Rosewill RSV-S4-X - 4-Bay 3.5” Hot-Swappable SATA - eSATA Storage System - RAID 0 / 1 / 10 / 5 / 5 + Spare, Spanning & JBOD Enclosure - RAID Controller Card Bundle

Pros: Price

Cons: Never has worked on any linux, windows 7 or FreeBSD system I tried in 3 years of fiddling with this.

Other Thoughts: I can't tell if the adapter card or the enclosure is the problem but I've wasted tens of hours trying to get this unit to work. As soon as I try to write to any of the disks in the enclosure the system locks up and throws lots of error messages. I updated the BIOS on the adapter and that helped a bit but still massive failure.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

We are sorry to hear that, please contact our support team to assist you with troubleshoot and/or warranty options.

Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Monday - Friday 8AM - 5PM PST

Email: rma@rosewill.com
Email2: techsupport@rosewill.com


We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Work good for almost 2 years! Looks nice, Solid cabinet.

Cons: When they started to fail I they may have taken a couple of drives with them. There all failing the same way, obvisly theres a manufacuring problem, way wont the manufacture offer usefull support when they knowingly know they have a QC or engineering problem.

Other Thoughts: I have 2 of these, the first one started to fail after about 1 3/4 years and then the other one about 2 1/4 years. It does sound like the power supplys are to fault, I was thinking maybe do to poor quality electrolytic capacitors, but my LCR meter indicates there still good, not sure whats failing but both my units do the exact same thing. It's like there trying to start up then they fail, then they try again and fail, it happens over and over and then they start working after about 10 mints, mean wail you could be damaging more drives.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Thanks for the feedback; we will pass it along to our QA and Design teams for further investigations. In the event that you are having troubles, please do not hesitate to contact our support team at the number below.

Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com
Email2: techsupport@rosewill.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Simple setup, software and firmware easy to install and update on certain OSes. Long cable.

Cons: Unreliable in 3 installations and through various replacement parts. No support from manufacturer (or Silicon Image) regarding updates to drivers or software for future compatibility.

Other Thoughts: I have owned 3 of these and ordered a replacement PSU when needed to help in diagnosing where the problems with these lie. When they work, they work great. However, don't count on getting one of these to work, then upgrading your OS, or moving to another computer, without major problems. In the first instance, I was running W7x64, and reformatted and reinstalled Windows, plugged the box back in, and everything was detected as before (without the RAID manager program installed it still picks up the array). Later, repeating the same process (same OS), 2 out of 4 drives lit up and I was still able to access the data because I had set it up as RAID 1+0. Now, when one drive dropped from the array and switched to "offline", there was nothing I could do to bring the array back up and it had to be recreated. But guess what, since I'm now running W8.1x64, the software does not see the array or SI3132 controller (even though device manager does). I had to put the card in another computer running W7, install all software and configure the array, then move the hardware back to the W8.1 computer and install only drivers. Then the array I already set up works, but cannot be configured. Sans Digital and Rosewill blame SI because the card is not supported well (and they are right), and claims that they are using Marvell based cards in all current bundles. All in all, I have one still in service just to use the hard drives it contains, and the speed is amazing, same as if the drives were internal. I map all my user folders to the external box, as well as run VMs off of it instead of loading up my internal SSDs. It's not dependable enough to use as a backup destination, and not versatile enough like an NAS device to set it and forget it. However, at this price I still like the device and it fits a niche. If only the PSU were serviceable, I'd have all of them running right now.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Thanks for the feedback we will pass it along to our QA and Design teams.

Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com
Email2: techsupport@rosewill.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Well I got three years and one month of 24x7 activity out of this guy. I used it in a JBOD configuration and had the raiding done by the OS (linux software raid).

Cons: Power supply is dead - as MANY others have noted... I just got a bit more time out of mine.

Other Thoughts: I flip some electrical breakers off to do some electrical work and when I flip them back on the unit stays powered off. No lights, no fans, nothing (although there is a faint clicking noise - but I don't know enough about electronics to say whether or not that's typical). I emailed Rosewill asking where I can buy a replacement PSU and they pointed me to SansDigital product (TR4M Power Supply). At $75 (including shipping) I'm not sure I'll buy a replacement PSU or find another external enclosure.

Pros: Flexibility of configurations between PCI-e card BIOS and software, easy to set up and get running in Windows 7 x 64 WHEN THE SOFTWARE WORKED. Also these cases look sleek and everything fits together well. I have owned two of these units purchased during sales, and they offer a lot in this price point. I initially had my first unit set up with 4x500GB Seagates in fake RAID 1+0 and partitioned with one partition for VMs and one for storage. The storage partition was my destination for automatically downloading software installation files from Filehippo, etc., and the VM partition was extremely fast and saw no lag in running various server OSes and desktop OS test installs over the eSATA connection. This worked extremely well for several months with the right combination of drivers and card BIOS.

Cons: The cons don't really make me give up on this product, because I really want to like it. Some of the issues I'm having I know are because of my configuration, but the support departments at both Rosewill/Newegg and Sans Digital (the actual manufacturer are lacking in their knowledge of the product and in denial of the issues that many other reviewers have run into.

