Mediasonic ProBox 4-Bays SATA Hard Drive Enclosure

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Appears nice. It was DOA, I just decided to get a refund alternatively of acquiring a new one, the construction of the device was a tiny to cheapish for me.

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None for me Dead out of the box. Unit would turn on for 20 seconds and then turn off. Attempted it with 1, two, and drives and similar issue.Their top quality manage testing need to add a few seconds on the start-up sequence check. 1 of the front panel buttons wasn't properly aligned with a single edge protruding farther than the other. Buttons have a cheesy chrome plastic finish.Fan on complete power is incredibly noisy - at least for the 20 seconds it would run just before the unit shut off.

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exceptional enclosure, applied other individuals critiques in order to purchase this. I have not had any difficulties with it yet. The fans can be a little noisy but that is effortlessly adjusted by 3 unique obtainable settings. presently using as a media server and loving it none yet

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This is a response to the earlier poster WLKofDoom who had difficulties finding this device to detect much more than 1 of his eSATA drives. Hopefully, this will assist him and other people who could be experiencing comparable troubles. The first issue to comprehend is that it is actually not a problem with this product that it does not detect far more than one particular of your HDDs by means of eSATA. If you are using your motherboard's onboard eSATA port, it is very most likely that your port is not set up as a "port multiplier" (PM). eSATA only detects one particular drive natively, so it demands a PM to help detect far more drives in a JBOD array. The uncomplicated repair for this is to purchase a SATA controller card (such as the Highpoint Rocket 622 or RocketRAID 622) which will assist a "dumb box" like this Mediasonic have all installed drives detected by your computer. An option is to acquire a "smart" enclosure w/ hardware RAID constructed-in, but if you don't want RAID then it's superior to get a SATA card w/ PM. This ought to resolve your problem. On a side note: Numerous AMD boards which use the SB710 Southbridge do not let PM out of box on their eSATA ports when making use of common AHCI drivers. Nevertheless, there is an un-documented operate-around for this limitation...see other thoughts... In order to get the SB710 eSATA port to play nice w/ PM, install the most current ATI AHCI Compatible *RAID* driver when keeping the RAID choice turned OFF in the BIOS. This makes zero sense from a customer stand-point (i.e., why would I ever load the RAID driver unless I'm working with onboard RAID? therefore, it is "un-documented" and generally found by accident). But, this does operate on additional than 1 SB710 primarily based board and has been verified by a number of sources on a associated report on AVS forums. Hope this helps!

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I collect a lot of media. And even though I possess four external hard drives and they're extremely handy, getting internal drives is far a lot more economical. I've exhausted the sata ports on my motherboard so external USB is just fine for me, speed is much less important than capacity. So what are the pros of this enclosure? It took me significantly less than 5 minutes from opening the box to have it set up and recognized by windows 7. I began copying files to it promptly with out any troubles whatsoever.Who demands this? If you've got challenging drives lying about Get THIS. If you want an economical way to expand your media file storage system but don't have room inside your box, Purchase IT. I noticed copying files is slower than my other external drives by about 7-eight MB per/sec. Once again, not a massive deal simply because you can hook it up via ESATA and with USB two. I'm not expecting tremendous speeds. This point is a perfect solution for me, and I intend to purchase additional in the future the subsequent time I need to expand my media library. Mainly because it can accommodate four difficult drives it is far a lot more economical to purchase one particular of these than 4 separate external difficult drives individually.

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threeቦ񳏊 overview See Other thoughts Right after 24 hours the esata responded on it's personal. The unit has been in operation 24ǝ given that buy. Definitely flawless. Arranging on purchasing a second unit.

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First, cudos to Newegg. I have produced several purchases over the past months and Every person OF THEM ARRIVE THE Subsequent DAY!!!!! How excellent is that?! Guidelines uncomplicated and simple. Loaded 4x1t drives in ten minutes. The server immediately recognized the box when connected to the USB port. Poor difficulty shooting guide in manual. Further, the manual does not mention that the unit will not energy up if it is not connect to a Computer or Server. The esata is not responding. The manual states if esata does not respond, receive updated drivers, even so, when I went to the offered website, there were no driver downloads, just a hyperlink to download yet another manual. In appearance, the unit was almost everything I expected. It compliments my property server. When the manual provides adequate facts to assemble the unit, the lack of troubleshooting/driver assistance is disturbing.5 eggs for Newegg service and delivery.

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Please see my previous review for this solution (which I can't figure out how to edit). I had to return one of the two units I purchased. It worked well when copying files from one particular disk in the enclosure at a time, but when all drives were busy at the same time it would glitch within a time frame of about 10 minutes and anything unmounted leaving issues all messed up. I think the energy supply couldn't deal with all the simultaneous activity. I returned it and the new a single has been working flawlessly with all drives simultaneously being active for over 24 hours straight now. The old one was a lemon, but I wouldn't have identified devoid of this sort of test.

