I’m considering some 12-bay short-depth cases from AliExpress/Alibaba, specifically models produced by Fanlong and Jonsbo. I was wondering if anyone here has experience with these manufacturers or these particular cases.
My main concern is the backplane. The listings mention “direct connect,” which sounds great, but I’m unsure about its reliability. The backplane seems to have a few ICs on it, and I’m worried about stability over time, especially for data and power delivery.
Has anyone used these cases with TrueNAS? Are the manufacturers reliable? Is there anything I should watch out for?
The most important factor for me is ensuring the backplane provides stable and reliable connectivity.
The intent use for these would be mixed storage and compute sever (Compute will be done in VMs).
Will use the 5 2.5 inch for NVMe U.3 fast + VM and the 12 bay for HDD backup and large slow storage.
My Jonsbo 12 bay arrived with one faulty drive bay. So far they have acted like a replacement backplane can be ordered from China. But have gone radio silent since telling me that. So my Jonsbo is working reliably, but with 11 usable drive bays, not 12. In general the case is a horribly inefficient use of space. But it is easy to work inside too. Consumer level RAID cases are not exactly rich with well made designs. Also most consumer RAID cases are not designed with quiet in mind.
