Introduction
The Sans Digital TowerRAID TR4M-B Enclosure is a Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) unit. A DAS unit refers to a device that is directly attached to a server or workstation, without a network in between. What this allows a WHS user, such as myself, to do is provide an opportunity to increase storage capacity beyond what is possible in the physical WHS computer. In my case, I have plenty of bays to add additional drives, but my motherboard supports only 4 SATA on-board devices. Using today’s 1TB drives, I would be nominally limited to 4TB’s of storage capacity. Using one of Sans Digital’s optional host adapters, it is possible to create an array of TR4M-B devices, which use port replication, to obtain a total WHS capacity of 20TB using a JBOD configuration. For those of you out there that must have the security of a RAID array, the Sans Digital device will allow you do this in a way that is transparent to WHS. Very nice!
So who is Sans Digital? From the Sans Digital website:
Sans Digital is a provider of high capacity, multi-functional advanced storage solutions. These storage units can be used in home offices, small and medium-sized businesses, video editing, data backup, surveillance systems and many other industries. Sans Digital’s products provide great solutions for companies and individuals across the world who need effective and reliable data storage systems.
Technology and Service Differentiation
Sans Digital offers storage products for RAID and bare-bone systems. With technologically advanced products, Sans Digital ensures that the products will meet the customers’ needs. By incorporating the latest technology, Sans Digital sets the standard in the storage industry.Product and Service Innovation
Sans Digital offers products and services that are exclusively unique, which help customers improve their productivity. With over 10 years of experience offering complete storage solutions, Sans Digital’s products have come to be distinct with their unmatched technology.Business Productivity Solutions
Every customer is different and Sans Digital recognizes that one size fits all storage solutions are unlikely to meet everyone’s requests. As a result, Sans Digital joined a wide variety of industry leaders to offer storage applications that are specific to various industries. This includes off-the-shelf or fully customized solutions.Audiences
Sans Digital’s main customers include business and enterprise, government and education, creative professionals, as well as consumer and SOHO, which are reached through our Distributors, System Integrators, Value-Added-Resellers, and Dealers.Sans Digital specializes in, but is not limited to, serving these vertical industries:
Audio-Video Editing, Data Backup, Surveillance Systems, Database Storage, Imaging, File Servers, and etc.
Specifications
Once again, from the Sans Digital website:
Overview
The TowerRAID TR4M-B is a compact RAID tower utilizing the latest SATA II port feature, where one single eSATA cable connects to four 3Gpps SATA II hard drives. Designed with easy installation in mind, the trayless TR4M-B allows instant installation by simply inserting the hard drives after opening the protective ventilating cover. It supports JBOD and Spanning modes for instant storage expansion. It also supports RAID 0, 1 0+1, 5, 5+spare via included software utility, for high performance and hard drive redundancy. The package includes a 2-port eSATA PCIe card at no additional cost, which allows the connection between two TR4M units (up to 8 hard drives) using only two cables. PCI/PCI-X options are also available.
Features
- Accesses four hard drives using only one cable.
- Host interface:
- eSATA with Port Multiplier.
- Supports RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 5+ spare, spanning and JBOD using bundles software utilities.
- Drive interface: 4 x 3.5″ SATA I / SATA II Hard drive.
- Supports the latest 1TB Hard Drive. Up to 4TB in storage capacity.
- Supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2003.
- Supports MAC and Linux. (Please note that the host adapter card is based on Silicon Image chipset, which currently only support up to MAC OS 10.5.1 by Silicon Image.)
Specifications
| Model | TR4M-B |
| Form Factor | Compact Tower |
| HDD Trays | 4 Hot-Swappable 3.5″ |
| RAID Level | RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 5+spare, spanning and JBOD (using bundled utilities) |
| Maximum Capacity | 4TB |
| Auto Rebuilding | N/A |
| Hot-Spare | N/A |
| Host Interface & Transfer Rate | eSATA 3Gbps (via Port Multiplier) |
| Drive Interface | 4 x 3.5” SATA I/ SATA II |
| Cooling Fan | 3.15″ Ball Bearing Fan |
| Power Supply | 150W (120V-240V) |
| Control Interface | N/A |
| Status Indicators | Power LED and 4 * Access LED |
| Dimension (in) | 5.3″W x 7.1″H x 10.0″D |
| Weight (lb) | 5.9 |
| Safety Regulations | CE, FCC, UL |
| Limited Warranty | 1 Years |
| Package Contents | TR4M-B (1) Power Cord (1) eSATA Cable (1) 2-Port eSATA PCIe Adapter Card (1) Screws (1 set) Quick Installation Manual & CD (1) |
Available Models
| Model | TR4M-B | TR4M-B1T | TR4M-B2T | TR4M-B3T | TR4M-B4T |
| Hard Drive | No HDD | SATA II * 4 250GB | SATA II * 4 500GB | SATA II * 4 750GB | SATA II * 4 1TB |
| Total Storage Size | N/A | 1000GB = 1TB | 2000GB = 2TB | 3000GB = 3TB | 4000GB = 4TB |
Optional Accessories
- HA-SAN-4ESPCIX – PCI-X eSATA 4 Port Host Adapter
- Silicon Image SIL3124.
