Question 1

Does the computer see this as one big drive, or do you have a drive letter for each installed drive?

Accepted Answer

Each drive is seen as an individual drive. If you have one drive in the Mediasonic enclosure, you will see 1 additional drive , if you have 4 drives in the Mediasonic enclosure you will see all 4  drives as individual drives.

Question 2

if I put my 4tb seagate that had my data in it to this external enclosure, will it still keep my data?

Accepted Answer

Yes, putting a hard drive in this enclosure is the same as putting one in your computer.

Once the enclosure is connected to the computer and turned on, the OS will assign an drive letter and you will see it in my computer.

If your drive already has a drive letter assigned then your might need to change some of your pointers or assign the drive the same letter your were using.

Question 3

Mediasonic's website states this model to support 4tb per bay for 16tb total. Someone mentioned special formatting for drives over 2tb. What format is this? Did you have success with this method?

Accepted Answer

The drives simply need to be initialized and NTFS formatted. The included instructions explain it all very simply. I have four 4TB drives in it and it works flawlessly and FAST (USB 3.0)!

Question 4

In the video on the Overview tab, the box says 8TB max, in the Specifications tab it says 4TB per bay, max of 16Tb total.

What one is correct?

Also, does this enclosure support RAID 5?

Accepted Answer

The box it arrived in says it supports up to 16 TB (4x4 TB drives).  I'm currently using mine with 3 TB drives, and it works just dandy.

Question 5

I have had this running for a year and a half with no real problems (except esata connection was very slow and made re-booting computer a gamble, but USB worked fine) with only two drives in it.  However,  now I have tried to add a thrid drive and Win 10 will not see the third drive.  The drive lights on the box light up at start up as if the box sees the third drive, just My Computer doeesn't see it.  I have changed out the drives so it doesn't matter which drive is the 2nd or third drive (the new drive or the old drive) or what position the 3rd drive is in (bay 3 or 4), all I get is two drives.  Has anyone else had this problem?  Any suggestions?

Accepted Answer

I want to preface this by saying I used my mediasonic JBOD with Windows with WHS 2011 and WSE 2012 r2 so it might not translate to Win 10. I have noticed it is better to format hard drives prior to putting them in the mediasonic JBOD. As a matter of fact, I cannot recall ever formating a hd in a mediasonic JBOD. I also sometimes have to power cycle a mediasonic device in order for it to see all the hard drives. I have noticed that if the 1st bay has a hard drive close to full it tends to be less active which can result in the other drives not being seen even though it is a JBOD the first bay seems to act like the primary drive (for lack of a better term). I would try to see if you can see the HD in bay 3 with an active transfer going on with bay 1. I know this is common sense and I am not trying to be insulting, but make sure the drive is pushed in all the way. I have two 8 bay mediasonic JBOD and four 4 bays with me not pushing the drive in all the way many times. If your note sure or want to be sure, close everything up. I leave the fronts off for better ventilation. Hope this helps.

Question 6

If I have all bays loaded with drives, can I turn on each drive individually or does the power switch control all bays that result in all of them powering up at the same time.?

Accepted Answer

They all power up at the same time.  I've had this for over a year now, and it is serving nicely as my media server.  My only complaint is that the fans are a little loud.

Question 7

can I plug the esata cable straight to my sata III on motherboard? or is there any adapter?

Accepted Answer

The box comes with an eSATA cable.  The connector will not plug into an internal SATA connector as the internal ones have a shape that is roughly L shapped, but the external connector is straight.

Here is a link to a product that would allow you to connect your internal connection to the supplied cable.

item number N 8 2 E 1 6 8 1 2 1 9 6 1 4 1

Question 8

Can you run this unit as JBOD?

Accepted Answer

If you have an eSata card in your computer or on your motherboard you can use this unit in JBOD mode, if you use the unit with a USB cable the only option you will have is to use Microsoft Storage Spaces when using multiple hard drives plus when using an eSata card it must support port multiplying.

Question 9

It looks like there is a row of HD activitly lights across the front, can someone confirm this? Are they flash-on-activity lights, or simple "drive is present in bay" indicators?

Also there aren't any pictures of how you physically install drives. Is it easy to slide them in and out? How easily could you get a 2.5" drive in one of the bays if you put a pair of 3.5" adapter rails on the drive?

Accepted Answer

The white band just next to the power button contains 4 blue LEDs linked to the activity state of the respective drives. They will turn on/off depending on the activity of the respective drive. The other LED indicators on the main panel that you may be referring to are quick indicator lights indicating the speed of the fans, the connection used and the power setting.

The drives are installed by installing a tray handle on the drive, and sliding the drives into grooves in the body itself. The connections are static connectors at the back of the main body. I do not think it would be possible to mount a 2.5" drive in the tray even with conversion rails, as the spacing for the connectors will not be correct (they would need to be more centered to handle the offset caused by the rails).

Question 10

Would it be possible to run 6tb drives in this enclosure Win8 x64.... ??? Has anyone tried?

Accepted Answer

Did any one actually tried 6TB HDD? I am very interested to know. When I had this box a few years ago, it says only hold 2TB each bay, but actually I could put in 4TB each bay. What if only use two 6TB with total 12TB, still need new firmware to drive?
Tony. G.

Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2 Metal 3.5" Black SATA I/II/III USB 3.0 & eSATA 4 Bay External Enclosure

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Item#: N82E16817576009