Product ReviewsMediasonic HFR2-S3B PRORAID Box 4 Bay Raid Enclosure with USB 2.0, eSATA & FireWire 400/800
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 Rating: Review Date: 08/03/13 |
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Rating: Review Date: 07/21/13 |
Comment:
Simple to set-up and very good connectivity alternatives. I purchased 4x500meg Deskstar drives with it and installing them was easy sufficient and the drive came up configured for RAID five, which is exactly what I wanted.I'm connecting making use of Firewire 800, and I get good throughput to my 7200 RPM disks using that.It's QUIET! When I initially powered it on, I had to place my ear to it to hear if the fan was going. So far with my 4x500Meg Deskstar drives, I haven't seen the fan go above its lowest/quietest level.It shuts down when the computer goes to sleep or if it hasn't been accessed in a when, so kudos for the power savings. Slow to start off up right after it goes idle/shuts down. It spins up each disk sequentially alternatively of in parallel. I must have tested failing a drive prior to I place important data on it, just to see how nicely it rebuilds. I didn't, and now I hope never ever to have to test it. :-) |
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Rating: Review Date: 06/23/13 |
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I bought this unit because of the good sale cost & the reality that it functions will Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (though linux isn't documented). It's incredibly good that it has connections AND cables for USB two./eSATA, & Firewire 400몸. RAID form was quite easy to set up. The unit is extremely solidly constructed. The documentation for the jumper settings had been a little confusing since the image & the arrows explaining switch placement do not match up. If the jumpers are not set appropriately, added drives will show up as error/failed. When the jumpers had been set up effectively, the unit plugged into my iMac running OS X 10.six and worked completely by way of Disk Utility. I plugged the unit into 2 Linux (CentOS 5/RHEL5 -two.6.18 kernel) machines and by means of USB I was only able to see the unit as 2199GB (it ought to have been 6TB - 4x2TB at RAID five). This could have been a USB issue or my machine hardware situation. When I plugged it into the second linux machine through a Rosewill Silicon Image RC-209-EX PCI External e-SATA card it saw it as a 6TB volume. The trick to finding this to function below linux is employing the parted utility alternatively of fdisk. Here is the procedure that worked for me:as root: 1) fdisk -l to see the drive letter assigned to the unittwo) parted /dev/sdN <- N being the drive letter assigned3) mklabel gpt <- you need to have GPT to see volumes larger than two TB - other sorts work, too4) mkpart primary 6001G <- I wanted 1 huge partition - this can be any size5) quitsix) mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdN1Mount the drive & edit /etc/fstab |
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Rating: Review Date: 06/04/13 |
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Great throughput - running four terabyte disks in RAID ten connected via eSATA, and ATTO disk benchmark tells me I'm acquiring 104 MB/sec write and 131 MB/sec study anytime moving 64 KB or higher sized chunks. Down at 4 KB, obtaining 35 MB/sec create and 38 MB/sec read. So because this will be storage drive rather than technique drive and transfer sizes will be huge, I'm delighted! Quiet fan, quite lights, no trouble recognizing it in Win7/x64. Here is picky for you: Two dip switches to set disk count, and the variety of achievable disks for the device are 1, two, three, or 4. Now obtaining been involved in technologies for decades, I sort of assumed they'd count base two, with the drive count = two^N + 1. But noooooo....not related to base two at all. Spend attention to the manual!!! Device is hanging off a JMicron JMB362 eSATA port on an EVGA 790i ultra SLI mobo with 8 gigs. |
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Rating: Review Date: 05/31/13 |
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Low-cost, decent build quality, good mounting mechanism, excellent interfaces. Setup is a snap for those that merely study the manual, about 20 minutes max to set up all the drives and configure. Test rebuilds with spare drive have all been productive.Power management is extremely excellent, unit sleeps when unmounted. For these that complained about spinning each drive up individually - this is a significantly much better way to guarantee you can begin to hear when there is a difficulty. Monitoring ongoing drive well being is a weakness of this unit, If you are severe about your information, make certain you have backups, and also check the physical media with some other tool. Clever monitoring, for example, is not achievable. For the price, this is a strong unit. I have some issues about spare parts availability. |
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Rating: Review Date: 05/27/13 |
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was rapidly when it worked and was a excellent bargain at the time for about 𞲨 died appropriate more than the month return period so I have to go by way of the manif. to get a replacement if it occurs at all... these factors seem to have energy difficulties from some of the other posts I have read, beware! |
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Rating: Review Date: 04/07/13 |
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I connect this by way of Firewire 800 to my Macbook Pro (late 2008) to four x 2TB Seagate low power drives. It is fast, rather, and was a wonderful value when I bought it a couple weeks ago (贘, totally free shipping) I don't think there are any cons in my setup. |
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Rating: Review Date: 02/23/13 |
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Nicely built, solid, works as advertised. Quiet. Relatively rapid. Can't treat unique sized disks as either one particular large disk or as separate disks.As others have mentioned, superior guidelines are available on their website. Very good customer service. Unit I received had a fan that created bearing noise. Sent e mail to their consumer service, received a prompt reply and they are replacing the fan. Pleasant to deal with and helpful. |
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Rating: Review Date: 02/18/13 |