- Supports SATA II, up to 3.0Gb/s.
- Supports NCQ and LCQ.
- HA-DAT-4ESPCIE – Four eSTATA Ports PCI-Express (x8) Host Adapter
- Fully compliant with SATA I and SATA II.
- Supports Serial ATA Generation 2 transfer rate of 3.0 Gbps.
What’s In the Box
The TR4M-B|TR4M comes in a box with pictures of the main components inside, as well as as list a features, specifications and hardware connections on the various sides. The TR4M-B has the black enclosure while the TR4M has the silver enclosure. The box even includes a nice carrying handle.
When you open the box, the first item you will find inside is small placard that provides general contact information as well as technical contact information. This is a nice touch that should be the first item that any buyer should see with any consumer device. The box that you see first inside contains the ESATA card, DVD disk, and other accessories for the unit.
Burrowing down the past this box, you will find the the actual DAS enclosure and 4 small boxes tightly packaged around this enclosure. These boxes contain the physical hard drives. According to Sans Digital:
The hard drive bundles are not prepackaged at the factory to prevent hardware damage during shipment. They are all freshly installed and tested by our technical team. Once the testing has been completed, the hard drives are then taken out and packaged separately for the same reason. This is usually the case with units that require more than 2 hard drives, because with the weight of these drives, many things could go wrong during shipping. If the units come with hard drive trays, the hard drives are left within the trays when repackaged, so the customers simply need to plug the trays back into the unit. All of this is to ensure our customers receive thoroughly tested units, requiring as little installation as possible, so they could have the units up and running right away.
When you first see the unopened box, one must think that the TR4M-B is quite large. Looks can deceiving, however. The physical TR4M-B enclosure measures only 5.3″W x 7.1″H x 10.0″D. It is quite small and very unobtrusive. And did I mention that is has a very nice shiny black casing?
What is shown below are the items included in the accessory box. eSATA card, low profile bracket for the card, power cord, eSATA cable, DVD containing drivers and manuals, and a small bag containing the screws to attach the hard drives inside the enclosure.
The eSATA card and bracket are shown below after removal from their protective anti-static bag. The card itself contains 2 external eSATA ports. The chipset is a common Silicon Images SiI 3132 controller.
Installation
As stated by Sans Digital, installation of the hard drives is a relatively simple process. Remove 3 thumb screws from the back of enclosure, lift off the top cover, open the mesh front door, and slide in the drives. Secure the drives with the included thumb screws, reassemble the cover, and the unit is ready to hook up to your computer
One of the advertised features of the TR4M-B device is hot-swap capability. Installing the hard drives as indicated above eliminates this capability. I posed the question to Sans Digital regarding this installation procedure and their response was:
Our customers usually take advantage of the hotswap feature by simply sliding the hard drives into the unit from the front without taking off the top case. However, if the unit needs to be frequently moved around, we recommend the hard drive to be secured by screws to stop them from sliding out.
So, if one does not intend to move the unit after intial placement, all you need to do is open the front door and slide in the hard drives. One door, 4 hard drives. Simple hot-swap.
The picture below simply shows the inside layout of the enclosure prior to hard drive installation. You can see the backplane and just behind that is the 80mm exhaust fan.
This is shot of the back of the enclosure. Located on the back of the unit are the power connector and switch, power converter switch, exhaust fan, and eSATA port. The Sans Digital unit use Port Multiplier technology which requires just one eSATA connector between this unit and the host computer.
Just a couple of pictures of the TR4M-B unit sitting on top of my WHS CoolerMaster case. The enclosure finishes match perfectly! These 2 pictures give you and idea of the size of the unit. Very small and unobtrusive. If desired, you could easily stuff it out of the way in a corner. But why do that? It simply begs to be displayed up close and personal.
I reassembled the WHS computer and installed the drivers. I pointed the OS to the appropriate folder on the included DVD. WHS also checked the Microsoft web update for any updated drivers. In the end, driver installation was quite painless.
Once the drivers were installed, I simply plugged in the power cord and eSATA cable in the appropriate places. I had instant increased hard disk storage space! The following 2 pictures gives you a indication how the LED lights work. The lights on the right indicate power and the host indicator status. The 4 lights on the left indicate hard drive status. The second picture shows the change in disk status as a hard drive is being accessed.
