What I did was, starting with the drive in Slot #4, removed the disk and then re-added it as a regular disk to use in the total WHS pool, then went to slot #3 and so on.

So, far no other kinks.

1. Connected the TR4M enclosure to a notebook PC running Windows 7 with eSATA and loaded each HDD individually into bay #1 (THE BOTTOM SLOT) and then formatted the drive with NTFS, removed it then powered off the enclosure and then loaded another disk, turned on the enclosure and then formatted another disk – repeated for all 4 drives.

2. Loaded one drive (one of the 1TB WD drives) into bay #1 (THE BOTTOM SLOT), turned on the TR4M and THEN turned on the HP EX490 and allowed it to fully boot up. I had the orange "power" light on, the green "host" light on, and the slot #1 green light on.

3. Added the drive into the disk pool from within the "Server Storage" tab in the WHS console, which for me, I added it as a backup drive and chose to format the disk again and gave the drive a unique name which I then stuck a label on the appropriate disk so you can see it when you open the door to the TR4M.

4. Then, WITHOUT turning anything off, I loaded another disk into slot #2 (the second from the bottom) which I added my second 1TB WD drive. Some lights flashed on and off and then the #1 and #2 lights stayed on and green. I then repeated step #3 above for the new drive.

5. I then repeated steps #4 and then #3 for disks installed into slots 3 and 4.

6. Of note, I was having some problems when I had the Tentacle Software Disk Management for WHS add-in installed. (the TR4M kept going out…) which resolved when I uninstalled this add-in. Obviously the reviewer above did not seem to have any problems with this add-in; I have not gone back and re-installed this and experimented. Just FYI.

Anyway, after much messing around, I've let my server run for an hour or so, restarted it a couple times, and turned on duplication for some folders and it looks like the external enclosure is now staying on with all 4 drives active and I don't… think… there… are any problems…. however I'm personally not going to put any drives that aren't backed up into here until I know for sure it's running flawlessly.

Anyway, I am having even more problems with the TR4M not coming up when the system boots. My method of powering up the eSATA units 10 seconds before the PC has stopped working for the TR4M. So far I can’t get it to work today (I only see the orange power LED, no Green host connect light once the bus scan detects the HBA). Since I have too much work lately to do I don’t have time to mess with it anymore. Going to replace it, and use the TR4M on another PC that rarely gets rebooted (security camera system controller and CIFS backups for the other 4 systems I have. I will send an email to tech@sansdigital to see if they have an answer (or even do answer).

It has been long enough that I do not remember some details: I had to return the drives, but they let me keep the enclosure. I had at one point 2 drives and later 3 drives in the unit. iirc, I had drives installed opposite (top down?) of what one responder indicated they needed to be. Worked fine.

Currently, it is not in use as I lost 3 drives in one day. 2 were in the Sans Digital and 1 in my computer. As a result, I have nothing ATM to test with.

I do not use RAID arrays much anymore, I’m more a JBOD user now, since is independent of having to match drive models. So I can not discuss much on that. In my review, it worked quite well, but it was of course 4 drives w/the provided controller.

When you say the Sans Digital works only 3132 controllers, I get the impression that this is RAID setups? If I am wrong there, correct me. Assuming that, what about JBOD/San Digital/non-3132 controllers? Go or no go?

I bought some extra hardware at the local FRYs yesterday to try an experiment. I added an internal 1TB Seagate drive and backed up everything on my 2 TowerRAID volumes to it to start with. I also bought an IOGear GICe702S3R5 2-port PCIe HBA which is also an SiI 3132 chip just like the rebranded SiI HBA included with the TR4M. I have 3 eSATA attached DAS units to experiment with: TR4M with 4 500GB HDDs, RAID-0 is one; the Termaltake MUSE R-Duo with 2 400GB HDDs, RAID-0 is the second; and a Vantec eSATA enclosure with 1 320GB HDD is the third (these run too hot after a few hours of moderate use for a work disk on my system).

I did have an SIIG PCI HBA with 2 eSATA ports (not an SiI 3132 ASIC) already in my main PC before I added the HBA from the TR4M. I had the MUSE and Vantec attached to that original HBA. Once I added the TR4M to the system, port-1 on the SIIG stopped working, and port-2 was eratic. Some sort of system conflict that I couldn’t find. Hence the removal of the SIIG HBA (it was just PCI anyway), and the installation of the new IOgear PCIe HBA ($30).

All 4 eSATA ports work reliably now, although I still must power up the TR4M unit about 5 seconds before the PC power, or the TR4M will not get picked up on the port scan (no green light, no disks visible).

As an experiment, I moved the TR4M to a port on the IOgear, and moved the other units over to the TR4M’s HBA. All units worked fine. I was wondering where the config info was kept for the RAID configurations, and evidently it is on the multi-port logic in the TR4M unit itself. I would have to install another IOgear HBA in a second PC here to verify that this is not captured in the Registry somewhere, but I doubt that is the case.

BTW: When I backed up the TR4M file systems to the new 1TB Seagate I timed the operations. The first volume on the TR4M contained 80.2GB of data (82,370 files, 6353 folders) and averaged 51MB/s (since this was a sequential operation). The second volume had a lot more very large Zip files (2-3 GB each), so the sequential efficiency was higher. That volume had 184.3GB (107,834 files, 10,887 folders) and it averaged 65MB/s. Hence, read performance out of the TR4M (in RAID-0)is very good, as is the write performance to the 1TB Seagate.

I haven’t had time yet to run multi-threaded IOmeter tests and conduct small block random tests (an IOPS measurement) to compare the 1TB Seagate with the TR4M and the MUSE boxes. As random (IOPS with a Response Time) and sequential (throughput as MB/s) workloads are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, a unit-unit-test can behave very differently. A sequential workload is the easiest test for any system controller, but it also shows up the back-end design limitations (larger arrays) as well.

BTW: At FRYs yesterday, there were 5 returned TR4M units on the shelf, and the sales dude who manages that section said those people couldn’t get more than one disk to work. So they were also tripped up on the nature of the box and required use of the 3132 controller.

Thanks for the clarification on the SI chipset restrictions to use this device. My Express Card adapter has a 3132 chip, and the last comment suggests it should work. Going for it!

I will point out one thing. No where in my review do I indicate anything about hardware Raid. Everything at the beginning refers to software-based Raid. I would hope that most users/readers would understand that one is not going to get hardware Raid at this price point.

And FWIW, I did plug this directly from the original eSATA card to another one w/o a problem. Granted, it was another variation of a 3132 chip. From comments here and from Sans Digital, it also works with the HP MSS units. I would be curious to know what eSATA chip they use.