Mediasonic 4-Bay JBOD Enclosure: HF2-SU2S2

The time finally came that my old Mediasonic enclosure had reached capacity, and it was time to look for either a new solution, or buy another box. In the two years since buying the original enclosure, I have purchased very few hard drives, but my method of consumption and computer use has changed a tiny bit. First, I decided to move away from having drives inside my tower computer. This computer, housed in an Antec P183 chassis, served as both home theatre PC (HTPC) and server. It performed magnificently, but times have changed. In July, I moved in with a friend, which brings us to the second change: multiple servers and HTPC boxes throughout the house. See, my friend had a similar setup, and it seemed senseless to duplicate media and purpose when one server/library could handle all of our needs.

I could go on and on about the new client/server setup but the focus here is on the Mediasonic enclosure. Because we had moved to one central server, it was time for my drives to come out and be easily connected to our new server. My roomate did the same thing, and in the end, we now have three of these devices in use: they really are amazing.

Within a short period of time I filled my existing enclosure and needed another; living in a town with a decent computer store has been a blessing, and I found myself wandering downtown to take a look at what they had. And it's all relatively the same: the lowest end model (which I believe I purchased before) was there for less money than what I had paid years ago, and as a bonus, it comes with an eSATA port. The extra speed would be a blessing for file copies, and it's something that I've wanted out of my previous enclosure - but a lack of funds and availability of ports on my server were preventing me from doing so. In this new setup, I would be using my roommate's computer, which had eSATA ports to spare. But we ran into an issue which I had ready briefly about when I was reading a review of Mediasonic's 8-bay enclosure: eSATA drive replication.

The problem with eSATA on these enclosures is that only the first drive (or in the case of the 8-bay model, first two drives) are recognized. The other are missing in the operating system, which is upsetting when you spend hours of troubleshooting, only to learn that you need to buy another eSATA expansion card for your computer - and make sure that it supports port replication. We went back to the store and my friend bought one; it was inexpensive, but the cost was still there, and it only supports two connections. This is fine in our setup: we have two eSATA boxes then my older, USB only box. The most offensive part was putting this card in, then troubleshooting why no drives were recognized: apparently there are actual jumpers that need to be modified, and even though we are dealing with old tech, we are apparently stuck in the '90s and can't get over the use of jumpers. Connect the right pins, and we are flying: all the drives are recognized on both enclosures, and speeds are incredible.

There isn't much more to say that I haven't said in the original review from two years back. The quality is solid on these boxes: they do not feel flimsy. The method for inserting the drives has not changed. The power adapter is still awkwardly located on the side of the box, but it matters little. And the new boxes support 3TB drives; I bought one recently to amalgamate a few of my standalone external drives into one, and after formatting in a Windows PC, it worked without problem in the enclosure. For the older enclosure, we are confined to 2TB drives. Not a big deal by any means, but there will be a time in the future (a long ways away) where we're going to want 3TB across the board. Imagine this: 36TB of space within three enclosures. Excessive? Yes. Geeky and exciting? Definitely.

Mediasonic 4 Bay JBOD Enclosure (Original Post)