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Does exactly what it claims to do. USB and eSATA connectivity worked fine. Running it with two WD 1TB Greens and two WD 2TB Greens and drives run considerably cooler than in my Cosmos 1000 case ྾-33 C). Manual is weak and had difficulties receiving eSATA connection functioning but after reading the testimonials figured out it took switching the mode. I use SpeedFan to monitor Sensible and a single of the slots doesn't report its stats. That slot/drive also seems to have slower read/write times despite the fact that I haven't officially measured. Gave 4 star becasue of the slot problem, otherwise a wonderful device. Utilizing this as backup storage. I initially wanted to go with RAID but after deliberating the difficulties with contemporary drives and RAID I decided to just mirror with a backup plan.

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Sweet small box! I do suggest reading the manual as a lot of may possibly overlook to do that. :) Installation was clean and effortless. Versatile in regards to configuration needs - supports many versions of RAID Ɛ-5) and is speedy on setup (took about 20 minutes such as an interrupting phone contact.) :) Energy on connector on the side of case instead of out the back. But seriously this is just an aesthetic issue - functionality is just fine. I would recommend this to everyone that desires higher speed drive access for apps such as Adobe CS5 apps. They now call for higher speed throughput. As stated, if you study just the 1st handful of paragraphs of the manual you should be up and running promptly.

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Appears wonderful and simple to swap out drives. Where do I start? It worked perfectly right after two weeks then it started to shut down and not even study the challenging drives. It then would not even recognize the USB and would not sync. Very dissapointed with Newegg on this one. Following asking for a replacement they just refunded me after a week of waiting for the item from UPS.

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eSATA, smaller, quiet, worked. Lights are quite bright. It supports hotswap (supposedly) but I wouldn't trust trying it since it's touchy trying to get drives in and out (you're likely to turn it off or disco an additional drive).To get eSATA to function, I had to connect through USB 1st, and when it's operating hit the switch to transform to eSATA, then turn off, then reboot Computer with it on, and eSATA worked from then on. IE - quirky to get that working, as I couldn't just start with eSATA. I found an additional comment mentioning that, and that pointed me in the appropriate path. Maybe this will save you a get in touch with to their assistance :-) Utilised a SATA to eSATA cable to connect from GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 to eSATA, which supported the SATA port multiplier required to see several drives on it. Operating Linux, Ubuntu 10.4.It may possibly be a "me" issue, but if my Computer is already operating and it's turned off, and then I plug it in by way of eSATA, it isn't recognized. Have to either use USB, or reboot the Computer to have it see it. I was hoping to be able to turn it on only when I wanted to do a backup. I believe this is more a BIOS/AHCI/Linux factor, so I won't knock them for it.

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Easy to comply with directions to set up hard drives. Holds Four 2TB Tough Drives for 8TB total storage space. Outstanding for backing up and archiving. Low value ๳ can't be matched by something else for this sort of device. It doesn't accept verbal commands....maybe subsequent gen.The front panel is a push/click to secure/unsecure. It is removable. I believed I snapped it off at very first, but it is made that way so you can get all the really hard drives inside with ease. Good black case. Operates with my theme. Don't neglect to open the box with the tough drive handles/accessories. They may well get stuck if you go off and jamb them in there without having understanding what you are undertaking.

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Compact, quiet. Non yet. Installed drives, hooked up ESATA cable, turned on and it shut down after 20 seconds. Would not stay on. Contacted tech help by means of e mail and they recommended starting up with USB cable connection. Worked initially time. As soon as began a uncomplicated push of the interface button on the front switched it more than to ESATA. Performs good. Tech support responded inside 20 min. Great assistance.

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4 bays, price. it would not recognize esata. directions are useless, as was the response i got from the manufacturer when i emailed them about the issue.

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Does what it is supposed to do, supplied you actually read the needs. Strong overall performance on raid and jbod. Will almost certainly by a second unit. Manual could be far better written, and construction could be a tiny bit a lot more solid. Power plug on side, rather than back of unit. can't genuinely beat the price tag for what it does.

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holds four drives up to 2tb each and every, blue lights, i like blue :). that my mobo doesnt have esata muti, which sucks cause i have a thermaltake lan boy v1000 case, so duel slot gpu, 7.1 sound card, and no area for addin card :( strong, front door falls off when opened, but how ofter will u open it? have had it running for a couple days non quit, no problems. hdds are nevertheless nice and cool. would purchase agian

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four Bays, low-cost, quiet, works with my EX490 WHS out of the box and looks great performing it Sync feature is twitchy, it turns off on reboot and doesn't want to wake back up - fixed by changing to manual. Since it's attached to a server, doesn't require to sleep. Must have purchased 2 of these. Will need expandable storage without having the need to have for RAID, this is a no brainer. All drives are presented to the OS independantly which is a huuuge plus if you're running a WHS box.

