StarTech.com 3.5-Inch 4-Drive eSATA USB Multi Bay External Hard Drive Enclosure SAT3540U2E (Black) Best Price
StarTech.com 3.5-Inch 4-Drive eSATA USB Multi Bay External Hard Drive Enclosure SAT3540U2E (Black)
Rating:
List Price: $ 214.99
best Price :$ 153.47
this best price old post please check price update(price will lower or up)
- Support for up to 4 drives provide large amounts of storage with a choice of high speed interfaces from USB 2.0 or eSATA
- The removable front cover and accessible drive bays allows drives to be replaced easily in case of failure or upgraded
- An 80mm controllable cooling fan and aluminum chassis help to keep drives from overheating
- High Speed USB 2.0 host interface, with transfer rates up to 480Mbps
- SATA revision 2 compliant eSATA host interface with transfer rates up to 3.0Gbps
- 80mm cooling fan with 4 selectable speeds: Low, Med, High, Auto
- Manually switchable between eSATA and USB host interfaces
- Removable front cover and accessible drive trays
StarTech.com’s SAT3540U2E Multi Bay External Hard Drive Enclosure is a high-performance 4-drive SATA enclosure connected to host systems through eSATA and/or USB. The enclosure can be connected to two systems simultaneously, one through USB and one through eSATA, allowing users to share installed SATA hard drives between the computers by switching host connections back and forth at the touch of a button. The 4-drive SATA enclosure works with high capacity 3.5in Serial ATA hard drives (SATA, SATA II, SATA III) and features a removable front cover that ensures easy access while installing or removing the drives.
List Price:$ 214.99
best Price :$ 153.47
this best price old post please check price update(price will lower or up)
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about 10 months ago
Works Great – Neat Design,
My goal was to purchase a 4 drive USB enclosure that supported the latest 2TB drives. I have a bunch of these drives so I can test right away.
My first attempt was the Sans Digital TowerRAID TR4U-B 4 Bay SATA to USB 2.0 JBOD/Spanning Enclosure (Black):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001LF40OU/ref=oss_product
Based on the reviews you would think this would work well, and also based on the description “Supports the latest 2TB Hard Drive. Up to 8TB in storage capacity. (*Max. 2TB volume when in Spanning mode).” You would think it’s the best choice. Think again. I owned 2 of these, one from newegg and one from Amazon. I got one from newegg tried it with a few 2TB drives, and it does NOT recognize them. I thought that maybe the newegg model was older so I contacted Sans Digital for support, they replied promptly asking me for the makes/serials of the drives that I used. I sent them high resolution pictures of the drives that don’t work. No reply. I ordered another one from Amazon, thinking that it must support 2TB drives, because it says so in the description. Wrong again. Returning as we speak.
So I popped the Sans Digital from newegg open to find the chipset that it’s using. It was an IDE chipset and had the markings “D8927GC-002″ on it. Strange, because this is a SATA box. I tracked the company that makes these to a Japanese company named Workbit. The chip is also called the USAT-3.
Sans Digital Chipset Datasheets:
[..]
60Mhz whoopie! It’s kind of old.
Then, the Sans Digital uses an IDE to SATA bridge made by CFI. CFI no longer exists ([..]) and so I couldn’t find any specs on that.
This was not the storage box I was looking for, it had no chance of supporting the 2TB drives that I wanted. Right now I’m trying to return both of these.
So I did some research on this StarTech model and their website clearly states what chipset they use. A sure sign that these guys are not hiding anything.
Here is the datasheet:
[..]
I am very impressed with this model.
Advantages over Sans Digital:
* Properly supports 2TB drives.
* Modern chipset.
* Smaller form factor. Yes, this houses 4 drives but is significantly smaller that the Sans Digital model.
* Better design. No comparison here from the finish on the outside to all the details inside, this is a FAR superior unit.
* Drives have attachable handles for easy removal. These also provide padding and ensure a secure connection then the spring loaded front bracket is closed.
* Has a metal bracket that ensures the drives are well secured in the unit, screw-less design here. The drive handles are however attached once using 2 screws, but once attached, drive can be swapped in and out very easily. Brilliant.
* Front spring push-locked door. This is actually removable, if you need quick access to swap the drives often. Again, brilliant.
* Detailed indicator lights on the front.
* Can connect both esata and USB at the same time to 2 different computers. Swap between which computer will see the device with a push button on the front (I did not try this).
* Silent fan, controlled by a thermistor (temperature sensor). Also can be put into manual mode.
* Each drive has an activity indicator light. It’s integrated in a very slick way with the front bezel.
Cons:
* There MUST be a drive in the TOP slot or else the USB will not connect. This is probably what one of the reviewers was experiencing.
* Drive handles may be a problem if swapping drives often between different make enclosures. This is not the case for me, and you can actually not use them if you want to.
Just to reiterate the above point, if there is no drive in the first TOP slot, the unit will not power on properly and will not be recognized by your computer.
This seems like a great unit, they should be selling more of these.
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|about 10 months ago
Simply the best external storage solution,
If you have a home theater pc (ie low wattage, 24/7 computer) this is exactly the storage solution you want.
This is a very solid piece of equipment. The hard drive arrangement, fans, metal case all feel very well constructed. If you are connecting with USB2, this baby is literally plug and play.
This enclosure is perfect if you just don’t have enough external enclosures for all your hard drives. I leave this device connected to a server 24/7 and it is significantly cheaper than a 4 bay NAS or separate enclosures.
There are only 2 downsides to this device:
1. ESATA: if you don’t have something called “port multiplier technology” on your computer, only one hard drive will show up when you are connected to the ESATA port. It seems like this is a deficiency on the computer and not the enclosure, but still, it’s a downside.
2. Be very careful when plugging in the usb cable to this device. It uses the larger square-like USB connector but since the enslosure’s USB port is not as solid as the rest of the unit, it is possible to put this cable in upside-down if you are not paying attention. This will short out the device and USB won’t work anymore. I think this happened to one of the other reviewers. It happened to me but I just sent this back to amazon and got another one the next day. No big deal; just something to be aware of.
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|about 10 months ago
just want i wanted,
Ok, this is a 4 bay enclosure without raid option. it will mount 1 – 4 of your drives via usb (which i am using) or esata(i havent tried yet).
i put in my 4 sata drives that were full with files and it mounted perfectly on my imac 27 i7.
i did not want any raid function, and as far as i know there isnt any raid function with this model.
if you just want to consolidate 4 drives into 1 enclosure and mount them, this is is.
i would have liked firewire 800 but this only has usb and esata.
there is a fan in the back that you can choose the speed on the face i guess…but i have to look into that.
the drives also slide right into the trays, no screws
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