And for those who like a nice LED fan, simply turn the enclosure around. The exhaust fan produces a nice soft blue hue from the LED’s. I can take or leave LED fans, but it is nice to be able to have an easy way to check for a correctly operating fan. And for you noise fanatics, of which I have to include myself, the fan is very quiet! I turned off all the noise producing devices in the area, with the exception of the Sans Digital unit. I could barely hear it from less than 3 feet away. I would call it a near-silent fan.
Total time to get this point? It is rather difficult for me to be definitive, as I was documenting all this as I went through the process. I would estimate that the total time from initial opening of the package to the point where I took the above pictures would be less than 30 minutes. At least for those that are at ease putting this this type of hardware together. It also depends on how much documentation you wish to read prior to getting the unit up and running.
Performance
Sam Wood makes a very nice add-in for WHS aptly named Windows Home Server Disk Management. With this nifty add-in, I was able to take a very definitive snapshot of WHS disk array, as can be seen below.
I clicked on the WHS Server Storage tab, which provided an alternate view of the storage array.
So, now for the real question. How does the Sans Digital device perform? Originally, I was going to use ATTO Disk Benchmark software, but it only recognizes logical drives, not physical drives. As I wanted to compare drives in my WHS array to the Sans Digital drives, I was forced to use the HD Tach Disk Bench software. While slightly outdated, it does recognize physical drives, which ATTO does not.
I first tested my WHS boot disk, which is a newer production model than any of the other drives. I also ran a test on a WD1600JS disk, which just so happens to be the same model as the drives Sans Digital sent me for this review. That was a nice coincidence. I ran my initial tests with the Sans Digital drives outside of the WHS drive pool. The following comparison chart shows my WD5000AAKS against the one of the Sans Digital WD1600JS drives. As expected, the later generation 500GB drive beat the 160GB drive easily. Of course, I expected this.
I than ran a test comparing my Seagate ST33206 320GB drive to Sans Digital WD1600JS. Once again, the newer generation drive easily beat the older generation drive. One item that surprised me somewhat is that the Seagate drive ate up CPU cycles. Must be one the reasons why these drives were selling so cheaply when I picked this one up.
Since I had a hard drive model of the same type in my WHS, a more fair test would be to compare these drives. The following picture provides this comparison. It was nice to see that the performance numbers were nearly identical. Whatever overhead that is required to attach this DAS unit to the host computer has minimal effect, if any, on performance. With the exception of Burst Speed which was considerably higher on the internal hard drive.
I emailed Sans Digital and asked them if they could provide some insight into this difference. Their response:
The Burst Speed is slightly delayed when the hard drive is in the unit because the data must be processed by the chipset of the Port-Multiplier feature. The Port Multiplier allows 4 hard drives to be accessed by one cable, and therefore the chipset scans all four connections when processing data (even if only 1 hard drive is present). While when the hard drive is in the computer, data is being accessed directly without going through additional chipsets.
Is Burst Speed important for a Windows Home Server? Possibly, but I doubt anyone would see a real difference in actual use. Regardless, I would rather have the single eSATA cable connection.
As a last benchmark, I simply compared 2 of the Sans Digital drives, just to make sure that they ran about the same. As can be seen below, the numbers were almost identical.
It was now time to add the Sans Digital drives the WHS array. I initially added these drives in a JBOD configuration.
I ran a test on one of the Sans Digital drives and compared it to the same drive when it was outside the WHS array. As can be seen, about the only item that changed was Random Access time. As this changed somewhat from test to test with various WD1600JS drives, I considered this to be a non-factor in real-life performance.
It was at this point that I decided to let the unit sit there in the array and do quietly do what hard drives do. Unfortunately, WHS’s drive balancing has changed significantly with PP1. I could probably let it sit there for a month or so without any data being put on. Most, if not all, of the data I have on my WHS is backed up in some form or another. As a result, I have never turned on folder duplication. It was about time to try out this feature, in an effort to make use of this increased storage capacity. As I turned on duplication of 500Gb’s worth of shared folder data, the transfer rate that can be seen in Windows Home Server Disk Management on the Sans Digital drives immediately took off like a rocket. It was quite interesting to watch the LED light show that the Sans Digital unit started to display. It kind of reminded me of a one of those display consoles in the original Star Trek episodes! The following picture shows how WHS spread Folder Duplication over the Sans Digital disk array.
One piece of technology that I have on my WHS is a Crystalfontz LCD display. I use this item to display several key performance factors of my WHS. While the folder duplication was occurring, I took some photos of a CFA-635 in action. What I saw was very little difference in CPU usage during this period. Most of the CPU usage that occurs on my WHS is from my BOINC program, which can be fairly CPU intensive. The CPU usage that I saw was in line with what I have seen in the past without heavy disk usage and/or without the Sans Digital unit.
Please note that I took the above pictures in a dimly lit room, so that the displays can actually be seen in the pictures.
