Question 1

1.  Is there only one connection coming out of the enclosure to go to the computer?

2. Does Raid have to be run or can the drives be used as individual drives?

Accepted Answer

1. Yes, only one connection is needed (USB or eSATA).
2. You DO have to use some form of raid on the drives.  You can _not_ just use them as single, individual disks.  To have that functionality get the non-raid version of this product (the Mediasonic H82-SU3S2 ProBox, which does not provide hardware raid, but the drives can be used invididually, and you can also use software raid).

Question 2

I'm looking for a RAID 10 as my backup system. I read that this enclosure must be used 4+4 drives, but not all 8 in one RAID config. But I read another comment saying that's not true. Which one is correct? All the other 8 bay enclosures are so expensive... And I want to purchase 8 WD Red 6TB into this. Does this product take that? Please help! Thanks!

Accepted Answer

When first formatted in my lab, with R10 selected at the front control panel, Win 7 Ultimate saw it, allowed formatting and seemed quite happy with all eight drives in one big happy family.  That lasted one day, and it reverted to four and four.  I haven't been able to resurrect the full eight drives as an R10, and it appears to become unstable if that is done.

Good luck.  BTW, not endorsing any products here, but I have several workstations with RAID in my lab, and have had too many crashes using Seagate HDDs.  Staying with WD drives seems to have solved that problem.

Question 3

What is the difference between this model and the H82-SU3S2?

Accepted Answer

The H82-SU3S2 is a JBOD (Just a bunch of Drives) 1-8 individual drive box. Whereas the H82-SU3S2 ProRaid Box is a True Raid system which is great for storage with backup drives. If one or two fail, your just replace them and let it rebuild. No data loss. I have 2 of these running raid 50 and they work great. You can put up to 8 4TB drives in them. Just depends on your needs. Hope this helps.

Question 4

Can I use 2.5" SSDs in this enclosure?

Accepted Answer

These are great cases for desktop attached storage very reliable but the backplane is fixed, the drives glide in on side rails plus they utilize the screw holes in a 3-1/2” HDD body for mounting the pull handles which also serve as vibration dampening and drive retention.

I would suggest that you contact the manufacturer to see if they make drive carriers to mount 2-1/2” SSD’s.

Question 5

I have a box with 4x2TB in Raid 5. I want to buy this 8-bay box with 4x5TB in Raid5 and transfer the data. That's the easy part. Now I want to migrate the 4x3TB drives to the 8-bay box and create a second volume. Can I do this without destroying the data in the 4x5TB volume and essentially have 1 6TB Raid volume and 1 15TB Raid volume?

Accepted Answer

I set up my ProRaid with a Mac. Your experience may differ on Windows.

I installed eight drives, attached the power cord and USB cable, and powered on the device. I selected RAID 5, the device restarted, and then I used Disk Utility on my Mac to I set up the two RAID volumes separately. They are both RAID 5, but they appear as separate volumes. And if you use RAID, this is the only way this device works. JBOD can be set up as one volume, but you lose the speed/security of RAID.

You have to set up the two RAID volumes separately, so you don't have to destroy the data on the other RAID volume.

When I first got my ProRaid, the first four drives set up as a RAID 5 volume, but I had to replace a drive before I could get the second volume set up. The ProRaid prevented me from using an incompatible drive, which is either good or bad, depending on how you see it. Either way, I kept using the first volume until I got the right four matching drives for the second volume.

Hope this helps.

Question 6

is this product compatible with USB 2.0?

Accepted Answer

Yes, I have run it under both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 without a hiccup on several different machines.

Question 7

Does the unit support Windows Server 2008 R2?

Accepted Answer

Good question.  If your hardware supports USB 2.0, 3.0 or ESATA it should work.  The question about port multiplier support comes in where multiple drives (there are 2 layers{logical drives} on this device) come through the same IO connection.  If you are using an add-on card to do thi s, it needs to support the port multiplier.  I used Win2K8 R2 and it worked for me on a similar device that would offer up all four devices as separate drives.  You should be fine.
64 Bit OS for the large drive sizes.

Question 8

In the event of catastrophic failure and the unit dies, is the data lost or can the raid be brought back up on another unit?

Accepted Answer

raid can be reconstructed on another device or virtually using recovery software.

Question 9

Do these support 16tb drives?

Accepted Answer

Hi, I’ve used it with Seagate 8tb drives but haven’t tried the 16Tb drives yet. I have a stack of 16Tb drives but haven’t found the time yet to build it. If you do, please let me know how it went.

Question 10

Will this support 6GB Drives?

Accepted Answer

yes. We have several in production.

Brand	Mediasonic
Series	ProRaid
Model	H8R2-SU3S2

Drive	SATA I / II / III
External I/O	USB 3.0 / eSATA
RAID Levels	RAID 0 / 1 / 3 / 5 / 10 / 50

Dimensions	13.86" x 6.10" x 9.96"
Weight	11.02 lbs.

Mediasonic ProRaid 8 Bay 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure – USB 3.0 & eSATA (H8R2-SU3S2)

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Item#: N82E16816322007