 I'll have a much a better idea.

Thanks for giving so freely.

Larry

[me2050]

I must admit that I haven't been here for so long and lost track of nice topics like this. I'm very interested in what you are doing (or have done so far) modding SnapServer units to adopt sata drives. A lot of these type of old hardware will surely thrive with your efforts! Thanks a lot for your great work contributed to the community!

From the thread reading, I understand that you don't seem to have any 14000 unites. Do you think your stuff will work for a 14000 unit?

[me2050]

Phoenix32,

Not sure if you are still monitoring this thread. Are you still making these adapters? I'm interested if your mod works on a 14000 box? Please kindly let me know. Thanks in advance..

Stephan

[Phoenix32]

Stephan, I do still have some of these adapters but I have pretty much quit paying any attention to the subject beyond my own personal use. I have some of them and I get a fair number of people asking me for them, but they never follow through and so I have found it to be a waste of my time to be honest.

The 14000 is a different animal with very different trays, thus these adapters would not work as is for the 14000. I did look at the 14000 once upon a time to help Bitor out with his and told him what he needed and so forth. Maybe he will come forward and pass that info I have gave him (and he now claims as his own) on to you.

[me2050]

Pheonix32 -

Thanks much for your reply. I don't have 15000, I thought 14000 would be close to 15000, and so to 18000, but I might just be plain wrong. I did ping Bitor, and he kindly send me to you and credited all your great work! He suggested me to post another message again after my first one got no response for two months, that's why I did the re-post. I'm grateful for your information. I'll PM him again and see if he could help me out.

I know you put a lot of personal time/money and came up such a great solution. As others pointed out, please do not give up. Both the SnapServer HW and SW are pretty solid, though a bit out-dated, but with the TB adapter add-on, it still shines.. I guess that's why these units are not showing on ebay much, meaning people still wanna keep'em. I'm sure a lot of people want to know how you made it. How about setting up a donation account, and maybe people here can help out your R&D expenses.

Best Regards,
Stephan

[me2050]

Apologies! I went back to my inbox, and I found out that I was in contact with blue68f100, which I thought I was talking to bitor. Sorry about that. blue68f100 was so kind to provide me more information and send me to you. I'd like to publicly send my Thank-You to blue68f100! -Stephan

[Phoenix32]

People, Please stop e-mailing or PMing me about the adapters and various questions if you are not serious about them.

This is part of the reason I stop messing with them publicly. I get tired of people who are not serious about them wasting my time.

Feel free to contact me if you are serious about them, but stop wasting my time if you are not!

[Phoenix32]

Here is what you need to know about them, and has been said over and over, and not just by me....


1. They convert/adapt the ability to use the larger/cheaper SATA drive for use in some IDE/PATA Snaps.

2. They are intended for the 4400, 4200, 4500, 15000, and Snap Disk 10.

3. They work.

4. They are durable and not prone to "hicups" or other problems.

5. They work during extended and sustained use (this is key).

6. They work with the larger drives (tested with up to 2TB drives).

7. I don't know about 2.5TB or 3TB drives. I don't have any to test with.

8. GOS 4.2.x/4.4.x is required and 5.x.x is best.

9. You need 512MB memory, but 1GB or above is best.

10. The Mod part on your end is not hard.

11. The Mod does not prevent you from going back to IDE/PATA if you wanted to.

That's pretty much all you really need to know. Anyone who now has them feel free to comment or add to, "Pro or Con", what I said here if you wish.