It was now time to dismantle the JBOD setup and check out the RAID functionality of the TR4M-B unit. Setting up a RAID array is a relatively straightforward process. Simply insert the supplied DVD into your drive, locate (sataraid_utility folder) and execute the SATA install file. I used the Windows XP 2000 installer. The following pictures document the install process.
Once the RAID utility program has been installed, execute it and you are presented with the following screen.
Under the RAID Group menu, you will find the Create RAID Group item. Opening that brings you the following screen.
Select your RAID options and create your array.
The array I created is a RAID 5 array. If you look close, there is one item you may have noticed that created a problem for me the first time I created the array. You will notice a pull-down menu item: Capacity. The first time I went through this task, I did not scroll far enough down the menu. All I saw was 1GB, 2GB, etc. options. It is only at the bottom of the menu did I eventually find a “Max” option. I would suggest to Sans Digital that this option be the first item in the list, not the last.
Once I straightened out this anomaly, I went to Windows Computer Management, opened the Disk Management menu and prepared the disk for use in WHS.
Please note that I took these pictures before I realized that I had made the aforementioned disk capacity error. If done correctly, I promise that you get much better results!
Once I had successfully setup the RAID array and prepared it for use the operating system, it was time to see how it worked with the WHS Storage Array. If you set it up correctly, you will see the RAID array added instantly to the WHS Console Storage Array.
I followed the same procedure, using HD Tach, I had previously used by testing the Sans Digital drives outside the WHS and as part of the pool. The following picture compares the RAID array to one of the drives in the JBOD array.
The following picture compares the RAID array outside the the WHS drive pool and as part of it.
From the above pictures, one can come to 2 conclusions.
- As with a JBOD configuration, there is minimal difference between drive performance inside or outside of the WHS pool.
- There is a significant penalty for using a RAID 5 array. Both in performance and available drive space.
I do need to stress that the penalty for a RAID 5 array is not a Sans Digital problem. There are 4 basic types of RAID array available, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID1+0, and RAID 5. RAID 5 provides the best balance of capacity, speed, and failure recovery. The key word is balance. In the end, I am happy to report that if you desire to use RAID in a WHS, it is rather painless to implement using the Sans Digital device.
Costs and Conclusion
The TR4M-B can be configured anywhere from the base unit without drives all the way up to (4) 1TB drives. One can spend anywhere from $295 to over $1200 for a fully loaded unit with the optional 4-port PCIe card. I took a quick look at Newegg to see what the street price of the base unit might be: approximately $225 shipped. That is a very nice price for what you get: a 4 HD enclosure, power supply, JBOD to RAID 5 capability, port replication, hotswap capability, and a PCIe eSATA adapter. The chart below provides you with the list price breakdown for the various versions.
| Model | TR4M-B | TR4M-B1T | TR4M-B2T | TR4M-B3T | TR4M-B4T |
| Cost | $295 | +$240 | +$360 | +$560 | +$800 |
| Optional PCIx 4-port Adapter | +$44 | +$44 | +$44 | +$44 | +$44 |
| Optional PCIe 4-port Adapter | +$154 | +$154 | +$154 | +$154 | +$154 |
With the cost of hard disks dropping on a weekly (or daily) basis, it would seem to be a little difficult to justify the cost of a fully configured case at this time. That is one area that manufacturers are at a disadvantage. They can’t/won’t adjust their Retail Price based on a fluctuating component market. Sans Digital’s response to this observation was:
Sans Digital uses Seagate or Western Digital for hard drive bundles. The pricing of the HDD bundles are slightly higher because they must be tested after the hard drives are installed, before they are released to customers. It benefits the end-users by saving them a lot of installation and setup time. One could also purchase the enclosures and install the hard drives himself.
One question that you may have regarding the TR4M-B device is what is the maximum storage capacity of the unit? What is noted below is my question to Sans Digital and their response.
If one purchases their own HD’s, is the maximum capacity 1TB per bay, or will these units accept the 1.5TB units that are coming on the market at this time?
Because the 1.5TB is not readily available, the compatibility is yet to be confirmed. We do not suspect there to be any problems because they are based on the same SATA technology. There was no compatibility issue when the HDDs went from 750GB to 1TB. The written specs will remain at 1TB, until the 1.5 has been tested and confirmed.
Pros
- Easy to setup. 0 maintenance after initial setup
- Direct Attached Storage is a perfect solution to increase storage capacity on a WHS
- Very reasonable price for the base unit
- High capacity four drive enclosure
- Trayless construction (my personal preference)
- RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 5+spare, spanning and JBOD support
- hotswap capability
- Port replication requires just one eSATA connector
- Includes a 2-port PCIe eSATA card
- Extremely quiet
- Quality construction
- Small footprint
- Tool-less construction
Cons
- Can get rather expensive if one buys the unit with Hard Drives
- Port replication degrades Burst Speed performance
- Hotswap removal feature is for stationary units
Overall, I was very impressed with the Sans Digital TR4M-B DAS device. The pros noted above pretty much says it all. The cons that I noted are quite minor. Would I recommend it? Without hesitation. If you are out of SATA ports on your motherboard or out of storage bays in your case, this device should be on your short list of devices to consider to increase your storage capacity.
