SANS DIGITAL TowerRAID TR4M-B - 4 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD / RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5 Enclosure - Retail

Reviewed By: on 6/6/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Works as advertised. Running in a Linux software RAID with no issues.

Cons: Needs better cooling. Passive PS burnt up in the first one I got. Drives run hot to the touch, 55-60C. Single fan in the back does little to cool drives because the backplane blocks airflow across the drives. Spliced a fan into the box and have it resting behind the door blowing back across the drives and they run about 20C cooler. Don't think I could get the drives out if I mount it to the door so that might be where it stays unless I get a thinner fan.

Manufacturer Response:The unit backplane is design with ventilation to provide enough cooling to the hard drives. If you have problem with the Power Supply, the unit is covered by 1 year parts and labor warranty and contact tech@sansdigital.com or 1.800.980.1988 to request service.

Thanks,

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Working great so far

Reviewed By: on 4/20/2009

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Easy to set up, was able to get a raid 5 set up in minutes!

Cons: None so far

Other Thoughts: I've only one issue so far, every time I reboot the machine it's attached to, it has to perform a restore redudancy operation because it says it was shut down improperly. I contacted the manufacturer and they provided the following suggestions:

1. In SATARAID5 manager page, please click “File” -> “Configuration” and the window “Configuration Screen” will pop out.

Click “Advanced Options” and unmark “Advanced RAID Features” -> “OK”.

If it doesn’t help, please try to –
2. Right click My Computer-> Device Manager -> Disk Drives -> right click and disable the volume created by RAID utility (Silicon image….)

Then you can shutdown the computer and reboot, and Enable the volume after reboot.

3. Right click My Computer-> Disc manager -> SCSI RAID controller-> Right click and disable the Silicon Image SiI3132 Soft RAID5 controller.

Then you can shutdown the computer and reboot, and enable this controller after reboot.

Doesn't seem right to me, but I'm not an expert.

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Take Heed of the Negative Reviews

Reviewed By: CSRTech on 1/24/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: May be good for a JBOD device.

Cons: You MUST use the enclosed eSATA card to get RAID. Any other eSata connection is only good for JBOD. If you do use the card and set-up for RAID5 with disks of any size (>500 MB), it may take a week to build the array, if it ever does because it tends to "drop" disks at random intervals.

Other Thoughts: I need a large (> 4 Tb) portable, redundant solution for off-site back-yp. This isn't it. If I hadn't been trying to get it to work for over 30 days, I would return it to Newegg. Now, it's just a dust collector.

Manufacturer Response:Thank you for purchasing our products.

Unless you have different RAID software on the computer, such as Linux MDADM or Windows disk management Software RAID 5, you will need to use the bundled software to create RAID 5.

The performance on RAID 5 is about 30MB/s. For higher performance, you can consider upgrade to PCIe x4 controller card, which comes up to 150~200MB/s in 4 bay model. You can also consider TR4UT, hardware RAID engines inside of the unit, so there are no software required for RAID 5. It will be fit to your redundant solutions for offsite backup.

If you have further question, please contact tech@sansdigital.com or 1.800.980.1988.

External Link(s):

4 port PCIe x4 RAID Option|

4 bay Hardware RAID Tower|

5 bay Hardware RAID Tower|

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Restore redundancy problem

Reviewed By: Ric44012 on 1/19/2010

Tech Level: low - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

Pros: Fairly good deal.

Cons: Restore redundancy problem. Complicated -1

Other Thoughts: Every time I reboot my server it has to rebuild the array which takes anywhere from 20 to 48 hours
Restore redundancy are due to shutdown without flashing all write cache.
I contacted tech@sansdigital.com for detail how to disable the write cache.

The Answer:

1. Open regedit
a. Click Start
b. Select Run
c. Type “regedit” in the open field
d. Click OK

2. Goto
a. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet
\Services
\<DRIVER NAME> Driver name has the format: Si<controller id>r5 In my case, it was "SI3132r5".
\ProblemDevices
b. Right Click --> New --> String Value
c. String Value Format: 40 byte Model Number string, 8 byte Firmware Revision string
d. You can find this information in the: (Oh yeah, you need to get this information first)
GOTO: Device Manager in Windows Explorer --> Computer: Right Click --> Manage
Device Manager --> Storage controller --> Silicon Image SiI 3132 SoftRaid 5 Controller.
"Device Info" TAB
The drop down bo

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Great unit for the price

Reviewed By: CI on 1/19/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: more than 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Runs cool and quiet. Has indiviudual drive activity lights. No problems hot-swapping drives.

Cons: Didn't work with my on-board SATA controller. You'll need a card with a Silicon Image chipset (like the one included in the box) to be compatible with the port multiplier

Other Thoughts: I've got 4 of these (each with 4 drives) all running off a single 4-port controller card. I haven't tried running the controller in RAID mode, just have 16 individually accessible drives, but speed is good and reliability is outstanding.

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