StarTech SAT3540U2E External Hard Drive Enclosure - 3.5" SATA to USB 2.0, 4 Drive, eSATA, Aluminum, Black (SAT3540U2E)Item#: S262-3214  |  Model#: SAT3540U2E

Well-built unit, unless you really want RAID

Pros: Solid construction, nice quiet multi-speed (selectable) fan. The door tends to fall off if you just breathe on it, but I can overlook that. Cons: I bought this unit already understanding that it did not come with RAID support on-board, so not faulting it there. I did the research on it knowing that the RAID card that I chose to use would have to support the FIS-switching mode of a port multiplier for this to be used for RAID implementation. Sounds simple enough - but after trying several eSATA RAID port multiplier cards with known FIS-switching chipsets, I could not get the unit to recognize the eSATA mode. Just to ensure it wasn't a bad unit, I plugged in the USB port and it worked just fine (no RAID, obviously) I have since found another one (Vantec NexStar HX4R) that has it's own built-in RAID controller and cost about $60 USD less. That makes this one a bit pricey for a standard non-RAID external enclosure.

Worked great until I had a drive failure...

I bought 1 of these a year or so ago and it worked fine (but I had no drive failures). So I bought 3 more. I configured all of them with 4-drives at RAID 5. Some time ago, I had a drive failure, I powered down the device, and replaced the drive. When I powered it back on, it did not rebuild. Fortunately, it was backed up and I chalked it up to an anomaly. About a month ago, I moved all of my data to one of the units and intended to backup to another unit. While I was in the process of backing it up, a drive failed. No problem, replace the drive and we'll be fine. Once again, it didn't rebuild. I've had to send the drives for recovery at $5,100. Two drive failures, two RAID failures. If you are going to use RAID 5 or 10, then invest in something else.

Worth the price

Compact, easy to configure; I had it up and running in 20 minutes. No RAID, but I didn't need one. I'd buy it again.

Great Item

nice and easy to use, extremely portable. I would buy this item again!

SIMPLE SETUP - SIMPLE TO USE!

Awesome device! I fell in love with this immediately. Very simple to install hard drives to this case. The instruction booklet is 2 small pages, and illustrations make it a snap. Installing drives is as simple as inserting them into the slots. The hardest part of installing this device was finding a spot in my power strip for it. The device is extremely quiet. Even with the fan running full speed, it's relatively quiet. Handles 4 drives of 3TB each (total of 12TB) just fine, even though it calls for max of 2TB each.

Great solution for mass storage

Beats having to try to set up a NAS on my network. I really like this unit, its compact, has a fan, power supply and every drive I have installed, it reads. If you want eSATA, make sure your computer hardware supports it. Mine did not, but that is ok. USB is fine for mass storage. I have some hard drives from the 90's I can still read. I have had many burned cdrw disks fail over the years. Great Value!

Great addition

I needed a solution to host a bunch of drives, but I didn't have room in my tower, I also wanted to be able to move the drives to another location if need be. I bought this with a eSATA card and man is it fast. I have put away my USB drives for good now. I do a lot of Video work and this works great for accessing my media fast and with out any bottlenecks. I highly recommend it.

Super price - Simple set up

From the fast shipping to the very easy set up this quad bay enclosure has been great. If you need a large storage unit and no headaches this is the unit to buy. We have 4 2TB drives installed used in single mode and have had 0% problems with this enclosure.

Great product

Great enclosure. I have 3 2TB and 1 1TB drives. I used windows 7 administrative tools to creat a spanned volume without RAID function which this enclosure does not have. So now I have a 1TB in the computer, 1TB external, 2 TB external, and a 4TB to back the whole thing up.

Excellent enclosure

Works great. Specs are wrong though. Says only 8TB. It works with four 3 TB drives like a charm. Total of 12 TB in this puppy with no problems. USB and esata both work. Shipping was also on time.