Mediasonic 4 Bay RAID 0,1,10,5 eSATA/USB 3 Enclosure (Refurb) $100 - 8 Bay (Refurb) $199

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arestavo

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/B003YFHEAC/ref=olp_tab_refurbished?ie=UTF8&condition=refurbished

Seems to be a fairly solid enclosure and for the price it's damn good - comes with a 1 year warranty. I picked one up to use with some old 1TB drives for use as a RAID 5 or RAID 10 array for my Xbox 1 S. Camelcamelcamel has the historic price at around $185 or so, and Newegg has it for $149.

There's also the 8 drive version which costs $349, but Amazon has a refurbished unit direct from Mediasonic for $199 with prime shipping and a 1 year warranty - https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B005GYDMYQ/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

It should be noted that the 8 bay version has two separate back planes, and to use all 8 drives in one array you have to set up the array as RAID 50. Otherwise you'll end up with two RAID 5 arrays, two RAID 10 arrays, etc. To use only 4 drives (and not the full 8) in an array, it's not bay 1-4 or 5-8, but rather 1, 3, 5, 7 or 2, 4, 6, 8 which is counter intuitive.



EDIT: The listings for both show that they require a port multiplier, but that only holds true if you are using it for JBOD - I found that out while researching it.

EDIT 2: Array expansion on these guys doesn't seem possible, so when you want to add more drives - say you want to go from a 3 drive RAID 5 to a 4 drive RAID 5 - it will wipe out the data. So, start out with what you want drive wise, or have the means to back up all of your data for when you do decide to make the array larger.
 
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Been using one of these for about 2 years now. Using the eSATA port with an port multiplier aware add-in card. Shows up as 4 seperate drives to the OS. Have had zero problems with it. There were complaints about the power supply crapping out, but I keep mine on a battery backup/conditioner, so that may help with longevity. Most of the issues with this revolve around the USB connection, but I have never used it.
 
Hope the power supply is better than the ones in Sans Digital units.
Those seem to give up the ghost after a few years.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
Hope the power supply is better than the ones in Sans Digital units.
Those seem to give up the ghost after a few years.
Click to expand...

I've read about a couple of power supply failures from Amazon and Newegg reviews (some soon after purchase, some after 2 years), but it didn't seem like a common problem. Here's hoping my UPS will keep it going for a long time because I changed my order to the 8 bay version for some RAID 50 action on my Xbox One S.

Why, no, I don't have a RAID problem... No problem at all...... (Hides his 8X5TB RAID 6 game rig and 8X3TB RAID 6 server away)
 
Looks like the 4 Bay is slowly going up in price.

The 8 Bay refurbished unit is staying at $199 for now.
 
arestavo said:
Why, no, I don't have a RAID problem... No problem at all...... (Hides his 8X5TB RAID 6 game rig and 8X3TB RAID 6 server away)
Click to expand...
I don't have a RAID problem either!
Well, unless you count literally RAID-1-ing an entire server's hardware 1,000 miles apart (the one in my sig has a twin in IA) :p
 
arestavo said:
I've read about a couple of power supply failures from Amazon and Newegg reviews (some soon after purchase, some after 2 years), but it didn't seem like a common problem.
Click to expand...

Although the plug is a 4 pin plug, looking at the actual wiring on mine, I didn't see why I couldn't cut off the cable with the plug and put a molex connector on the cut end and just use an ATX supply should the day ever come.
 
westrock2000 said:
Although the plug is a 4 pin plug, looking at the actual wiring on mine, I didn't see why I couldn't cut off the cable with the plug and put a molex connector on the cut end and just use an ATX supply should the day ever come.
Click to expand...

The 8 bay version looks to have a standard NEMA 5-15(?) power receptacle - definitely different than the 4 bay version.
 
arestavo said:
Looks like the 4 Bay is slowly going up in price.

The 8 Bay refurbished unit is staying at $199 for now.
Click to expand...

I ended up snagging the refurb 4 bay from mediasonic with the one year warranty for $100. Now I just need a drop on pricing for some drives to replace my 6tb setup I'm using for media now, and possibly go for something a bit more light weight than my 2500k, like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01M3TUOW4/
 
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westrock2000 said:
Although the plug is a 4 pin plug, looking at the actual wiring on mine, I didn't see why I couldn't cut off the cable with the plug and put a molex connector on the cut end and just use an ATX supply should the day ever come.
Click to expand...
Yes, you can. It's what I did with an old Sans Digital TR4M+B. Bought it new with a RocketRAID 622 for ~$99 IIRC, and they wanted $69 for a new PSU.
I said screw that and powered it with a spare Corsair 430CX :)
 
Looks like the 4 Bay is up to $150 new, but the Refurb is still $99.99. Edited the OP to the refurb option.

The 8 Bay refurb is still going for 199.
 
westrock2000 said:
You will need to look up if you particular server model supports port multiplication (if you want to see each drive separately). Otherwise you would have to rely on the internal built-in RAID of this device (which I can't comment on).

http://homeservershow.com/forums/in...lly-enabled-port-multiplier-on-esata/?p=50318
Click to expand...
Yeah, I have the tweaked BIOS that should enable port multiplication. It would be cool to have a separate enclosure for another RAID volume.
 
Apart from the power supply going kaput, the couple of Sans Digital 4 and 8-bay enclosures I use have been going strong 24/7/365 for the past few years
without issues (using the "crappy" RocketRAID 642 cards no less).

No SMART transfer errors, no silent bit corruption (regular hash checks). Used with 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB and 8TB drives.
 
Got my (edit: refurb) 8 bay ProRaid in today and loaded up some of my languishing 1TB 7200 RPM Barracudas for some RAID 50 action. The unit looked brand spanking new to me - no cables out of place, screws new, plastic still on the covers. And it was the revision 3 model which can support 8TB drives (earlier revisions only supported 6TB and can't be updated).

You gotta be fast on the initial RAID choice setup or it powers off before you can set it. Even though it showed RAID 50 as the default, I had to scroll through the options and then press the hidden initialize button to get it to work. It's in the instructions, but no mention of how much time you have.

Reads are in the 220MB/s range, writes are abysmal at 176KB/s to 17MB/s even with write caching disabled - emailed their support to see if there is a fix.

After it's done doing a full format (trying to catch any drives on their way out since they're quite old) I'll hook it up to the Xbox and see how it works.

Edit: full format stalled at 100%. Stopped it and did a quick format, still shit for write speeds. No word yet from support and their forums have been upgrading for 3 days straight. Installed in the Xbox One and man oh man does copying games to it take a long ass time - read speeds are just fine.
 
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I've had one of these for a few years with 4 1tb WD's in raid 5.

I use it to store my shadow copies from Win10.

Frankly, it's reliability has been meh.

Fairly often Windows tells me to re-attach my backup drive because it has disconnected.
 
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