SANS DIGITAL TowerRAID TR4U+ JBOD 4 x SATA 3.5" Drive Bays 4 Bay SATA to USB 3.0 JBOD Enclosure (Silver)

Pros: Looks like good unit, but as all USB 3.0 enclosures I have seen so far, this does not support SATA III 6GB/s drives!!! so if only supports 3GB/s input, how can output be anywhere near 5GB/s instead of less than 3GB/s?

Cons: No SATA III support. No eSATA 6GB/s support. USB 3.0 not fully supported.... 3GB/s MAX!!!

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for purchasing Sans Digital product.

The unit overall perform is about 200MB/s ~300MB/s. It is not due to 3GB/s, rather, it is the USB 3.0 implementation.

If you are looking for higher performance storage device, we recommend TR4X+, which will provide true 6Gb/s per harddrives, totaling 24Gb/s per ports.

Please contact feel free to contact our technical support at tech@sansdigital.com or 1-800-980-1988 to provide you the solution to meet your requirements.

External Link(s):

TowerRAID TR4X+, 24G bandwidth|

Pros: These are great towers. Whether you want to RAID it or just use it to access 4 drives for storage I recommend these highly. I bought this same tower about 6 years ago, with the only differance being mine was USB 2.0 only. I am still using the tower and the only thing that has changed over the years is the size of the drives it has housed.

I started with 4 80 Gb drives and now it houses 4 2 Tb drives which is the largest mine holds. I use it for back up storage in JBOD mode mostly but have used the RAID capabilities with no problems at all. I am getting ready to purchase a new eSATA version since my new computer supports eSATA.

The original 80mm cooling fan is still working after 6 years of running almost 24/7. Like any computer its a dust magnet and opening the unit and bowing the dust out is pretty much the only maintenance I ever performed. I do this every 6 months since my house is dusty.

Cons: The only issue I have is that in Vista when you set your computer to sleep the auto power switch does not shut the tower off. It only shuts the tower off when you shut down completely. Not sure this is a con but it would be nice if it shut down in sleep mode. Not a con but you want to be real careful and deliberate when changing the 2 dip switches on the back. 1 is the auto power and 1 is the RAID switch. If you have 4 drives full of data and flip the RAID switch accidently you will lose all your data. There is no warning stating that all data will be lost do you want to continue so take care if you are messing with these.

Other Thoughts: I have seen several people who claim "HIGH" tech knowledge slamming these towers with 1 egg reviews because their computers won't boot with the tower plugged in to their USB ports. These people are blaiming the manufacturer for their own computer illiteracy. My tower is plugged in and my computer boots up just fine because I don't have "Boot from USB device" enabled in my BIOS. If your box won't boot after plugging this tower in, enter BIOS and disable this function. If after doing this you still have issues contact the manufacturer and 9 times out of 10 they can help you solve your problem b4 you start leaving lousy reviews.