John,
On Sunday, February 21, 2010 you wrote:
a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these.
example of one of these, http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU...
You may consider using this part:
http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=2814
The disadvantage is that you have no quick-swap-possibility, but the cooling is better as in hot-swap cases. The box has nice vibe-stoppers so that you have no vibrations on the case. I have several of these boxes and the disks run at least 10C cooler compared to a hot-swap system. And they sell for less than 25$.
best regards --- Michael Schumacher