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Superb box for networking options, excellent produced, great seeking, nice pricing, if you need four bay Raid with the e-sata and firewire 800, this is the box you are longing for. I adore the fan can be either automatically controlled or manually controlled at any speed you wish (and its runs pretty silent on most of the time during auto mode, my drives stays cool after 2 days on auto fan setting), where my other four bay enclosure can top rated a desk best fan on noise. none so far! More than all, this box does specifically what I require it for. Highly advised! |
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Rating: Review Date: 02/05/13 |
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- Uncomplicated of Setup- Price- Flexibility - A small noisy- Fans I had been searching for a Raid-five selection for my iMac for some time. I purchased this primarily based on the mainly positive reviews. I bought the enclosure along with four Seagate 1TB hard drives. Unpacked the enclosure and installed the handles on each and every of the drives and slid them in. Hooked up the energy and Firewire 800 cable to my iMac. Inside 1 minute, the Mac recognized the un-initialized drive and took me to Disk Utility to partition and format the drive. I chosen the "quick format" and was up and running in a couple of minutes. Total time from opening the boxes to seeing the drive on my desktop was significantly less than 15 minutes. I hugely suggest downloading the users manual from MediaSonics website very first. I can't comment on reliability but given that it's only been 3 days, but I'm hopefully optimistic. |
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Rating: Review Date: 01/17/13 |
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Uncomplicated to set up, even for a novice No directions in box. Had to track down on internet |
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Rating: Review Date: 11/11/12 |
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External enclosure for four SATA II drives. Excellent construction, several interfaces. I bought this in the hope that RAID striping would have great throughput, but it is poor. 4 WD 500GB RE4 drives are reading at about 150MB/sec, and writing at about 100MB/sec for multi-gigabyte files, utilizing an eSata connection and a RAID SSD (LSI RAID, OCZ Vertex two 120GB drives) as the target/source. This throughput is nowhere near SATA II max speeds, so the internal controller is to blame. Follow directions to set up the RAID mode with out the drives in place as specified in the integrated pamphlet.When installing the drives you may possibly will need to tilt them up a bit to secure it to the backplane.On initial beginning up the 'Rebuild' and 'Error' lights will go on, do not worry about the error light, as apparently it is on for the duration of a rebuild. |
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Rating: Review Date: 09/29/12 |
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Tiny size enclosureCool and QuietCan't argue with the value Raid five apparantly not supported for WD20EARS 2TB Green drives I intitially set the box up with a RAID five array, but I kept obtaining an failure messages with 1 of the WD drives. I switched it to a different bay, very same message, so I exchanged that drive. Pretty speedy process to achieve, then I reset the mode, formatted once more, and I was superior to go. But then I got an additional drive failure light. Checked with Mediasonic and they pointed out that the WD20EARS is only developed for RAID or RAID 1. So I set up a RAID array, and went from below 6TB to much more that 7TB, with speeds of up to 130MB/S. The downside of that arrangement is that when the very first of the four drives fail, I shed all data in the array. I am for that reason not putting any essential data on the device: only imaging my DVD collection and recorded shows.I could switch to enterprise level drives, but, provided the substantial cost in executing so, I cannot justify that expense: it would double the price of the 20EARS |
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Rating: Review Date: 08/29/12 |
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As soon as it was set up, it worked like a charm. I took benefit of the cost-free 2TB Samsung HD deal and purchased one more three for a total of 8TB. Setting it up as a RAID5, I have five.45TB which is about ideal due to the fact I recognize you shed about 1 HD's worth of space in this mode. Tried setting it up using an eSATA connection initially and it only showed 1.45TB of space regardless of having 8TB installed. Couldn't figure out why until I read a overview someplace that setup could not operate utilizing eSATA so switched to USB, got it recognized then went back to eSATA for a final format. Strange. If not for this glitch I would've given it 4 eggs. |
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Rating: Review Date: 08/24/12 |
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A lot smaller than I thought, not particularly loud with fan on automatic and disks getting accessed aggressively (moving many TBs of files to them suitable soon after adding to Windows 7 64bit Pro).Installation was really effortless, the offered mini-screwdriver was a nice touch and helped me get every thing setup without having diving into my toolbox.Handles the 4 x 2TB Samsung's with out issue. Want to read on the web site to ensure you get every thing working appropriately as the provided documentation was virtually non-existent.Dip switches in the back below a plastic cover tells the method how many disks are attached. When you add this to windows 7, I had to initialize as GPT to have the total 6TB Raid5 space appear. From that point on, its been great. I'm using USB at the moment which is slow even if you set the device for performance in Windows (where you will need to use the "Safe to remove device" function) as an alternative of being able to just unplug the usb device safely with out any further action. Getting an actual transfer rate of about 8MB/s.Looking to add a Mini PCIe esata or firewire 800 card to get far better speed out of this. The HTPC its attached to is an Ion with a tv card already working with the 1x PCIx slot. Purchased this on particular for 赧.99 such as 2TB Samsung disk incorporate. I purchased an additional three matching Samsung 2TB disks to go with it.Will deal with 3TB disks according to the site. |
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Rating: Review Date: 08/01/12 |
