Interesting product. As I was reading though, I kept thinking "How would I be able to use something like this?" I couldn't find in my mind any real scenario where this would be better than a NAS, until the last page where it was mentioned you could use this to help rebuild a RAID array. I'd love to see a more in-depth article/HOWTO on this process!
In general, this would be quite a bit faster than a NAS. So if you have any kind of data that's big but only needs to be accessed by a single computer (say, you're doing video production) these sorts of DAS enclosures are a pretty common sight.
They're also useful for expanding a homebuilt NAS or file server.
I don't see the value of testing this case with all SSDs instead of spinners. The thermal and power usage benchmarks are best-case scenarios, thanks to that decision.
Recently ran out of SATA ports on my tower and was seriously considering adding one of these devices to my collection. ~200MB/s write and ~100MB/s read is perfect for my photo/raw footage collection mid tier storage. Mind doing a few more of these on 5-10 drive switched enclosures? The cost savings compared to something like a drobo when all you want is direct attached storage is huge.
DAS devices have a couple other uses. They are similar to external drives, though they might logically be a RAID device, so they let you choose which volumes are on based on your current needs. This is good because it saves power and reduces noise. Further, if you can use DAS devices to have a single SSD in your build and all your hard drives in the DAS then you reduce the amount of heat in your PC. I'd much rather have 8 drives in a separate box with a separate PSU and fan than try to get my tower to also stay cool with 8 HDDs stuffed in it, which also impede airflow as they dump extra heat into the system.
Given that you seem to found a system/setup that works better for you - do you think that you would be able to re-test the Mediasonic Probox because I have a feeling that some of the speed limitations (like around 180 Mbps regardless whether it was USB 3.0 or eSATA) might be due to hardware/infrastructure/setup limitation and might not actually truly represent the performance of the enclosure?
I really don't see the benefit of spending this much. There are better and cheaper alternative external enclosures with 4 bays for < 1/2 the price for each. For example the Media Sonic HF2-SU35L handles 4 bays eSATA & USB3 for $99/each. Get two and you are at 2/3'rd the price of this one unit. If one enclosure fails you aren't SOL.
Get a PCIe eSATA card with two ports/2 channels. This will offload some of the burden
These mega NAS builds are for professionals only with serious NAS storage requirements. (Business web servers, data archives, code archives, photograph databases, etc...) Again not really useful for 99.5% of the readers here. Cool to look at, but not practical for the vast vast majority of us.
I'm not sure what the Media Sonic HF2-SU35L is, because it doesn't exist. Perhaps the HF2-SU3S2 is what you were referring to? In any case, it may be cheaper but it CERTAINLY isn't better. The build quality isn't good, and far worse, the transfer speeds are awful compared to the Startech product. If you want dirt cheap, get 2 of the HF2-SU3S2. If you want something that works well, get the Startech product.
As the review noted, this isn't a NAS device so I'm not sure why you are ranting about them. This is a DAS. It seems to me YOU don't need one so you don't think anyone else does either.
I know the difference between a NAS and a DAS. Most towers are more then capable of holding 10+ drives.
If you honestly need that much storage space then chances are you are running a server farm for some medium to large business. In that case you want redundant backups (failover). So running something like this on a desktop environment isn't practical.
If you need more then that then you are going redundant failover NAS and adding on a DAS to that NAS when the NAS runs out of storage.
And you are correct it is a HF2-SU3S2. I never claimed it was better. Just that is was a cheaper alternative. And if one hardware case goes down, then you aren't ham stringed with the loss of 8 drives versus 4. (If you set it up properly)
Now as to your argument that just because 99.5% of us don't need it translates as "I don't need it" would be incorrect. It's a NICHE product AT BEST. If you TRULY need this much storage, then you are a profesional with mission critical data, and you aren't going to buy a niche product without top TIER 1 support, warranty, and reputation behind it.
"The product page also doesn't make it clear that a SATA chipset with port multiplier support is needed for accessing multiple disks in the array over an eSATA connection."
You really need to emphasise this more. It's actually rather common for eSATA ports to not support this, especially Intel ones.
It would be nice to see how accessing two drives at the same time affects the speed. I have an old Silicon Image SATA 300 based 4-port multiplier box (Rosewill branded). One drive has okay speed, but if I start accessing two, the switching mechanism combined with the latency of conventional hard drives mean read or write speeds drop to around 25% of their original - with only two drives being accessed. I could imagine RAID on any of these boxes with hard drives would be pretty miserable. The eSATA card that came with mine had softRAID capabilities, but I immediately flashed it to the non-RAID firmware.
completely stupid idea and useless logic with sata multiplexer. the enclosure would be thousand time more useful with two external sas ports (each port is for 4 disks). then you dont need any chip inside, only good quality wiring and your computer can control fully all 8 disks, you can get full speed 8x6Gb/s. eSATA and SATA is completeley useless. You can buy 8 port SAS controller for $100. if You need SATA for any sake then You can use SATA disks, or You already have SATA then You can use SATA disks, SATA disks are compatible with SAS controllers. but it is good idea to buy SAS disks instead SATA, the price is almost the same, I mean the same model with SATA and SAS are only 2-5% differrence in price. if You prefer very low performance disks like WD-RED then You stick with SATA, but all 7200 disks are available with SAS and SATA. please remember SAS are not only faster (full duplex, SATA is half duplex - cant read and write at the same time) but are more solid, accept longer cables and have more advanced error correction.
