Are eSata Enclosures Hot-Swapplable?

[defuse54]

Hi, I have a HP EX475 w/5TB of storage. I'm currently down to my last 100GBs and I need to acquire more storage.

If I would purchase an 4-bay eSATA external enclosure. Would I have to fill all four slots with hard drives before I connect it to the server or can I just put hd drives in on the fly when I can afford to purchase them?

If it supports both RAID 5 and if its Hot Swappable which would preform better, and would be safer?

Oh and I'm looking at getting this

Mediasonic HF2-SU2S2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817576001

or

SANS DIGITAL TR4M+BNC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111148

 

[mfenn]

Yes, you will be able to physically hot add the drives without trouble.

There are a couple of possible issues though:
- not all controllers support SATA expanders, check to see whether the EX475's does
- I don't see that those enclosures do anything other than provide drive slots, how did you intend to do RAID5?