SANS DIGITAL TR4U-B 4 Bay SATA to USB 2.0 JBOD / Spanning Enclosure

Comment:
If you are looking for JBOD mode, forget it. Only if you happen to have four 500 GB drives sitting around unused, is this an economical solution.As an enclosure for drives in regular mode, this unit is not bad. The main problem is heat build-up. The unit does have a fan and plenty of ventilation holes. Unfortunately, none of those holes are on the top. Consequently, the top most drive will overheat after 8 hours or so of continuous use. The bottom drive sits directly over the power supply, so that drive might also overheat. I currently only have three drives plugged into mine...Leaving the door off helps with the heat problem. I will probably see if my wife can add some ventilation holes with her dremel tool to permanently solve the problem.This is not listed as a hot swappable device. However, with the way the drives slide in and out, it is tempting to try. What I have found, is if I add a drive to an empty bay, it is not recognized until I power cycle the unit. However, if I swap drives, the new drive is recognized right away by the unit. However, there is no signal sent to the OS to indicate the drive swap. Under Fedora Linux, you can manually run "partprobe" to have Linux load the partition table for the swapped drive. I don't know if there is equivalent Windows command.