So if I move all 6 SATA drives that I have in my computer case to a DAS, will I lose any data or will Windows show up these 6 drives as though they were attached to the internal SATA connections in my case? Also is there one connection from the DAS to the computer case? If so, wouldnt operating multiple drives in tandem be a problem since the available bandwidth (USB 3/ eSATA etc) are limited?
This looks like a neat product. Typically I would avoid things from brands that aren't well-known, and that would include Star Tech, but...
The only item I've purchased from this company was a 25u 4-post server rack for my home setup. Their packaging could be improved, as two arrived with over 50% of the parts missing. Of course, the fault lies with the couriers (one attempt with UPS, one with FedEx). As far as the rack itself -- it was a great price and while it is a no-frills rack, it's very well-built. It's holding a large rackmount PSU, a filled 24-bay storage enclosure/server, two switches, rackmount PDU, patch panels, and even a monitor and keyboard up top and is very sturdy. I will consider their other products in the future.
I'm surprised that it didn't come with the esata card. Most of these types of boxes come with it. Though you can buy a cheap Highpoint 622 for 30 bucks that handles 10 drives, you shouldn't have to.
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jardows2 - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
Interesting product. As I was reading though, I kept thinking "How would I be able to use something like this?" I couldn't find in my mind any real scenario where this would be better than a NAS, until the last page where it was mentioned you could use this to help rebuild a RAID array. I'd love to see a more in-depth article/HOWTO on this process!dave_the_nerd - Thursday, August 13, 2015 - link
In general, this would be quite a bit faster than a NAS. So if you have any kind of data that's big but only needs to be accessed by a single computer (say, you're doing video production) these sorts of DAS enclosures are a pretty common sight.They're also useful for expanding a homebuilt NAS or file server.
Visual - Friday, August 21, 2015 - link
Um. Plug this in the USB port of most any home router made in the past decade, and you have a NAS.dhotay - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
I don't see the value of testing this case with all SSDs instead of spinners. The thermal and power usage benchmarks are best-case scenarios, thanks to that decision.basroil - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
Recently ran out of SATA ports on my tower and was seriously considering adding one of these devices to my collection. ~200MB/s write and ~100MB/s read is perfect for my photo/raw footage collection mid tier storage. Mind doing a few more of these on 5-10 drive switched enclosures? The cost savings compared to something like a drobo when all you want is direct attached storage is huge.Navvie - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
I have a similar 4 bay JBOD e-SATA enclosure connected to my Gen8 microserver NAS. Adds more drive capacity without having to buy a new machine.I'd struggle to come up with any other use for them. Certainly my next NAS build will have more internal bays.
joex4444 - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
DAS devices have a couple other uses. They are similar to external drives, though they might logically be a RAID device, so they let you choose which volumes are on based on your current needs. This is good because it saves power and reduces noise. Further, if you can use DAS devices to have a single SSD in your build and all your hard drives in the DAS then you reduce the amount of heat in your PC. I'd much rather have 8 drives in a separate box with a separate PSU and fan than try to get my tower to also stay cool with 8 HDDs stuffed in it, which also impede airflow as they dump extra heat into the system.karpodiem - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
Is it possible to do software RAID6 in Linux if all eight drives were empty?digitalgriffin - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
With ZFS you could. However this eSATA enclosure chip only has hardware JBODfackamato - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
So software RAID6 in Linux would work great then?BMNify - Wednesday, August 12, 2015 - link
you could probably do it with the £99 Orico 9548RU3 Aluminum 4 Bay USB3.0 3.5 inch Hard Disk SATA HDD RAID Enclosure Bhttp://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Orico-9548RU3-Aluminum-4...
alpha754293 - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
Given that you seem to found a system/setup that works better for you - do you think that you would be able to re-test the Mediasonic Probox because I have a feeling that some of the speed limitations (like around 180 Mbps regardless whether it was USB 3.0 or eSATA) might be due to hardware/infrastructure/setup limitation and might not actually truly represent the performance of the enclosure?digitalgriffin - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
I really don't see the benefit of spending this much. There are better and cheaper alternative external enclosures with 4 bays for < 1/2 the price for each. For example the Media Sonic HF2-SU35L handles 4 bays eSATA & USB3 for $99/each. Get two and you are at 2/3'rd the price of this one unit. If one enclosure fails you aren't SOL.Get a PCIe eSATA card with two ports/2 channels. This will offload some of the burden
These mega NAS builds are for professionals only with serious NAS storage requirements. (Business web servers, data archives, code archives, photograph databases, etc...) Again not really useful for 99.5% of the readers here. Cool to look at, but not practical for the vast vast majority of us.
