Stardom Decktank

Picked up one of these on my birthday:

Stardom Decktank

My previous mass-storage device took only older IDE disks, which was proving to be a bottleneck. iMacs don’t come with eSata yet, so the fastest interconnect is FW800. The Stardom Decktank houses two SATA disks and comes with a FW800, FW400, USB2.0, and a bunch of card-reader slots. Here’s how it looks in action:

Stardom Decktank

For now, each bay holds a 1TB drive. One for backup, the other for additional storage. The unit runs much quieter than my previous setup. And the disks are held in with Stardom’s standardized enclosures:

Stardom Decktank

so one could conceivably get a few more of these and swap them around. I don’t think the Decktank supports hot-swapping the disks though.

3 Responses to “Stardom Decktank”

  1. gen

    Looks very cool. I bought something similar from Akibakan but it’s kinda loud, well louder than my LaCie. How quiet is the Decktank?

  2. matt

    The Decktank has two small fans in the back so it’s not ultra-silent, but the fans haven’t bothered me yet. It’s noticeably quieter than the slower-spinning 80mm fan in the 4-disk box I replaced with the Decktank. If you go with the “eco” WD drives, it’ll be even quieter when not in use (the “eco” drives usually mean they spin at 5400rpm when not in use, and 7200rpm when reading/writing).

  3. mb

    Nice photos! does the card reader work with FW800? or does the card reader require the usb connection? I’m thinking about picking one up. thanks!

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