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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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Quick. Quiet (on lowest fan setting). Due to the fact I'm working with "green" drives and am employing as a backup unit, it's not on all the time so I don't see the need to increase the fan speed. Unit feels nice and solid. Smaller footprint. Good value for what you get. As mentioned by others - front door has tendency to disconnect easily when opened. Flashing blue lights can be annoying. Unable to boot Mac from this device, nevertheless I believe that's more a limitation of the card I'm working with rather than the unit. I'm employing this box to hold the backup drives for my MacPro. It's connected to a MAXPower eSATA 6G RAID card (purchased elsewhere). Unit came from factory with power-saving function enabled, which suggests that 15 seconds after turning it on, it turned itself off. I had been waiting for the drives to spin up ahead of turning on the computer system. The moment I realized that, I turned on the pc first, and then the unit. Worked fine soon after that.Considering that the MAXPower card has two eSATA ports, I am seriously taking into consideration getting an additional unit and use it for offsite backup storage.

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- not to high-priced- not paying for raid chip I won't use- lets me connect 4 drives to the single sata port on my laptop- works with Linux (Fedora 13)- supports Wise monitoring (tested on sata, not sure about usb)- front door comes off- you don't have to attach rails. it comes with plastic handles to attach to the front, but if you don't plan on pulling the drives incredibly usually, you don't seriously need them. - fan is usually on, even if all drives are powered down. i'll almost certainly disconnect it or find a quieter fan.- energy plug on side. don't know why, there's lots of space on the back.- front door comes off- would be good if there was a way to get drives out very easily with no obtaining to attach plastic handles general, my 1st impressions are pretty positive. I'm in all probability going to get a single or two a lot more, assuming every thing is nevertheless operating will immediately after a couple of weeks.

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works good with usb hot swap can not get the esata to perform with more then one particular of my 4 drives at a time i would have loved to make this a 5 egg BUT i bought this for the esata and it doent seem to operate on mine

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With only a few millimeters between each drive bay, "drive handles" (made to mimic hot-swappable RAID drive bay trays) mount to each drive via the two frontmost side-screws so you can remove the drive easily. The drive bays are snug but not enough to slide the drives dead-on into the SATA connector board (no cables here). After some jiggling to seat the drives, the screwless plate that holds the drives in place could be jammed in. A simple thumbnail screw plate would be more secure. The removeable door pops open and falls off when anything bumps into it. It bothered me so much that I duct-taped the door onto the unit. Now my ProBox doesn't look "Pro" at all with duct tape stretched horizontally over the front of it. Mediasonic's website (http://www.mediasonic.ca) mentions that you need an eSATA port multiplier (not included) to access more than one drive on this product. This is crypticly noted in the instructions but doesn't say anything about needing an eSATA port multiplier. So such issue occurs with the USB connection with every system from Mac to Windows to Linux. Out-of-the-box, the maximum speed is 480Mbps USB 2.0 and 3.0Gbps is simply not possible unless you use one drive (which defeats the purpose of buying this enclosure).The power connector sticks out the right side, so you cannot put this side-by-side your tower or even another SU2S2 unit without leaving about an inch in between. Why the power cord does not plug in the back like the eSATA and USB, I don't know. You can stack these units but they are not designed for it. The fan can get loud at maximum speed and AUTO speed is probably inadequate so I use the middle setting.I did not buy it for a RAID setup so don't expect hardware RAID or JBOD drive spanning here. I applaud NCIX for bringing a wide range of products including this low-end SU2S2 enclosure, which is a great for collecting together all your old drives of various sizes. If you need RAID and speed now, I'd suggest a Network Storage NAS instead.

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This enclosure is quite straightforward to set up drives and intuitive. The excellent is of great construction. Even the little instruction manual is fairly understandable. I'm using this unit in combination with a SYBA SD-PEX40031 PCI-Express port multiplier card. The JBOD function performs nicely and that is the principal way I will be working with it. Even so, I also tried this out with Raid , 1, and 5 just for testing purposes. I've got to say that this appears to be an exceptional enclosure.I'm employing this in my HTPC on an eSATA port and the sleep and re-awake function function completely. I've attempted 2 other such enclosures and neither worked as I wanted them to. This a single is fantastic.I won't include things like this as a con, but if I was hunting for some thing that could be improved, it would be the drive access lights. It's not so a lot that they are as well vibrant, it's that they are vibrant and they flicker all the though a movie on that drive would be playing. It would be good if there was an uncomplicated way to shut them None that I can see. To fix the above pointed out situation, I've colored the light bar with a black magic marker and that performs just fine.

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I bought one of these in 2009, and kept it in operation for three years straight, mostly running nightly scheduled backups.It stopped working eventually (would power up, but the disks wouldn't mount for some reason), so I replaced it with a NexStar HX4. However, the HX4 was bigger, looked strange (like a coffee machine?), had louder fans, and to top it all off, kept disconnecting and unmounting its drives (I may have gotten a defective unit?).So I returned the NexStar and bought another Mediasonic HF2 instead -- hopefully this one lasts longer than three years, but even if it doesn't, it's a better buy than the NexStar, in my opinion.