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3.5" Dual SATA to USB 2.0 + eSATA External Enclosure w/ RAID - Black Color
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Product Brand : Mapower
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Great solution for a short period of time... : 3.5" Dual SATA to USB 2.0 + eSATA External Enclosure w/ RAID - Black Color
I bought this and stuck (2) 2 TB Western Digital Green drives in it, for a total of 4 TB, to replace my slow USB portable drives. I needed more space, but more importantly, the huge speed advantage of eSATA vs. USB. I installed both drives very easily, and the build quality of this unit is pretty decent for the money.
The problem I ran into is entirely MAC-related. I first tried to set it up as a RAID 0 array, which means my MAC should have detected a single 4TB volume. Instead, it said I had a single 8TB volume, and all attempts to format it failed. So then I tried it as both 2 separate volumes (JBOD mode), and as a large span (where it still shows up as a single drive, but starts with one drive, and when it fills up, moves to the second). Each time, my MAC only detected 1 drive at 2TB and didn't see the second drive. I tried a few other modes, and every time my MAC either couldn't detect it as one drive, or the capacity was completely off for the RAID. Finally, the only way I could get it to work was as a RAID 0 array, but I had to format it in Windows first as NTFS (where it detected the correct size). Now, it shows up on my MAC as an 8TB volume with only 4TB formatted and the rest unused (strange). It makes me nervous, since there's much more room for disaster if the OS one day decides to read the drive differently and I lose my stripe and data, but I'm hoping for the best (and have backed up all my data online as well, just in case).
So my recommendation in the end - if you're on a MAC, either choose a different enclosure, or use at your own risk (and a PC is required for initial formatting, and you'll be stuck using NTFS for life, which has lots of limitations when it comes to Time Machine backups or file sharing permissions, not to mention you'll need to buy a third-party NTFS driver like Paragon NTFS or Tuxera if you want to WRITE files to your new drive at decent speeds).
UPDATE: Ok, so it turns out this DEFINITELY is not Mac-friendly. I bought a 4TB Western Digital MyBook to replace this, and as I was transferring the contents to the new drive so I could pack this one up and return it, I noticed that it had corrupted (and deleted) a LOT of my files. Not sure if it's the enclosure, or the fact that it was NTFS, but almost 1TB of files in random directories were mysteriously gone, and all of my Mac color-coded labels were stripped as well, and I had spent a LONG time categorizing my files with color-coding (which Mac users can appreciate). So definitely stay away from this drive if you're on a Mac!!
