Mediasonic PROBOX 4 Bay DAS 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure – USB 3.0 eSATA Support 24TB HDD (HF2-SU3S3)

Title sums it's up, as a lot of folks here seem to have had problems.Product arrived two days after ordered. Install was simple. I don't have an ESATA port so I used USB as planned. I have read the complaints about USB 3.0, and can't speak to that as I only have 2.0 ports on my machine. That said, attaching the device to a USB 2.0 port worked fine and was recognized immediately.I first installed two older drives that I had pulled from a dead machine that was not being used. One of the drives I had used and at one time was holding the OS, so I knew it was good. The second drive I had never used before. I installed the two drives without much issue. The structure of the device is not all that heavy duty, but for the cost I found it more than adequate. Once the face plate and the cover we put back on, I hooked into the USB port, and the drives appeared in disk manager, and then cut out. In, out, in, out every few seconds. Pretty frustrating and I began to think that I had a bad controller on the box. I then removed one of the drives leaving the one that I knew was good and the device worked fine. Adding the second drive caused the same problem. I then tried the second drive on it's own and also had the same issues. At that point, I figured it was the Mediasonic, but needed another drive to test and make sure. I do not have a spare controller port to test the drive that I was not sure of.The next day I bought a small used drive a local place to test with. I added it as the second drive in the box and it went in, and then worked perfectly. The second drive was now recognized by drive manager and everything working fine. I guess the the second drive I had has something wrong with it. At some point I'll find a way to test it, but for now I am convinced that the Mediasonic works, and does what is promised.Thoughts:Works fine with USB 2.0 - I know everyone wants faster drive access, but I am using it to stream from that drive, over the USB 2.0 cable, to a Win 7 box, over my network to a WD Live HUB to my TV. Works fine, and is fast enough to watch movies across my network. I don't have a 3.0 port or ESATA so cannot comment on those issuesThis is not RAID - I assume anyone reading or buying this device knows that already but it is an important aspect. This is exactly what I was looking for, four independent drives. I am using a software product to merge drives and it accesses the Mediasonic device without any problems. For me this is basically a USB HUB with a container for the drives. You want RAID, look elsewhere.A bad drive will make the device act screwy - Based on the issues I had, if you buy this and it keeps connecting and then disconnecting, it may be worth trying each drive individually. I found the one that was causing the problems and removing it solved everythingSo Far So Good - Just the like the title says. We all know that until you really put some stress on drives and controllers, they may appear to work fine, but really be on the verge of dying. Since I have only had this running for three days, it's hard to say if it is really as good as it has been working so far.Conclusion:At this point I would definintley recomend purchasing one of these. I intend to buy another at this price. I like external drives, and the ability to buy the internal of my choosing, and then be able to stack four in pretty small space is very appealing to me. If your goal is to get some additional storage and have the ability to upgrade the size as you go along, this is a good way to go. Alternately, if you have a bunch of older SATA drives that are not being used, here is a decent way to get them into use on your newer computer. All in all, a good purchase for the price.-P

ORDERED: March 16, 2012 (a Friday, 3-5 business day shipping)SHIPPED: March 19, 2012ARRIVED: March 21, 2012 (arrived Wed. morning) *Amazons estimate was the 27th, UPS had a correct estimate of the 21st.SHIPPING: Shipped from Canada in an inside out USPS priority mail box (odd - no idea why). I've never seen a box with so much tape on it. Every corner and crack had a thick strip on it. Inside there was one long sheet of bubble wrap protecting the product box.The box comes with 4 handles on it that require 2 screws to mount the handles on (little screwdriver included - very nice of you). When HDD's are in the bays, pulling the handles down gets past the initial tension of pulling the drives off the sata ports. The drives themselves aren't held tight near the port so you can angle the drives a bit. You have to eyeball it and used "the force" to feel if the angle of the drive is right over the port before pushing down. When the HDD's are pushed down, the handles follow a groove and lock the drives down. So the handles lock the drives in place as well as give the initial pull to remove the drive off the port. The con here is you only get 4 handles so you cannot have extra drives for hot-swaping pre-mounted.The outer door if let drop past 90 degrees will fall off - it's not physically locked to the case. This can be a bit annoying at first but it's nice to have the option for the outer door to be all the way off.The inner door has two pressure tabs at the top and a thin edge at the bottom that goes into a thin slit at the bottom of the case. This as well comes completely out. It can be slightly annoying to get the bottom of this inner door back into the groove. Once locked into place though, it's solid and doesn't move. I guess with this and the locking handles combined, even a good drop should not be enough to cause the HDD's to move.Fan on low or medium is much quieter than my PC (Coolermaster HAF 932). On low it's pretty silent. The included product sheet comes with instructions for adjusting the fan screws to reduce noise. Also a nice plus is that this is an external fan mount (really thoughtful feature - thank you). External fans are rare for devices like this and I appreciate it. The side A/C plug I don't like at all though.USB 3.0: Awesome. I'm getting an average of about 120MB/s.eSATA: The Unit does not see an eSATA connection at all. This is on my rear MOBO eSATA port that I've been using with an external Thermaltake eSATA dock on for a long time. I know the port is good. I think from reading it may be this device needs a powered eSATA multi-port connection. I'm not sure at all though - it seems like it should at least see the port and show drive 1? The annoying part here is that with the USB at 120MB/s average - that's is PLENTY good enough for me. I guess since an eSATA card is only $20 or so I'll go ahead and order one. But, I dislike the idea of throwing a card in just to verify the eSATA port on this device works. Right now as far as I know it's doesn't work and the only way I know to find out for sure is to put in a eSATA card that's known to work with this device (recommendations welcome - thanks). If it's dead I'll send it back or cross-ship for a replacement. Stuff happens. I'd only be upset if there was a problem like a dead port twice in a row.OTHERWISE (with USB 3.0): I turned the unit on and the drivers were ready and available to Windows in just a few seconds. I've always used eSATA and have never used my MOBO's USB 3.0 port - I'm rather pleased with the speed it's getting. My internal eSATA to eSATA average transfer speed is about 83MB's (hopefully I didn't screw up and put a drive on a eSATA 3GB/s connection instead of a 3GB/s connection. Right now the external USB 3.0 connection is almost 40MB/s faster than on of my internal eSATA drives.RATING: I want to take off 1 star for the lack of extra handles and the side mounted power connection. But, otherwise I'm pleased and got what I wanted and what was advertised. Just from looking at the package content I knew ahead of time this had no spare handles and a side mounted power connection. I got what I paid for so I can't really take a star off for it. I've already copied around 2TB of data and watched a movie off it through a media server since I got it earlier today. Everything (except it's eSATA port?) is working great. And, the noise is very low. I also like how it turns off with the system - although there should be a dip switch or something where you can choose for it to auto-power up with the PC as well (maybe there is and I don't know yet). I wish they would have left out the little screwdriver (I have like 50 around the house probably) and used those few cents to instead throw in extra HDD handles.MY HARDWARE:------------MOTHERBOARD: Asus Sabertooth P67 rev 1 (released April 2011)EXTERNAL eSATA PORT: jMicron JMB362 3Gb/s external port*Supports Port Multiplier with Command-based Switching on SATA II port*limited support*external eSata is does not support POWERED multiportUSB 3.0: NEC USB 3.0 controller - no idea what the model number is for it.