Question 1

Does this power itself on after a power loss?  I have the older model and that's the most annoying thing.

Accepted Answer

Hi --

I'm afraid not.  If the unit loses power, then it simply stays off (which I find equally annoying).

I you're truly industrious, then you could probably hack it open and replace the front on/off switch with a toggle (so that once the switch is in the physical "on"  position, it stays there until you physically change it to the "off" position). That way, if it loses power, it's off because it has no power; when it has power, it's on because the toggle switch is in the "on" position. But, that's a lot of work, and would instantly void any warranty you have.

Sorry for the bad news.  :-(

Question 2

Does is work with USB 2?

Accepted Answer

usb3 is backwards compatible with usb2.  The downside is, it will be SLOW...

Question 3

how would one connect this NAS to a network via ethernet so others can use it?

Accepted Answer

This is NOT a NAS - so it doesn't have an Ethernet port and cannot be directly connected to your network. You will need to connect this first to your workstation/server via eSATA/USB - then configure shares on the RAID using your OS.

Question 4

Does this device work with Windows 10? I also read on the specifications that with MBR enabled it only supports up to 2tb, what does that mean??

Accepted Answer

In general, hard drives used in PCs have to be partitioned. There are two different partitioning schemes in common use: the older, called "MBR", and the newer, called "GPT". The partition table format used in MBR has a 2 TB limit *per drive*. Since this box presents itself to your computer as a single drive, that means that if you built a RAID array on it, you'd only be able to use 2 TB of the entire array! GPT partitioning theoretically supports "drives" up to 2^64 blocks, which with 4K sectors is about 75 x 10^21 bytes (that is, "75" followed by 21 zeroes)...  we won't run out of room there for a very long time.   Windows (Vista and later) fully supports both (you choose this in Disk Manager).   Even XP supports GPT for data disks, just not for booting. Also note that to boot from a GPT disk your machine has to have UEFI firmware rather than the old BIOS. But you probably don't want to boot from this RAID enclosure. You can of course mix them: leave your existing drive(s) as MFT and run a RAID array in this one as GPT.

Question 5

My file transfer rate is all over the place with this connected via usb 3. It's jumping from 5 MB/s and then climbing to 50-60 or 100 and then plumits back to 5-15. I have never had ANY drive act like this ever. What is causing this, is this the enclosures fault? what do others get when transferring large files from this to internal hdd?

Accepted Answer

It did get that (fluctuation) from one of my PCs but worked great on the others at a steady 100-150 with USB3, a bit higher with ESATA...and I even pulled those numbers through a shared folder on a 1GB test LAN. I deduced that it may have been issues with that PC (load, mem, port, etc). Try a couple more PCs and see what you get. Hope that helps. Let us know how it goes. Take care. -J

Question 6

Does this product support 4096 4Kn physical sector drives?

Accepted Answer

Manufacturer page says "Not compatible with 4Kn Native Drives".

Question 7

Has anyine tried to use it with ZFS and Linux?

Accepted Answer

I have not tried this; I've only used my box with (4) 6GB drives under Windows which, given the current RAID-5 setting, gives me 15.5TB of usable storage.  The instructions give step-by-step instructions (including pictures) for setting things up using either Windows or Mac; however, since the RAID is being handled by the hardware in the box, and the computer's OS just sees the box as one (or more) drives connected by either USB or eSATA, I'd have to believe that the box wouldn't have a problem with ZFS and Linux.  NOTE that I DO NOT work for Mediasonic, I HAVE NOT tried it with ZFS and Linux, and my opinion should IN NO WAY be viewed as a statement that it DOES or DOES NOT work with ZFS and Linux.

Good luck!

Question 8

Can this be configured to run 2 drives in RAID and the other 2 drives figured normally or in RAID. I don't want to have all 4 drives running in RAID?

Accepted Answer

No - you can run all four as separate in single mode, but all the available RAID modes are exclusively RAID configurations and can't be mixed as RAID and Single Mode --- at least that's with Windows OS.  Manual and box indicate what I described above so it looks like the answer is no.

Question 9

is the hard drives hot swapables?

Accepted Answer

No.   This is NOT a hot swap device.

Question 10

Can this device be attached to a router/ap that has the capability to host a regular external drive already?

Accepted Answer

yes, appears as normal drive.  large capacity may be a problem.

Brand	Mediasonic
Model	HFR7-SU3S2

Drive	SATA 6Gb/s
External I/O	USB 3.0, eSATA
RAID Levels	Raid 0 (Spanning) JBOD Raid 0 (Stripping) Raid 1 (Mirroring) Raid 3 (Stripped set with dedicated parity) Raid 5 (Striped set with distributed parity) Raid 10 (Mirroring + Striping)

Dimensions	6.54" x 4.96" x 8.46"
Weight	3.97 lbs. (Excluding hard drive)

Mediasonic PRORAID 4 Bay 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0 & eSATA (HFR7-SU3S2)

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Item#: N82E16816322029