Question 1

This advertises as only supporting drives up to 3TB. Is that true, or can I put 4TB+ drives in it and expect them to work and have their full capacity available?

Accepted Answer

I currently have 8 4TB drives (each drive has 1 4TB ExFat partition) in mine and they work wonderfully.

The only time time the enclosure is attached to my Mac is to transfer data to it. It is usually (95%) attached to my Blu-ray player (Oppo BDP-103). Regardless of what it's attached to, all 8 drives are seen in their full 4TB glory.

I love this device and will probably get another 8-bay enclosure soon.

I hope this helps.

Question 2

Can I turn on drive separately or do they all go on at  the same time once the power is switched on?

Accepted Answer

All the drives power up one at a time, and is controlled by the unit. They are not hot swappable. I formatted each drive on another system, and assigned a letter for each of them (Win7). This allowed the system to mount each drive without any issues each time it booted up. Using native USB3 to communicate with the 8 bay tower too. As I need more space, I upgrade each drive. The unit does a great job of spinning up the drives and getting them all mounted. Using a program like "USB Safely Remove" allows this unit to be seen as one mounted unit, but allows you to un-mount each drive as you like. Currently running a set of mixed drives (1- 4tb Seagate, 2- 2tb Seagate, 1- 3tb WD Black, 3- 3tb WD Green and 1- 3tb Toshiba). The three WD 3tb Green drives like to spin down and save energy, but they will spin back up when you try to access them. The Mediasonic unit works fine doing that. Also interfaces well with Win7, Win8, and Windows 10. Have not tried any SSD drives in this unit, but I'm sure it will work just fine.

Question 3

Is there another/better box or newer model for 8+ drives connected via usb 3.0 to pc? Keep reading about issues with this..

Accepted Answer

I've had this enclosure for almost 2 years and never a problem with with it. Two hard drive failures, but they were 4 or 5 years old before going into the enclosure. It has been in use 24/7 since buying.  I'm using linux with an ssd for the OS and have btrfs raid10 for data on the enclosure. It is a file server, media server, crashplan, owncloud and additional backup. It receives hourly backups from the home computers and sends a daily backup off site. Granted, network and processing power have something to do with what I need, but it is taking care of 10 computers, 2 chromecasts and half a dozen android devices.

As it has worked so well I've been thinking of buying another over building an 8 to 10 drive server.

Question 4

I'm a little confused about the maximum drive size supported by this enclosure. The photographs show 3TB max on the box, the specifications and description say 4TB max, and the manufacturer's website now says 6TB max. I have installed 3TB and 4TB in mine without any problems. Anyone able to confirm whether 6TB drives are supported or not?

Accepted Answer

In my experience with Mediasonic devices (I have a range of their products from usb2/esata 4 bay drives, 4 bay raid and this 8 bay product), they usually list the maximum space of the drives that are currently in the market on the packaging. But just like you have experienced, I have placed in larger drives (2TB in an older 1TB model) and have gotten them to work no issues (with no updates to firmware).

I would assume that if they list a larger model on their website, they would have at least tested that 6TB drives would work (and probably the 8TB models coming out early next year as well).

Unfortunately, I cannot confirm the 6TB model works in this model (as I am personally waiting to fill it up with 8TB models) as I do not have the 6TB drives.

Question 5

I have the 4 bay version of this and would love to hear some suggestions on what drives to purchase.  I won't be using any Raid array as I've been talked out of that.

Any suggestions?

Accepted Answer

Hi Shaun,

I have a 4 bay Mediasonic, but decided to up my storage with an 8 bay.  I wanted at least 2 additional copies of my data, so I bought an 8 bay.  Love the 8 bay with adding the additional hard drives I can store almost all my data file with original & 2 copies.  All works fine and with the additional drives I feel comfortable of not losing any files.  Never had any failures with the hardware but I sure wish  I had purchased Western Digital & not Seagate.  I had two hard drives go out with new Seagates.  Both Mediasonic has been good hardware for me,.

Good Luck

Question 6

My mobo does not have a estata port and I will need to purchase a pcie estata controller.  Is there a recommended card for this device?  I'm assuming a card that can handle 8 devices?

Accepted Answer

The Mediasonic Probox connects to USB 3 or USB 2 (degraded performance)  or eSATA.  ONe Mediasonic cabinet has one eSata interface and one USB 3 interface.  Therefore, you can connect the box to either one USB 2, one USB 3, or one eSATA.  The Probox 8 interface performs the switching between drives for I/O across sthe single cable.   PCIE-eSATA cards come with 2 or 4 eSATA ports.  There is a variety of PCIE-eSATA cards available from multiple online computer part companies.  I have used both USB 3 and eSATA to connect a Mediasonic Probox, but I had problems with the eSATA (particularly at boot time)  and went back to USB 3.  (If you decide to use eSATA with a PCIE-eSATA card, buy a new high-quality eSATA cable.  The cables that accompany the Probox have caused errors on my drives in the Probox  The same for USB 3 cables.)

Question 7

Will this work with the newest 8T drives?

Accepted Answer

Hello.....My co-worker who I bought this item for has stated that this enclosure works with 8TB drives.

I did also find this post on the Mediasonic web site.

Mediasonic wrote:

Yes our enclosures support 5TB, 6TB and 8 TB Hard drives. If you are using Windows, you just need to use GPT partition just like in 3TB and 4TB

Question 8

Really confused about the storage capacity. The photograph says 3TB max, the box that arrived at my house says 4TB max, and the mediasonic website now says it supports 6TB max. Anyone tried 6TB?
http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1357290761

Accepted Answer

Enter an answer I am using 4 and 6 Tb drives on mine just fine. However you need to use windows 7 or newer and format them as GPT drives, however that is a function of windows recognizing them as larger than 3 Tb rather than an issue with the enclosure. Just according to what i read, the controller in this does not work like the one in a mybook or other single external HDD which allows the computer to see the 4 Tb and bigger without special formatting. But they work just fine on my windows 7 system. this question.

Question 9

is it possible to use a firewire to TBolt adapter when I buy the new mac pro? so I can acess this as a video storage box?

Accepted Answer

My co-worker is the end user of this device. He mounted eight 4TB drives, connected it to usb3 on Linux computer. The performance was good, he got persistent speed about 200 MBytes/sec. Sorry but he is not using this device with a Mac so I am not able to answer your question.

Question 10

4TB drives work. Great! What about 6TB? Or is the sata controller on this device not new enough to support those drives?

Accepted Answer

I am using 4 and 6 Tb drives on mine just fine. However you need to use windows 7 or newer and format them as GPT drives, however that is a function of windows recognizing them as larger than 3 Tb rather than an issue with the enclosure. Just according to what i read, the controller in this does not work like the one in a mybook or other single external HDD which allows the computer to see the 4 Tb and bigger without special formatting. But they work just fine on my windows 7 system.

Questions & Answers