I would like to thank Sans Digital for sending me this sample for review.
21. September 2008 at 8:35 am
Has this been tested on a HP MSS? and would it work correctly using eSATA adapters included with some motherboards, or do you need to use the specific eSATA host adaptor?
My mobo has 2 PCI-E 1x slots and a 16x slot.
21. September 2008 at 1:28 pm
Hi smadge1,
Regarding your 2nd question. After I dismantled the device, I installed a different eSATA card that I had purchased recently and plugged the Sans Digital unit into it. Worked like a charm! Please note that I did not try out the RAID option, tho.
The card shipped with the unit is a PCIe 1x card, for your reference.
Regarding your 1st question. I do not have the HP unit, but I see no reason why it would not work. eSATA is eSATA.
21. September 2008 at 1:32 pm
This is a fantastic article. Very informative and great pictures. Thanks for taking the time to create it and share with us.
21. September 2008 at 1:43 pm
Apologies for the slightly strange page formatting on this article – there’s a rogue tag causing a problem….
Terry
21. September 2008 at 6:58 pm
I second the HP MSS question. Would love to know if this works on the EX47x eSATA port, or if they have a solution. Looks about spot on to extend my EX475 in the future
21. September 2008 at 7:45 pm
While I am sure that the TR4M will work on an HP, I just emailed Sans Digital and relayed your questions.
I should hopefully have something to report back Monday or Tuesday P.M. (U.S. time), if Sans Digital does not reply directly here.
OK?
21. September 2008 at 7:47 pm
Actually, I think this post: http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=3501&hl=tr4m answers your questions
22. September 2008 at 7:07 am
Not exactly. Not all eSATA chips support the multiplier function required for this to work. Unfortunately whether or not your device supports it is not always in the literature. eSATA is not just SATA with a different plug. SATA 1.5 does not support the multiplier function.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
has some good info.
22. September 2008 at 5:25 pm
Looks like a great alternative to a couple of external USB drives.
One question remains though: if you have four identical drives in the enclosure and one of them shows up at a critical condition in the Home Server panel. How would you know which is the faulty one to be replaced?
22. September 2008 at 5:26 pm
As someone on a budget, I think it’s worth pointing out that there are several less expensive ways to do this. Buying a 4-port SATA card would have suited the author just fine. Those without the necessary bays in their WHS could buy four external enclosures and still be well under the price. For that matter, you could buy an entirely new case (with power supply) that can hold 8 hard drives for ~$100 + shipping.
Not that this isn’t a good product, but it’s simply to expensive for me.
22. September 2008 at 7:15 pm
Hi guys,
Yes, the TR4M-B is compatible with the HP WSS. We have customers running this unit on their HP EX47x eSATA port without any problem. The unit is compatible as long as the eSATA port supports Port Multiplier.
22. September 2008 at 9:57 pm
@ difool
If you use Sam Wood’s WHSDM add-in, just add in one disk at a time, locate in the wireframe and all is good!
@ Everyone else
Katy was my contact at Sans Digital who answered any questions I had, so if you have questions specific to the TR4M, she would be the person to ask.
23. September 2008 at 1:19 am
Hi difool,
Hard drive failures will immediately show on the front panel LEDs. Each LED indicates a specific drive. Therefore, the LED that acts different than the rest indicates that specific drive is in critical condition.
23. September 2008 at 1:35 am
Linus, that’s definitly another way to expand. However, Sans Digital’s products also take future expansion into consideration. Once you go pass 4 drives, you will need to buy more eSATA adapters, and so on. Where as having Port Multiplier allows up to 16 drives with only one 4-port card. As everything moves on to digital, and file sizes becoming larger, our users are always finding themselves in need to expand their storage capacity. Port Multiplier allows them to make the most out of their existing ports, without having to spend money to buy more.
23. September 2008 at 2:10 am
Ok if in the usa, but found this!
