Question 1

The description says "3 gigabytes or above". Does this mean you need to use 3GB drives or larger, or what? Does it mean it won't work with a pair of 1 GB drives?

Accepted Answer

It says "3 TB" or above, I believe that may be a mistake, because any smaller drive size will work. It may be a 3 TB maximum per drive, that just seems logical. (Meaning one could have two 3 TB drives pooled together for a total of 6 TB usable.) I am not sure what your use of this will be, but I will explain the reason I felt compelled to write this, as I normally never give feedback.  Mine stayed on 24/7 (about 6 months) and lately has experienced connectivity issues via esata and USB 3.0 ports. Could be hardware or compatibility issue with Windows 8.1, nevertheless, it is now defective. (Of course, out of the "30 day warranty")  I just purchased the following empty enclosure:  Vantec NexStar HX4R NST-640S3R-BK Quad 3.5. I have not received it yet, so I can not give any feedback on it, but it has excellent reviews. (Will be using two 3 TB drives for now, but plenty of room for expansion :)  )

Hope this helps...

Question 2

Does this only do Raid, or can it be configured in a non raid fashion? (single individual drives)

Accepted Answer

There are 4 modes (I believe) and one of them is JBOD (which stands for "Just a Bunch Of Disks"). I actually am running it in JBOD mode with software mdraid providing raid. Works great. Rumor is that your chipset has to support JBOD. Mine does. 
I tried to run it in h/w RAID 1 mode, but was not able to access drives to monitor temperature (running on Linux, so management software does not work). In JBOD mode I can read temperature from one of the drives, but not the other (I guess this is a hardware limitation, both drives support it independently).

I was not sure hardware RAID is much faster, since there is apparently no caching involved. Also, I don't want to be dependent on the circuitry and running a risk of being unable to access the drives externally if the enclosure itself fails.

Last thing - careful with mode change. You need to reset the enclosure after mode switch and it does wipe out data as a result.

Question 3

When it says, "Capacity: 3TB and above." Does that mean that I need to have at least 3TB?

Accepted Answer

It should support any compatible drive, interface wise, under 4TB. Haven't tried any 5TB and 6TB drives in mine yet since they are for my Synology.

Question 4

Is this unit backwards compatible with USB 2.0?

Accepted Answer

Yes it is, I tried it. I believe its stated in its tech spec or manual. It does not quite use a regular usb cable, the end that plugs into the unit is a bit different. Be sure to follow instructions when setting it up for raid1. I use the eSata and I like it better. Works great  I had to slightly bend the retaining tabs on drive bays, so the don't come loose, drives seat nice and tight.

Question 5

I currently use this in a "2 individual drives" configuration attached to Ubuntu 12.04 box. I noticed that hddtemp is only capable of getting temp from one of the drives, not the other. Same with smartctl - only one drive (left facing the front to be exact) is capable of reporting full smart info. Is this just my box or others experince this as well?

Accepted Answer

I do not monitor temps, but run the fan always. Never had any issues or failures. I run the drives as individual 4 tv units. Sorry I could not help.

Question 6

I need extra trays. Do you sell them?

Accepted Answer

I sent the same question to their customer support - no answer. Could not find trays for this model in their online store. Perhaps they will add them later...

Questions & Answers