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Little, Quiet, Price tag Will Erase All Drives upon entry!Can only run in particular configurations. Can't run a three Drive Raid , if utilizing a 1Tb + 1Tb + 750Gb + 500Gb, you will only see 2Tb.. Wish I would of recognized that before I purchased it. You get what you spend for. Seriously nice and small, absolutely wished I would have downloaded manual and study ahead of I bought. I was planning on employing mixed drive, but it appears greatest way to go is to use all the very same drives on this unit. |
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Rating: Review Date: 07/26/12 |
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Affordable, Solid Aluminum physique, Straightforward to Use, Sleep Mode is slow to wake up from. Happens as well often. I tested the RAID 1 by pulling out a drive although it was in operation and I lost no data. No hickup at all. Just plugged the very same drive back in and it rebuilt the RAID setup. I was nevertheless able to access my data on the drive whilst it was rebuilding. |
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Rating: Review Date: 07/23/12 |
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The enclosure looks actually sleek. Ultra quiet. 3 2 TB disks becomes about 3.7 TB in Raid five. I am acquiring sustained write speeds of about 70 mb/sec. This was whilst writing to this drive from three other discs on my laptop or computer, while streaming video from the disc. So far, none. I will update later. I am employing a PCI express Esata card (ฤ Rosewill RC-210). Vista didn't recognize it until I set the jumpers on the back of the unit as per the instructions (my wifes contribution was making me do this). Following that, it was a matter of seconds to initialize the drive volume and set it to NTFs. Other individuals have mentioned that this can take hours, but not if you do a quick format. |
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Rating: Review Date: 06/16/12 |
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-Functions as intended-Quick shipping-Supports multiple raid settings (JBOD, ,1,three,5,10)-extremely quiet None -Slow transfer speed over usb 2. (about 10 meg a sec), but that's to be expected. Probably a lot faster on esata or firewire 800 even. |
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Rating: Review Date: 06/15/12 |
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Uncomplicated to setup and appears stable no GUI and it's difficult to know what the box is undertaking unless you can guess from the icons on th eboc Running Raid 5 and will be testing it to see how long the rebuild takes. |
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Rating: Review Date: 05/21/12 |
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Reasonably affordable Stops operating (mine stopped soon after two months)No assistance If you can't get assistance in a timely style on a RAID array, it's as fantastic as useless. Presumably individuals acquire 1 of these because their information is crucial to them, so waiting a week for assistance doesn't function.Thankfully I had most of my data backed up on the net, but it nevertheless takes a couple of days to restore it all.Prevent THIS Item. I WISH THAT I HAD SPENT Much more FOR A Product THAT PROTECTED MY Information. |
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Rating: Review Date: 05/12/12 |
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Outstanding engineering and style. After backing up my ATI SB750 based content, setting this tiny box up took no time at all (once you view the two Youtube video's). My S/W based RAID5 has great read speed but write speed was unacceptable. It also does not rebuild a failed HD. This external, H/W based RAID5 box is Pc independent. A large plus if you own several PCs that want backing up. Although the H/W is outstanding, the assembly workmanship is a B-. There was a serious ding on the AL cover (the front edge exactly where it meets the plastic fascia). The ding is down to the bare AL metal. There was also a extended rub mark on a single side of the cover. Lastly, numerous black screws have heads that are stripped. Not great for such a high excellent box. Haven't carried out any eSATA transfers however to determine the write speed but so far, USB seems to be acceptable. Content with my buy particularly I got it with two of the very best 1TB HDs. |
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Rating: Review Date: 04/20/12 |
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small, quiet, affordable lack of support. the disk is a bit challenging to slot in adequately. take long hours to format the device (in my case, took a handful of days to format a the array built with 4 WD 2TB disks) |
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Rating: Review Date: 04/13/12 |
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This is a nice compact unit, and has all the connections, even though I only use Firewire 800 for my Mac and eSATA with my Computer. The fan is so quiet that I barely hear it in my area. The hardware raid embedded unit doesn't require any software installation. I can just bring this unit to my office and connect to my office computer and perform proper away The eSATA connection took me a tiny whilst to figure out and get it to operate. My Pc's mother board doesn't help Port Multiplier so I have to get a eSATA Express card to place in my Pc and connect to my unit. If your motherboard support Port Multiplier, then there is no need to get added card. I am pleased with my buy. Given that I only use Firewire and eSATA, so I don't even consider USB three. alternative. |
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Rating: Review Date: 04/07/12 |
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This item is so grate!! I can ultimately back up all my stuffs, and this item has been so great! I haven't have any problem with it, and now I can make certain all my important information will never be lost once more! none |
At present running four - 2tb drives in raid5. Functioning brilliantly. Haven't had a failure yet but am confident when I do the program will notify my in a timely manor and hold moving the way it says. none I have moved this about attempting to find a fantastic spot. Behind bed, in headboard fundamentally, makes also significantly noise when drives spin up late at evening during backups. Have it on dresser next to bed and I can barely hear it...but I can hear it. It is quite rather and the automatic fan runs extremely efficiently.