4-Bay TeraBox eSATA HDD RAID Enclosure
only £169.99
Web Only
Order Code: A84HW
In Stock*
Product Features
Quad bay enclosure that supports any brand and different capacity eSATA drives up to 1TB per bay
Supports Raid 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD,
View the 4 x drives as one combined or as 4 separate drives
Cable-less installation
Ultra fast eSATA interface
Supplied eSATA pci-e x1 card and cable
Provides Striping, Mirroring, Combine and Standard modes for effective storage management
Easy configuration of RAID modes, no IT expertise required
Simplifies RAID management, no software installation required
Achieves fastest performance via Striping mode and supports automatic rebuild in Mirroring mode
Ensures data integrity with redundant backup capability
Eliminates potential downtime, repair costs, and lost sales due to disk failure
Easy monitoring of system status via LED indicators
Dissipates heat efficiently with metal housing and maximizes airflow with silent, high quality fan
Supports supports the latest SATA II compliant HDDs
Simplifies HDD installation; user friendly design enables effortless HDD swapping
Supports hot-plug and HDD hot-swap
Dimensions: 135(w) x 180(h) x 255(d) mm
OS requirement: Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Server 2003, Mac OS 10.3 or later
Hard drives not included
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?C=SO&U=strat310&T=Wigan&ModuleNo=224358&ma=Wigan+-+4-Bay+TeraBox+eSATA+HDD+RAID+Enclosure#features
23. September 2008 at 2:22 am
That is the TR4M-B unit. Or an exact clone!
23. September 2008 at 3:12 am
So I assume you’ll need AHCI (SATAII) to use the Port Multiplier features.
I installed my WHS with the controllers in IDE (compatible) mode.
23. September 2008 at 3:40 am
My WHS BIOS is set to “Native IDE” mode. AHCI has more do with NCQ and native hotswapping capabilities. Hotswap, I assume, is taken care of by the backplane of devices such as the TR4M.
Regardless, my WHS recognized the Sans Digital unit without a problem.
23. September 2008 at 3:52 am
Now, if only they were available in Australia…
23. September 2008 at 4:15 am
Put the first drive in and then add it to the drive pool. Get one of those label makers and then put a label on the front with the same name that you give it has in the pool.
Add remaining drives and repeat for each drive.
23. September 2008 at 2:26 pm
@Jim Clark : Nice review, like the DAS enclosure, but is there a webshop that ships this beautifull piece to Belgium? … And also Jim, I’m planning to build a new Windows Home Server (mine is not powerfull enough now…) and I would appreciate it if you could give me the specs of your machine (type case, motherboard, CPU, etc etc …)
Thanx
23. September 2008 at 4:03 pm
Although i havent used this unit myself but other products from StarTech, this unit looks like it will do hotswap better:
http://www.startech.com/item/SAT3540ER-InfoSafe-4-Drive-eSATA-External-SATA-Drive-Enclosure-RAID-Storage.aspx
23. September 2008 at 9:19 pm
@KingWolf – Regarding webshops, I would email Katy, or go to the Sans Digital website and make an inquiry about dealers specific to your area.
As far as my setup, go to the forums and search for JC634. My specs are in my sig.
23. September 2008 at 10:32 pm
@smadge1 – Here is one I found: http://www.pacificgroupdistribution.com/product.php?productid=16167&cat=0&page=4
24. September 2008 at 3:50 am
@Jim Clark – LOL, the list price is $1,000,000!!
24. September 2008 at 3:55 am
Holy Batman! I’d buy a dozen, as in “Cheaper by the dozen”, lol!
I would assume (hope) a price snafu???
3. October 2008 at 3:47 am
Smadge1 – Sans Digital are being imported and distributed by Pacific Distribution Australasia (formerly Pacific Group Distribution) and retail enquiries may be made with http://www.vtservices.com.au who are authorised resellers.
Michael Squire
Managing Director
Pacific Distribution Australasia
Tel: (02) 8209 1743
sales@pacificgroupdistribution.com
http://www.pacificgroupdistribution.com
30. October 2008 at 10:38 am
I just hooked one up to my HP475. One important thing to note is that while the instructions say to load disks from the top and work down, you want to add disks from the bottom and work up if you are not going to fill the unit right away. Disk0 is the lowest slot in the unit. This caused me no end of confusion and I briefly thought I had a bad unit until I made the change on a whim.
31. October 2008 at 2:45 am
Jim,
How’s the cooling in that enclosure?
I’ve purchased 2 enclosures from Sans Digital in the past: a 2-drive unit (MS2T+B) and a 4-drive unit (MS4T). My two 1-TB drives almost fried in the 2-drive unit, with temperatures well above +50C. Even with a household fan blowing cooling air directly in the front of the enclosure, the drive temps were close to +50C. As for the 4-drive unit, I have the household fan blowing air direcly in the front on that enclosure too, which produces temps in the high 30s for both drives.
Maybe I’m too paranoid about my drive temperatures. I just know that when I had those same drives in my old (rack-mount) WHS case, with fans blowing air over each drive, that their temps were down to the high 20s, which gave me comforting peace-of-mind.
Appearance-wise, the Sans Digital units look beautiful. However, I’ve yet to find an enclosure that does a nice job of cooling drives. I notice from your first screenshot of Sam’s Home Server Disk Management add-in, that your temperatures were in the high 20s when at idle, which is nice. But then when you added them to the pool & turned on duplication, and the drives were actually doing work, the temps went up to the high 30s – still acceptable to me. Also, those are with small drives, and I wonder how larger TB drives would affect the temperatures.
