Question 1

When installed to a Windows PC, how does it recognize the drives in the enclosure, as a single combined volume with a single letter designation or as each drive being a separate volume with a unique drive letter?

Accepted Answer

If you have a raid controller card and connected with eSata port, you can manipulate in RAID so that windows can recognize however you wanted to be. If you connected to USB 3.0 however, you would have to set each drives as dynamic and use windows configuration. Hence if you want RAID set up before the windows boot, you'll require a eSata raid controller with port multiplier function. One eSata with port multiplier will be able to configure all 5 drives in RAID.

Question 2

Does it have a variable speed fan?  My current Orico 2 bay drive is very loud all the time.

Accepted Answer

Yes, but it still seemed load. I returned it because it kept crashing my drives by sleeping the drives or something, it didn't seem to be compatible with my Macintosh.  I bought a 4 bay Icydock and it's quieter and works correctly.

Question 3

Does this unit allow drives to park/spin down without disconnecting?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the drive will spin down without disconnecting.  The only minor problem encountered is the wakeup from sleep will reset the drives, but it causes no problem, just time delay.

Question 4

Can you use this with Blu Ray burners?

Accepted Answer

The built in controller wouldn't work with anything but SATA hard drives. I was disappointed to find the controller blocked any of the drives from being used as a startup drive. This unit works great for backing up any data, files, etc., and has been perfect for storing all the stuff I don't want to lose.

Question 5

Why does it only show 1 drive when connected with eSATA?

Accepted Answer

My guess is your eSATA controller doesn't support eSATA PM (port multiplier). I am using this enclosure on a machine running Linux (Cent OS 6) with 5 drives and RAID 6 software controller built into Linux. I added the SYBA SI-PEX40063 (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA85V3CK2536) controller card. Has been working flawlessly for about 1 1/2 years.

Question 6

Can I just connect 4 HDDs to the enclosure and use them as independent drives without the compulsion to enable RAID on them? However, I am still interested in the RAID supported model for future use.

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can use the drives as independent drives without enabling RAID. The enclosure supports multiple RAID modes including Normal, which allows you to use each drive independently.

Question 7

What is the maximum capacity Harddrive it can take i mean 8 TB or 10 TB?

Accepted Answer

I do not know.  My drives are in the 1T range.  They are a collection of old drives. What I can say is that the box is pretty good.  Easy to install the drives and it works.

Question 8

What chemicals does it expose me to as stated on the product page?

Accepted Answer

None.

Question 9

Wouldn't you want fans for heat  Wouldn't the case get really hot if you have that many hard drives in it ?

Accepted Answer

Certainly, which is why it has a fan in the rear per the grill holes in a circle where  fan is. However, if heat is a huge worry, fill it with SSD's.

Question 10

Does this unit support UASP?

Accepted Answer

I don't have Storage Controllers in my pc so I cannot help you on the USB Attached SCSI (UAS) Mass Storage Device mode.  Sorry.

Questions & Answers