Mediasonic ProBox 4-Bays SATA Hard Drive Enclosure

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- I'm not sure what hot-swappable means in the other persons review, other then disconnecting the whole unit from your tower I think, since I don't think a single drive is hot-swappable with the other drives running, and if it is technically supported by the specs of Esata and your esata port/card, I don't think its very feasible since there just isn't a good way to remove a single drive without risking damage to other drives during the removal and re-installation of another drive with the current design of the unit (in my opinion)-

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Overall, I am impressed. I brought back my first unit because I had thought it was DOA. NCIX technician agreed. It would shut down after 15 seconds every time it was powered on. However, when my second unit also exhibited the same 'problem', I discovered that one must hold the SYNC button down for a few seconds in order to synchronize with the current power state of your host computer. Furthermore, be aware, that if you plan to use the significantly faster e-SATA mode, your host computer must support e-SATA port multiplying (multiplier or multiplexing). My Acer AM5620 desktop (based upon the Intel ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID controller chipset), doesn't seem compatible! Grrrrrr!My only alternatives are to either use USB2.0 or purchase an additional e-SATA controller (e.g. LaCie eSATA PCI Express Card 2 eSATA Ports).NOTE: This is not a RAID device, but Mediasonic does offer this in another model for about $150 more.Again, this is a nice compact unit and is well built!

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I perchased this to run a software RAID 5 array on my media server. I am not overly concerned with speeds, so I could not really justify the RAID model. It's hooked up to a Silicon Image 3132 eSATA PCIe x1 card and seems to do the trick. Setup was very easy. It takes a long time to rebuild the array, but you still have access to all of your files etc. You just take a major hit on performance.Besides the functionality, it looks really nice as well. The LEDs have a good level of brightness, and the box itself is constructed mostly out of aluminum. If the fan happens to burn out, it is easily replaceable as well, as it is just a standard 80x25mm fan. For the price, you can't go wrong. If your motherboard does not have eSATA, just do what I did and pick up a $20 card that supports port multiplication. As the previous reviewer stated, make sure the bios is up to date as well.

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The weakness really doesn't count since this model isn't for RAID anyways, the RAID version is much more expensive, but I'd expect it to be of the same qualityAs for eSATA requirements, Port-Multiplication seems to be avaliable in most new Chipsets. The chipset I use is the eSATA on my ASUS P5B, JMircon. I had to update  the driver but other than that no real fuss.When I got it for $130, it was a great price, seeing how most eSATA external enclosures cost upward of $35 or more. Buying this just made a whole lot more sense. To be honest, I can't see how a simple external enclosure like this one can be improved, it's more or less perfect the way it is :)Things that could be improved on though are, maybe some software to help with Power Saving modes. Also, it'd be awesome if they could add some sound padding in the case to make it a bit more silent. 4 drives running at the same time isn't so silent. Also the fan I plan on swapping out for a quietier one. Your drives shouldn't get too hot since the external shouldn't be on 24/7 anyway.Bottomline, buy it if you have JBOD (Just-a-bunch-of-disks).