If anyone else has one of these enclosures, I’d be curious to know what temperatures they are experiencing.
All-in-all, a nice unit from Sans Digital, and an excellent review of that product. Thanks.
31. October 2008 at 2:51 am
FWIW, I have 3 drives in one. Top down and all is working just fine. Weird…
31. October 2008 at 2:57 am
4 drives in my machine: they range form 37 to 44 °C. In the Sans Digital, they range from 38 to 39 °C.
The drives in the SD unit are 2 Hitachi 80G drives and a Seagate 1Tb drive.
The hottest is a WD 160G drive.
It has been a warm day today. Also, this room gets quite warm due to 2 computers and all the other stuff I have running in here.
To me, anything under 50°C is OK. If over, I would be concerned, simply because I don’t usually see them that warm.
To me, these drives are all in the acceptable range. Hope this helps!
9. November 2008 at 3:48 pm
I got the 5-bay version (same adapter card I think though). I’m running Vista64. I got it all running smoothly out of the box with a 5-drive RAID5 (Parity Raid). All was going smoothly until I rebooted. When the system came up again, there was an issue with the drive, and the SATARAID5 software reported a “Restore Redundancy” event. My data is safe, but it looks like the windows reboot is leaving an uncached write or something which throws the RAID management software a curveball – it just ends up repeatedly looking for parity errors after each reboot. This is a transparent process, but runs for about 24 hours… each reboot! I’ve since looked up the problem and it seems this is not uncommon with this RAID software/hardware combination. I’d be interested to see if anyone else has found a solution to this harmless, but somewhat frustrating issue.
9. November 2008 at 4:22 pm
Bummer! Have you checked with the Sans Digital tech support? I would be interested in what they have to say.
17. November 2008 at 12:54 pm
I purchased this 4-bay enclosure several months ago. Donavon (HomeServerHacks.com) did a DYI on it back in February. I was watching this unit at Fry’s Electronics for a while and it finally went on sale for $149.00. I hook it up to my HP MSS EX470 and it worked perfect the first time. I currently have two 1TB Seagate drives in it (from the bottom up). One drive is used at the backup for my WHS shares and the other drive is an extra drive (not added to the pool).
17. November 2008 at 8:00 pm
@Jim Clark – Well here’s my follow-up from what was posted a couple up. I reinstalled the SATARAID5 software to the latest version of drivers, I updated the firmware on the little eSATA card (SiI3132 – 2-port), and reformatted the RAID5 – this time I did not initialize the individual drives in Device Manager first, but let the SATARAID5 software do it all, including letting it run overnight to set everything up. Then I opened Device Manager for the first time and formatted the RAID. Guess what? It works perfectly, and not only that, the new Firmware seems to have given me a new option to “safely remove” the RAID5 now! 5 reboots later and i have had no rebuilds!!!
18. November 2008 at 12:21 am
Out of curiosity, what is your firmware and driver versions now? Did you d/l from Silicon Image?
18. November 2008 at 4:04 am
@Jim Clark -
Aha, I should have posted that. I went to the Silicon Image web site and downloaded the following from their “support” page:
choose: SATALink PCI Express to 2-Port Serial ATA II Host Controller
choose SATARAID Tools (for Vista)
then download *SiI 3132 32 & 64-bit Windows SATARAID5 Management Utility version 1.5.18.0B
ALSO I downloaded and installed the driver:
choose: SATALink PCI Express to 2-Port Serial ATA II Host Controller
choose: DRIVER
choose: VISTA
Then download the * SiI 3132 64-bit Windows SATARAID5 Driver version 1.5.18.0
I don’t actually recall which I installed first, but I imagine it would have been a clean reboot, uninstall the SATARAID tools, reboot, install the driver, then reboot and install the “tools” download.
Jamie T.
19. November 2008 at 2:53 am
@Katy – Is there a special add-in for the HP EX475 to see the tower once plugged in?
19. November 2008 at 10:54 am
Hi and thanks for the review. I’m looking for something like this product in the UK & have found this one which looks virtually identical…
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=898755&Product=EdgeStore+DAS401+4xBay+USB+RAID+1+DAS+Enclosure+via+eSATA
Do you have any idea whether they are the same product, rebadged? Many thanks.
19. November 2008 at 10:47 pm
Either Edge10 makes them for Sans Digital or vice-versa. They look identical….
5. December 2008 at 4:55 am
Hi Jamie, can you let me know what you are getting in terms of average READ and WRITE speed with your RAID-5 configuration? I know the review said that RAID-5 speeds suffer greatly, so I wanted to see how yours was as well.
Thanks!
