Mediasonic HFR2-SU2S2 RAID 0 / 1 / 3 / 5 / 10 USB 2.0 eSATA PRORAID Box 4 Bay Raid Enclosure with eSATA

Pros: Cheap.. simple to get running

Cons: No support system.. W7 will not recognize the full capacity

Other Thoughts: Ok so I load this thing up and it sees under 1TB on a 4 X 1TB RAID5 setup (should see just under 3TB)..

So I go to get some answers and guess what... only thing is a forum? Pro part with zero support network? yea right...

If I needed other users to advise me on a product, I would go to toms, technet or some other third party forum... but if that is the level of support available? This can stay with home users... "PRO" it is not...

Pros: Inexpensive
Good quality construction for the price
So far reliable hardware RAID5
Seems to play nice with WD Green drives (1 wee so far so good)
Excellent tech support

Cons: Poor documentation.
Writes are a bit slow but for this price I'm not complaining.

Other Thoughts: My only complaint is the documentation. It really does not make clear that once you select a RAID level that you have to confirm the setting via a hidden button on the back. I'd give two eggs off for documentation but their tech support is outstanding. Once you get that figured out it just works.

I'm running mine via eSATA with 4 WD Green 1.5TB drives in RAID5 and so far no problems. That's saying a lot because the WD Green are notoriously finicky when in RAID5. The initial 1TB transfer was a tad slow but reads are quick and I'm not complaining at this price. In fact I may just get another the next time they go on sale.

Bottom line other than the poor manual Mediasonic exceeded my expectations.

Pros: Inexpensive solution for stand alone / portable array solution.

Cons: I took off a point due to the undocumented barriers to set the device up correctly. My use case involved having the drives in a raid5 config connected over the esata port. I got it to work by: populating the device with the drives, plug the unit into usb, supply power to the enclosure, power on enclosure, select raid level, hold down the hidden confirmation button in the back... enclosure reboots, via host format and verify capacity... formatting completes, remove from usb then plug in the esata. I had to do this due to the lack of port-multiplier support on my sata controller.

Pros: I ordered two of these.

One of them seems to be working fine so far. Running RAID 5 with 4x2 TB drives, connected via eSATA to a Windows PC. I have been robocopying data to the RAID non-stop without any problems so far.

Cons: I'm pretty mad.

The second unit I received appears to be refurbished or something as there was some strange label on the box and the edges of the box were sealed with Scotch tape. However, the real problem is that this second unit came without any of the screws needed to attach the handles to the hard drives. The second unit came with all the parts as advertised (even the little mini magnetic screwdriver), but no screws at all.

I should have given this 2 or 3 stars because it appears that I have received a refurbished unit (I could be wrong, but if I'm right, I'm 99.9% sure that the product is not advertised as a refurbished unit on the product page), and that Newegg or Mediasonic or whoever did not take the care to make sure all the parts were included with the unit.

Other than the fact that I did not receive the product as it was advertised, another issue is that SMART data for drives in the enclosure cannot be accessed.

Other Thoughts: If the second unit I received really is a refurbished unit, I ask that whomever is responsible (Newegg? Mediasonic?) for dealing with selling/packaging refurbished units, please make sure you include all the parts.

I should note that when I first connected the first unit to my Windows PC via eSATA, Windows would only recognize 1492 GB of the array (when it should have been recognizing ~5.5 TB). My motherboard uses the JMB363 eSATA controller which supports port multiplier, so I didn't understand why it wasn't working. Turns out I had to update the drivers for the controller to make it work properly.


The HDD activity indicators on the front panel (the clear thin bar under the front panel and above the front door) make the enclosure look like a disco or something (they're blue on idle, flash light purple on activity, and are red when there's an error).

Pros: Cant beat the price,Great Look, Compact, Quiet, Hardware RAID is a plus, supports both eSATA & USB 2.0, great if you need to take it somewhere, the chances your work or friends PC having a esata card that support port multiplier is very slim, but everyone had USB 2.0 nowadays.

