Question 1

Will this work with XP64?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it will, but Windows XP end of life is 8 April 2014.  Might want to move on to another operating system.

The Mediasonic Drive Bay isn't the compatibility issue.  It's the size of the hard drives you put in it.  If you stay below 2 TB drives you'll be fine with Windows XP.  Above 2.2 TB the drives need to be in GUID Partition Table (GPT) format.  Windows XP64 handles it, but with exceptions.  Look up "GUID Partition Table" in Wikipedia for more info.

Question 2

Can this be use just like a normal enclosure?  I want to see each hard drive separately. Standalone storage (No RAID, NO JBOD)

Accepted Answer

I don't think that this enclosure will do that for you. I believe you are looking for the SANS 4 drive enclosure with port multiplier. http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=N82E16816111177

Question 3

I want 2 each raid 1 'drives'.  Set one would be two 2TB drives I already have and set 2 would be two new 3TB drives.  Does this enclosure support this?  If not, what would you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Sounds like you are wanting a RAID 10 if I'm understanding correctly…and this drive will do that…however, I'm not sure it will be happy with the different size drives.  Thinking about it, what you really want is 2 x RAID 1 Sets so you'd need 2 RAID controllers most likely… you might want to look at two drives that take 2 x HDs each maybe. You can also try asking on the mediasonic.ca forums, they're pretty good on there I think…

Question 4

Can this drive do BIG with multiple drives of different sizes?

Accepted Answer

from wikipedia:Non-RAID_drive_architectures :
JBOD (or just a bunch of disks) is when a number of drives are used, but are not in a RAID configuration. The drives may be handled as separate logical volumes, or they may be combined into a single logical volume using a system like LVM… So I guess if your OS can handle it, you can have JBOD perform the same as "big", i.e as one concatenated drive array.
So, as long as your OS can see this the way you want the box itself 'should' work… :)

Brand	Mediasonic
Model	HFR2-SU3S2FW

Drive	SATA I / II / III
External I/O	USB 3.0 eSATA Firewire 400 (1 Port) Firewire 800 (2 Port)
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)

Mediasonic HFR2-SU3S2FW 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) 4 3.5" Drive Bays USB 3.0 eSA

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Item#: N82E16816322006