First issue: Power supplies. Both of my units started to develop problems staying on and coming back on within 1-2 years, after warranties had expired, of course. I currently have the only one operational on top of my computer case with Molex connectors from the computer's power supply running to the SATA backplane inside of this unit, just so I can access my data. Both Rosewill and Sans Digital tech support say that the power supply issue is unheard of, and the newer units are bound to be an improvement even if they did have known issues (which they deny). Reviews here make it pretty obvious how common the power supply issues really are.

Second Issue: Staying online. I had these running in Windows 7 x64 for a while, and after the power supply issues, they seemingly also started to develop issues with eSATA dropping volumes. I checked and rechecked all driver, software and BIOS versions, and tried all kinds of combinations that had worked before. As it stays in one spot and never moves, I don't really question stress on the cables, but I ordered a CablesToGo 6' cable just in case, and saw no change. After updating to Windows 8 x64, the problem persists. Again I have tried 2 driver versions, as well as two card BIOS versions, and have had no consistency. What happens is the drives drop randomly after being unused, as I have never had one disconnect as I was accessing it. There is no specified time as to when this happens, and unplugging either and of the eSATA cable and reinserting brings the drive online. I also swapped cards from the other unit, as well as backplanes, with no difference. I also tried electrical contact cleaner and making sure that the cable insertion length is the same on both the factory cable(s) and the one I purchased. The problem is definitely software/driver related. As it is on Windows 8 with a Windows 7 certified driver, Sans Digital said they would test on their setup on Server 2012, and later claimed they have no dropping volumes. Also they have told me that the bundled card with the Sans Digital branded boxes is now a RocketRaid 622 and not a SIL2132, with the RR622 having a Windows 8 certified driver.

Other Thoughts: I have ordered one power supply for a Sans Digital TRM 4 bay tower from their spare parts store, just to see if there is an improvement in later designs. $59 for part number PS-SAN-TR4MPS to repair a box that cost under $100... This was after numerous emails back and forth with Rosewill and Sans Digital describing the failures and doing their suggestions. If the power supply works I may order another, or I may forget about it and manage with NAS devices from now on instead of eSATA, although it was a decent way to get a lot of redundant storage for VMs without needing internal ports. The unreliability of the power supplies I could live with, and run 2 Molex 4 pin connectors from elsewhere as I am now, but the dropping volumes is too much. The cost of a replacement power supply and a bare RR622 card is above what this combo costs... I really wish these were more reliable, I'd love to be able to leave them in service permanently

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

If you are not fully satisfied with our product please contact us to better assist you in resolving your problem.

Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Simple enclosure design. Can do 12GB (4x3TB). Came with port multiplier card . Fast from: RSV drive 1 to RSV drive 2, drive to PC, drive to USB 3.0.

Cons: Need another one. Supplied eSATA Port Multiplier card will only really work with 1 of these enclosures loaded up. You'll need a second card for a second enclosure.

Other Thoughts: This has been working great. Used it on my primary PC (Win7) since 11/11 (almost 2-years) and it is pretty much always on with a lot of file transfers taking place. I've been using this as storage and local backup and now it is moving to be on an old computer to be a dedicated OpenELEC XBMC server (plugged it in and didn't have to do anything, just worked). It's quiet enough that I can't hear it so that is nice too.

I don't know why other people seem to be having issues with it considering how long mine has been in use.

Pros: Functions

Cons: Slow. With drives capable of 150Mbps sustained, in mirrored, stripped, JBOD or RAID 5. With either the eSATA controller that comes with it, or others. Average 1-5Mbps with occasional spikes to 10Mbps. This is has been tried on 3 different systems running a mix of Windows 7, SLES or ESXi.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

If you are not fully satisfied with our product please contact us to better assist you in resolving your problem.

Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Decent price. Sets up and installs fairly easily in Win7 x64.

Cons: This worked very well until I added two more drives for a second mirrored RAID. The second array becomes flagged as corrupt every time Win7 reboots or restarts. The software then goes into a 10-14 hour restore redundancy process. During the process the array is useless due to the transfer speed being so slow.

According to tech support this is supposedly a known problem. A suggested solution was to disable check pointing. The manual states that doing this will increase restore time, so I am not sure that it is the thing to do.

Other Thoughts: The marathon rebuild sessions cannot be doing my disk drive life any good. I am going to see about getting a different controller card, since the box itself seems to work fairly well (although without a port multiplier the box is just a big single drive enclosure).

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

If you are not fully satisfied with our product please contact us to better assist you in resolving your problem.

Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Worked well for a couple years.

Cons: Won't power on now. Looks like it's a PSU failure as others have found.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

If you are not fully satisfied with out product please contact us to better assist you in resolving your problem.

Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: It works as advertised, that is until it died. Luckily, I didn't use raid on it or the array would have gone down and my data would've been lost.

Cons: I'm kind of disappointed, the unit died 13 months after I bought it so no warranty.

Other Thoughts: Not going to bother taking in for repair, it's just not worth it, instead, I'll go look for another brand that can offer a little more warranty.