herky - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
I'm not sure what the Media Sonic HF2-SU35L is, because it doesn't exist. Perhaps the HF2-SU3S2 is what you were referring to? In any case, it may be cheaper but it CERTAINLY isn't better. The build quality isn't good, and far worse, the transfer speeds are awful compared to the Startech product. If you want dirt cheap, get 2 of the HF2-SU3S2. If you want something that works well, get the Startech product.As the review noted, this isn't a NAS device so I'm not sure why you are ranting about them. This is a DAS. It seems to me YOU don't need one so you don't think anyone else does either.
digitalgriffin - Thursday, August 13, 2015 - link
I know the difference between a NAS and a DAS. Most towers are more then capable of holding 10+ drives.If you honestly need that much storage space then chances are you are running a server farm for some medium to large business. In that case you want redundant backups (failover). So running something like this on a desktop environment isn't practical.
If you need more then that then you are going redundant failover NAS and adding on a DAS to that NAS when the NAS runs out of storage.
And you are correct it is a HF2-SU3S2. I never claimed it was better. Just that is was a cheaper alternative. And if one hardware case goes down, then you aren't ham stringed with the loss of 8 drives versus 4. (If you set it up properly)
Now as to your argument that just because 99.5% of us don't need it translates as "I don't need it" would be incorrect. It's a NICHE product AT BEST. If you TRULY need this much storage, then you are a profesional with mission critical data, and you aren't going to buy a niche product without top TIER 1 support, warranty, and reputation behind it.
This does not have that. Sorry.
Gigaplex - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
"The product page also doesn't make it clear that a SATA chipset with port multiplier support is needed for accessing multiple disks in the array over an eSATA connection."You really need to emphasise this more. It's actually rather common for eSATA ports to not support this, especially Intel ones.
dtgoodwin - Wednesday, August 12, 2015 - link
It would be nice to see how accessing two drives at the same time affects the speed. I have an old Silicon Image SATA 300 based 4-port multiplier box (Rosewill branded). One drive has okay speed, but if I start accessing two, the switching mechanism combined with the latency of conventional hard drives mean read or write speeds drop to around 25% of their original - with only two drives being accessed. I could imagine RAID on any of these boxes with hard drives would be pretty miserable. The eSATA card that came with mine had softRAID capabilities, but I immediately flashed it to the non-RAID firmware.dzezik - Wednesday, August 12, 2015 - link
completely stupid idea and useless logic with sata multiplexer.the enclosure would be thousand time more useful with two external sas ports (each port is for 4 disks). then you dont need any chip inside, only good quality wiring and your computer can control fully all 8 disks, you can get full speed 8x6Gb/s. eSATA and SATA is completeley useless. You can buy 8 port SAS controller for $100. if You need SATA for any sake then You can use SATA disks, or You already have SATA then You can use SATA disks, SATA disks are compatible with SAS controllers. but it is good idea to buy SAS disks instead SATA, the price is almost the same, I mean the same model with SATA and SAS are only 2-5% differrence in price. if You prefer very low performance disks like WD-RED then You stick with SATA, but all 7200 disks are available with SAS and SATA. please remember SAS are not only faster (full duplex, SATA is half duplex - cant read and write at the same time) but are more solid, accept longer cables and have more advanced error correction.
experttech - Thursday, August 13, 2015 - link
So if I move all 6 SATA drives that I have in my computer case to a DAS, will I lose any data or will Windows show up these 6 drives as though they were attached to the internal SATA connections in my case? Also is there one connection from the DAS to the computer case? If so, wouldnt operating multiple drives in tandem be a problem since the available bandwidth (USB 3/ eSATA etc) are limited?Jorsher - Friday, August 14, 2015 - link
This looks like a neat product. Typically I would avoid things from brands that aren't well-known, and that would include Star Tech, but...The only item I've purchased from this company was a 25u 4-post server rack for my home setup. Their packaging could be improved, as two arrived with over 50% of the parts missing. Of course, the fault lies with the couriers (one attempt with UPS, one with FedEx). As far as the rack itself -- it was a great price and while it is a no-frills rack, it's very well-built. It's holding a large rackmount PSU, a filled 24-bay storage enclosure/server, two switches, rackmount PDU, patch panels, and even a monitor and keyboard up top and is very sturdy. I will consider their other products in the future.
room200 - Saturday, August 15, 2015 - link
I'm surprised that it didn't come with the esata card. Most of these types of boxes come with it. Though you can buy a cheap Highpoint 622 for 30 bucks that handles 10 drives, you shouldn't have to.