Question 1

description says " Supports Latest 4 TB SATA Hard Drives " but product video shows only 2TB drives supported. Can someone please clarify?

Accepted Answer

I've used two of these and one 8-bay enclosure with WD Red 3T, and WD Green 2T drives for a couple of years.  I used software RAID under CentOS 6 Linux, and used the PCI card in JBOD mode.

About 8 months ago, my computer had problems finding 4 of the disks n the 8-bay enclosure, finally finding them after Linux kernel report several resets on the PCI card.

Recently, though, I lost a 12T RAID5 volume when the PCI card reset and caused a drive to look like it "failed".  The hot-spare was syncing when a second drive "failed".   During the failures, the kernel was reporting that the card was going down and up.  I moved disks between the various enclosures and servers.  All of the cabinets had issues with the PCI card resetting multiple times before all of the disks were found.

My newest 5-bay cabinet seemed to be working find until a "hic-up" a couple of days ago where half of the drives "failed" again.  After a reboot of the computer, everything was fine, and all of the mirrors came back.

I am no longer confident in the PCI card, and I have removed all three of my enclosures from service and replaced my server hardware (apart from the drives).  All of the drives pass the S.M.A.R.T. tests, and I've not seen any issues in the new server.

My old servers were Dell T100, Dell Vostro 200, and Dell Vostro 220.  I was running CentOS 6, using software raid.  I did not use the hardware raid on the card.

No matter what you decide, I would highly recommend against putting *multiple* of the PCI cards in your system at the same time.  That configuration was never stable and is probably not supported by the manufacturer anyway.

This may just be an issue with the Linux drivers, and that card may work fine under Windows.

I liked the enclosures when they worked.  It was straightforward to replace drives, the enclosures have nice big fans, and I was able to run WD Red and WD Green drives.

Question 2

Do the drives spin down when not in use?

Accepted Answer

I have yet to find someone who can figure how to configure the box to work, everyone that I've brought it too says it doesn't support Windows 7.

Question 3

is this mac compatible? does it come with drives?

Accepted Answer

It does not come with drives. I use it with Linux without issue, however I don't use any of the supplied software. Your Mac hardware should be compatible, but the supplied software might not be. Check with the manufacturer for their current software. You can usually download it from their site.

Question 4

Will this device work in RAID mode with my laptops's integrated eSATA port instead of the included controller card?

Accepted Answer

My experience suggests yes, presuming your laptop eSATA firmware includes a RAID mode (might be questionable) or your OS directly builds/manages RAID volumes from a JBOD setup. I've done the latter with a number of different controllers and a Linux OS using mdadm to manage RAID.

Your guiding principle is the controller or OS (i.e. not anything in the enclosure) is providing the RAID management.

Question 5

How do you rebuild a Raid1 (mirrored) configuration??? I can't find anything on this in the manual or anywhere on the Internet!  I purchased this unit in 2012 along with 2 1.5TB Western Digital Black drives.  One of the drives has failed and I can't get the thing to rebuild the array with a new drive.

Accepted Answer

I'm sorry but i know appositely nothing about raid. I will be using  this thing on a windows home server 2011 with Drive Bender and pool all my drives. It can be set up to work like raid. It works great for me. I had a drive crap out and after that it wouldn't let me change anything on any of the pool drives still working. the rosewill box i haven't set it up yet but i plan to just hook it up to the esata port on the mother board and not use raid. i plan to change over to Windows server 2012. I have ran a crossed some raid videos on utube just can't remember the page.

good luck
steven

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