Mediasonic Probox H82-SU3S2 8-Bay USB3 Hard Drive Enclosure Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,228 words · ~6 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the medi Sonic prob box h82 DS3
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S2 I think what they mean to say is it's an 8X it's an 8 bay USB 3 external hard
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drive enclosure and there's a couple things that are pretty cool about it so I'm going to run through everything
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media Sonic has to say about it and then I'm going to tell you what I think is
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interesting so first of all it supports eight hard drives of different brand and
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capacity you can throw whatever you want in there although with an enclosure like
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this I don't think I'd really recommend it okay it supports up to 24 terabytes
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yes that's 3 terabytes time 8 Bays it
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has one button interface selection so you can flexible alternative interface
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selection by simply pressing the button ah yes so the interface uh meaning
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either eat or USB 3 because it does support both of those transfer methods
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it's got a security lock because you don't want people running along and stealing your hard drives Force
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convection process for cooling power sync Powers off and on synchronized with
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the PC that's very handy because you don't need to access data that's plugged
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in by eata unless the system is powered on very nice supports hard drive hot
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swap need hard drive supported and smart fan comes with auto
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manual modes three levels of speed for best
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convention supports Windows 7 e USB 3
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we've mentioned that before all right moving along to the side we see what it
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looks like from the back moving along to the back we see what it looks like from
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the front and the side so far this is all stuff that's been covered Force
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convection process power sync one
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button okay moving back along to the other side okay hold on a minute ah here
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we go this is interesting here is a comparison chart so we're showing USB 3
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versus E versus USB 2 usb2 is slow es is
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fast and USB 3 is super speed so in Practical terms um USB 3 and
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eSATA probably aren't going to give you much of a difference in terms of
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performance because the way I would install drives in an enclosure like this
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is going to be um well not able to
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saturate a an ESAT connection so these are all theoretical maximums that you
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see in that graph on the back so let's go ahead and open it up and don't worry
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I will tell you the part about what I think is interesting about it coming
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soon first the accessories so the first
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accessory is an ESAT cable very nice
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next accessory is a usb3 cable that's a to
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B oh cameraman says it is a Mac
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compatible so thank you for that cameraman next we have hard drive rails
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including a screwdriver for you to install set rails and screws for you to
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install all head rails next we have a power supply cable so the power supply
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is built right into the unit which is nice because you don't have to deal with
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that external power brick nonsense okay
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we've got nice closed cell foam very very thick so you got like almost 2 Ines
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of foam on every side of the unit so I wouldn't worry too much about it being
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damaged and try wow it's heavy once you
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load this thing up with hard drives it's going to weigh like a ton all right open
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this baby up
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okay there it is the pro box 8 bay USB 3
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esad a hard drive enclosure so why don't we start at the
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front since that's a very natural place to start how do you open it you know
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what why don't I open it first give me a sec so by plugging in the key here I can
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unlock
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Aha and open the door so you can see I
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can uh remove my hard drive cage doors
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then I install my rails on the drives and then I throw the drives back into
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here so I am finally going to tell you what I think is so cool about this
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enclosure this enclosure includes an8
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Port multiplier so what that means is if
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you want to access all of the
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SATA ports so that is the eight ports
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you can do that whole thing through a single eat interface back here or usb3
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interface the eSATA one is more interesting to me though so a port
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multiplier this is not a raid box this is just a straight one SATA to eight
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SATA port multiplier which is great because compared to competing Solutions
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which might have two e SATA interfaces on the back and then two four port
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multipliers this allows you to configure array across up to eight drives using a
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single port so you can actually plug this in to your Intel uh to your Intel
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controller assuming your board uses the Intel controller for its eata and you
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can configure like an eight Drive raid five for example which is awesome now if
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the Intel controller is not fast enough for you you don't want to use like a software mode you can actually take
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proper raid cards and you can plug them into one port here now you're going to
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be bandwidth Limited in terms of the single EA connection but even eight
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drives in like a raid five or a raid six shouldn't be bottlenecked too much by an
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ESAT 300 megabit per second connection
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so or did I say three I meant three um 3
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gbit per second connection shouldn't be bottleneck too much so that means that
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you are going to have excellent performance to up to eight drives at a
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time so cameraman is showing us the ESAT and the USB 3 uh indicators the fan
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indicators as well as the ESAT and usb3 indicators okay I'm not sure which
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is which okay finally we have the interface change button the sync button
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and the fan button so these are all the uh LEDs and what knots another thing
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that's interesting about this particular Drive enclosure is that it looks very
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nice see it's got like a nice matte black finish going on there on the back
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we can see two 80 mm fans and what's cool about those fans is they are easily
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user replaceable yes media Sonic will not void you or your warranty for
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replacing those fans with something else I think that is a great feature right
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there there's our built-in power supply down there at the bottom that's part of
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what gives the unit its weight finally at the back we have a Kensington lock
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right here so that uh nobody just runs along steals your whole 24 tbte Tower of
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precious family memories and then runs off with it and I think that is pretty
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much everything I wanted to say about this 8 bay hard drive tower so I'm going
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to go ahead close it up take the key and swallow it