USB3 Direct Attached Storage unit?

[Jeff G]

Anyone have experience with a DAS running USB 3.0?
Every brand I've looked at has reviews stating they drop out running USB 3.0.
I'm looking for a 4 bay unit that I can leave connected and running 24/7 via USB 3.0 that wont drop out all the time (if it exists).

 

[bob4933]

Havent had any issues with my thermaltake unit on usb 3.0. That said, I dont keep it going 24/7, so ymmv.

 

[petteyg359]

Anyone have experience with a DAS running USB 3.0?
Every brand I've looked at has reviews stating they drop out running USB 3.0.
I'm looking for a 4 bay unit that I can leave connected and running 24/7 via USB 3.0 that wont drop out all the time (if it exists).

Been using a TR4U+B for over five years with no issues (not 24/7 in the past few years, but the first year it was on all the time).

I highly doubt there are really widespread problems with drives dropping out due to the enclosure. The operating system's power management timeout for turning off disks and bad USB hubs (I've had three different USB 3.0 hubs fail for no apparent reason and start disappearing and reappearing every few minutes afterwards) are nearly always the cause of any such problem, and a large portion of reviews come from the technologically inept, so...

 

[Jeff G]

I pulled the trigger this morning on the ProBox. Since I didn't get much response from any actual users, I made a decision based off reviews I've read online from both users (amazon/newegg/etc) and review sites. Like anything on Newegg/Amazon, it has it's share of negative comments, but for the most part they are positive. All the review sites that I saw reviews on for it also seemed pretty positive. Plus they're made in Canada, so hopefully customer service will be better than any of the over-seas units.

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-P...=1478721067&sr=1-1&keywords=mediasonic+probox

It should be here on Friday, I'll be running it through its paces all weekend. I'll report back my initial thoughts next week!

 

[trents]

Make sure you go into Device Mangager>Power Options. Choose "High Performance" and then click on the "Advanced Settings" link. Once there, configure Hard drive, Sleep, Hibernation and USB stuff to "Never" power down. You have to literally type in "Never" for some of them.

 

[Jeff G]

I've been running the ProBox through it's paces the last two weeks.
No issues yet. Setup was almost idiot-proof - Plug in your harddrives in to the box and plug the box in to the computer.
I'm running it on the USB3 output, no issues with sleep mode or turning on/off.
Recognizes everything every time.
It gets a thumbs-up from me!
I did shoot the company an email to see how response time was. Email was sent on a Saturday afternoon and I had a response by Monday afternoon.
So far, so good.

 

[HankB]

Thanks for the followup.

I'm curious if this exposes the drives to the OS or does it RAID the drives and make it look like a single drive to the OS?

I'm also curious if typical Mobo SATA will support "Port Multiplier" and work with this for eSata for multiple drives. (I suppose this also means that it presents individual drives as individual drives to the host.)

 

[petteyg359]

Thanks for the followup.

I'm curious if this exposes the drives to the OS or does it RAID the drives and make it look like a single drive to the OS?

I'm also curious if typical Mobo SATA will support "Port Multiplier" and work with this for eSata for multiple drives. (I suppose this also means that it presents individual drives as individual drives to the host.)

See https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SATA_hardware_features. Look in the "PMP" column for port multiplier support.

 

[Jeff G]

Thanks for the followup.

I'm curious if this exposes the drives to the OS or does it RAID the drives and make it look like a single drive to the OS?

I'm also curious if typical Mobo SATA will support "Port Multiplier" and work with this for eSata for multiple drives. (I suppose this also means that it presents individual drives as individual drives to the host.)

You have a choice to run it raid or individual drives. I've tried both and both work well. The only issue I had was the drives weren't labeled at first so they didn't show up until I labeled them. Pretty easy to set up.
They also sell a ProRaid setup that's designed for Raid.

 

[HankB]

See https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SATA_hardware_features. Look in the "PMP" column for port multiplier support.

Thank you for the link. That information seems surprisingly hard to come by. I see no mention of that in my mobo manual.

I have a J1900 based mobo in my DIY NAS and it has an Asmedia ASM1062 chip to provide SATA 3. (The mobo chipset itself only supports SATA 2.) Since the ASM1061 supports I would guess that the ASM1062 does also. (Yes, confirmed with a little more digging: http://www.asmedia.com.tw/eng/e_show_products.php?cate_index=117&item=151)

I wonder about more modern modern chipsets like Z87/Z97. Is the list a little out of date or are I not looking for the right identifiers? I do see H67 and X79 for Intel. But I do see that my main mobo supports a port multiplier on the eSata port: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z87 Extreme4/?cat=Specifications

That makes this box a very interesting bit of H/W. It would be a very cool way to use some of those ancient 200GB Barracudas that just keep going and going and going. <sigh> Who am I kidding. They won't really last forever and for less than this box I could purchase a 3TB drive. I think I'm just going to have to accept the fact that those drives are have outlived their usefulness. Then again, I could use the enclosure to house multiple 200GB drives while they still work and eventually replace them with the stack of retired 2 and 3 TB drives that I seem to be accumulating. Hmmm... Still kidding myself. For about 1/4 the cost I could add a 4 port SATA card to my DIY NAS and put these drives in that.