22. December 2008 at 1:03 am
Hi Terry,
I notice in your Disk Management screenshot that temperatures are displayed for all your drives, including those that are connected to your RAID card. Was there anything special that you had to do, in order for SMART information to be available?
So far I’ve tried 2 cards, but neither of them pass on SMART information to the OS:
Addonics ADS3GX4R5-E
Norco 4618
Both of them support port multiplying, and they both work fine with my iStarUSA v7AGE420-ES 4-Bay Trayless eSATA RAID Box. Once the drivers are installed, WHS sees the drives & can use them. My only concern is that for some reason no SMART information is passed along to the OS, and therefore no temperatures are available (which is important to me).
Possibly it’s my RAID cards that are the cause of this, and perhaps only certain cards pass the information along?
One thing to note is, whereas you installed the RAID software, I didn’t, as I’m not interested in RAID & want WHS to see 4 individual drives. No idea if this is preventing SMART information to be passed along, but your screenshot showing temperatures were from before you installed your items for RAID, so I think not.
I’m just trying to find a way to be able to be able to use my port-multiplier external eSATA enclosure with 4 drives, but have them display their individual temperatures as well.
Thanks in advance.
22. December 2008 at 1:56 am
@John Motyer – All the pixs in the article using Disk Management were with the drives added in a JBOD configuration. In a JBOD configuration, all the SMART temps would be reported.
For whatever stupid reason, I did not take a shot of Disk Management with the drives in a RAID configuration. And I honestly cannot remember what information was shown. My *guess* is that there would be no SMART information to display as I have never seen anything capable of displaying SMART temps of drives in a RAID array.
22. December 2008 at 2:15 am
Great, thanks. It’s the JBOD I’m interested in, and not the RAID. So perhaps if I were to install the RAID software, but configure them as only JBOD, that perhaps (through the RAID software) the SMART information would be available to the OS, and thereby WHS as well. Gives me something to play with.
Thanks, Terry, for your fast reply. Season’s Greetings to you & your family.
8. January 2009 at 10:47 pm
I picked up this (TR4M-B 4 bay) from Newegg in a combo price/free shipping deal with a 1TB Seagate.
This is a nice looking unit, easy to set up – except for, as mentioned above, the error in the instructions.
The instructions state mount the drives from the top down. I did so and the drive did not show up in WHS.
I moved the drive to the bottom as someone here suggested (thank you) and it showed up right away. Also, the lights in front are numbered from 4 to 1, left to right, and to me, it would have been better to have the lights numbered from 1 to 4, left to right, or even better, 0 to 3, left to right. But WTF, once you got it up and running, it does not matter any more.
Great unit, if they lowered the price another $40 or so, I’d pick up at least one more.
Currently, I have 4.09 TB total size reported, and free space of 2.1 TB, using 2x WD GP 500GB drives, 2x WD GP 1TB drives, 1 Seagate 500 GB Drive and 1 Seagate 1TB drive in the TR4M-B. [What a shame the disk companies can sell us a terrabyte that is 931.51 GB and not go to jail - if it was ham or cheese they would]
17. January 2009 at 2:55 pm
New egg has jacked up the price since I ordered mine as well as removing free shipping – The TR4M-B has gone from $179.99 to $209.99 – no free shipping. So the exact same combo I purchased is now $299.98 – $30 more and $315.09 shipped – a hefty price boost of $45.11.
If you are just shopping for the unit itself Directron has it for $174.99 plus shipping ($15 “instant” rebate) which is $35 cheaper than new egg, and for me, shipping is a buck cheaper at Directron.
Way to go, New egg – people give you a free plug on a good deal, and you jack up the price. I recommend that if you are looking to purchase this excellent add-on to your WHS, give Directron a look – you could save a few bucks.
17. January 2009 at 3:19 pm
I recently purchased two Seagate 1.5TB drives and placed them in my Sans Digital 4-bay array. I’m using them as WHS Backup drives for backing up my Server Shares. All is well and they are working perfectly.
17. January 2009 at 3:45 pm
Thanks for the “heads up” on the 1.5 TB drives. That was the final question I had about this case.
1. February 2009 at 1:22 am
I picked up one of these from Newegg but I’ve got a weird problem with mine – I’m wondering if anyone else has seen similar behaviour. In mine, no matter whether or not I start from the bottom and work up or from the top and work down, I can only get my HP 470 to boot with this connected if I have 2 or less drives in this. I’ve tried it with all sort of combinations of different drives and it different bays – not matter what I try the MediaSmart server just will not boot with more than 2 drives in the TR4M – regardless of which drives I try and which bays they are in.
(and I’ve tried this with combinations of 3 drives as well as filling all 4 slots)
Anybody have any ideas or have one of these and seen similar behaviour?
16. February 2009 at 4:46 pm
@Patrick Greene – Note that Fry’s has the the eSATA version of these periodically for $149, or approx. $170 shipped.