Cons: Included manual is not clear on the initial setup, Can get a bit discouraging when your Drives wont work no matter what you do, Took me a while to figure out.

Other Thoughts: First of All be aware you can power up the unit and set your RAID setting before even installing your drives,I had to do this because I was having an issue were the device would always give me a hard drive error and power back down and not allow me to change anything. Also the Manual does not make it clear that you have to press the Hidden button on the back just to "Enable" you to change the RAID mode, THEN you change the mode with the button on the FRONT marked "Mode".
I had 4 2TB Drives, mix and match of Seagate , Hitachi and WD drives. Every time I powered on the Device would give me a HD error and power back down. No matter what combination I tried, even taking out one by one and trying. so I powered the unit on with no drives and good it stays on because there is no HD error, Pressed the hidden button a few seconds and changed the RAID to RAID5 which is what I wanted, powered down, installed my drives and powered back up, Success.

Pros: The 2 big draws were (1) HW RAID and (2) auto-power on/off. Other good points: compact size, very low noise, good cooling (w/ 5400RPM disks).

RAID setup is simple (once you decode the bare minimum documentation).

Cons: Limited documentation.
Support is hit and miss. Pre-sales got same day response. Post-sales hasn't impressed.
There's a manufacturer forum, but can't get account properly created.

Key question is how the HW RAID handles the new 4K disks and whether it's able to properly align the partitions (performance).

No provided RAID utility to let you tweak the RAID parameters.

HW RAID also breaks SMART access to the disks. So if you need to look at disk stats, you need to take the disk out and do so individually (google WD TLER LLC).

Disk retention plate is a bit tricky to get on (once you clue in on it's supposed to work, it gets easier).

Other Thoughts: Documentation doesn't spell this out, but you can't use this with just 1 disk installed. You need a minimum of 2 disks.
Setup: FreeNAS + 4xWD20EARS disks

Wish Mediasonic would do a 5-disk version.

Pros: It arrived in 3 days

Cons: I plugged my previously set up drives into the raid tower and it wiped my drives. About 1.2TB lost, in the possess of recovering the data with disc recovery software...a now added cost.

Other Thoughts: I still have no idea if it actually works.

Pros: Great looks and form factor. It looks like a quality product. Works with my 500GB Samsung HD502IJ drives (I tested spanning, RAID 0, and RAID 1).

Cons: Does not work with my 2TB Samsung HD203WI drives at all. The error light comes on shortly after I turn on the device. These drives were new from Newegg and they work in my Thermaltake docking station and my PC.

Other Thoughts: I read another review (under the HD203WI drives) saying that these drives work with the HFR2-SU2S2 so I'm not sure what's going on here. I must just have a defective product.

Pros: Fast, quiet, cool, versatile, runs four SAMSUNG 2TB in RAID5 no problem, setup was a breeze, easy access to insane amounts of data in one entity, small and portable (heavy tho), looks pretty sexy.

The best storage enclosure I've seen, redundancy is a huge plus, everything is bundled into it -- saves you the hassle and cost of a RAID card or bios. Far cheaper than a NAS and can work as a substitute for it if you share it on a networked computer.

Cheaper and exactly the same as the Firewire model, if you don't intend on using FW, save the cash.

Cons: * Small but heavy, that's to be expected from a solidly built case with 4 HDDs crammed into it.
* Requires port multiplier capability on mobo to use eSATA.
* Not a NAS, but I wouldn't want a NAS that's at this price range.
* Manual obviously written by people with limited grasp of English language, but setup is a breeze for anyone with common sense.

Other Thoughts: I did a lot of research and considered a bunch of far more expensive NAS setups. Finally I thought about what I wanted it for -- storage, reliability (raid5), and portability. This fits all those, I have 5.5TB (4x2TB RAID5) of 'real' storage space with RAID5 protection and couldn't be happier. eSATA is crazy fast, appears as a normal single driver, my roomates download off me via gigabit and it tops out the read/write speeds through the network.