Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing of the media sonic Pro box h8 2 - s u3 s - I think what they mean to say is it's an 8 X it's an 8 Bay USB 3 external hard drive enclosure and there's a couple things that are pretty cool about it so I'm going to run through everything media sonic has to say about it and then I'm going to tell you what I think is interesting so first of all it supports 8 hard drives a different branding capacity good for whatever you want in there although with an enclosure like this I don't think I really recommend it ok it supports up to 24 terabytes yes that's 3 terabytes times 8 bays it has one button interface selection so you can flexible alternative interface selection by simply pressing the button ah yes so the interface meaning either eSATA or USB 3 because it does support both of those transfer methods it's got a security lock because you don't want people running along and stealing your hard drives force convection process for cooling power sync powers off and on synchronize with the PC that's very handy because you don't need to access data that's plugged in by eSATA unless the system is powered on very nice supports hard drive hot swap 8 hard drives supported and smart fan comes with auto / manual modes 3 levels of speed for best convention supports Windows 7 u s-- at a USB 3 we've mentioned that before alright moving along to the side we see what it looks like from the back moving along to the back we see what it looks like from the front and the side so far this is all stuff that's been covered force convection process power sink one button but ok moving back along to the other side ok hold on a minute ah here we go this is interesting here is a comparison chart so we're showing USB 3 versus eSATA versus USB to USB 2 slow eSATA is fast and USB free a super speed so in practical terms USB 3 and eSATA probably aren't going to give you much of a difference in terms of performance because the way I would install drives in an enclosure like this is going to be well not able to saturate an eSATA connection so these are all theoretical maximums that you see in that graph on the back let's go ahead and open it up and don't worry I will tell you the part about what I think is interesting about it coming soon first the accessories so the first accessory is an eSATA cable very nice next accessory is a USB 3 cable that's a 2b oh cameraman says it is Mac compatible so thank you for that cameraman next we have hard drive rails including a screw driver for you to install said rails and screws for you to install said rails next we have a power supply cable so the power supply is built right into the unit which is nice because you don't have to deal with that external power brick nonsense ok we've got nice closed cell phone very very thick so you've got like almost 2 inches of foam on every side of the unit so I wouldn't worry too much about it being damaged in trend wow it's heavy once you load this thing up with hard drives it's gonna weigh like a ton all right this baby up there it is the pro box aid a USB 3 eSATA hard drive enclosure so why don't we start at the front since that's a very natural place to start how are you open it you know what why don't I open it first give me a sec so by plugging in the key here I can unlock ah and open the door so you can see I can remove my hard drive cage doors then I install my rails on the drives and then I throw the drives back into here so I am finally going to tell you what I think is so cool about this enclosure this enclosure includes an 8 port multiplier so what that means is if you want to access all of the theta ports so that is the 8 ports you can do that whole thing through single eSATA interface back here or USB 3 interface the eSATA one is more interesting to me though so a poor multiplier this is not a raid box this is just a straight one SATA 2 8 SATA port multiplier which is great because compared to competing solutions which might have to be Sat interfaces on the back and then 2 4 port multipliers this allows you to configure a raid across up to 8 drives using a single port so you can actually plug this in to your Intel to your Intel controller assuming your board uses the Intel controller 40 SATA and you can configure like an 8 drive raid 5 for example which is awesome now if the Intel controller is not fast enough for you you don't want to use like a software mode you can actually take proper raid cards and you can plug them into one port here now you're going to be bad with limited in terms of the single eSATA connection but even eight drives in like a raid 5 or a raid 6 it shouldn't be bottleneck to too much by an eSATA 300 megabit per second connection so did I say three ethnic three three gigabit per second connection shouldn't be bottleneck too much so that means that you are going to have excellent performance to up to eight drives at a time so cameraman is showing us the eSATA and the USB 3 indicators the fan indicators as well as the eSATA and USB 3 indicators a I'm not sure which is which ok finally we have the interface change button the sync button and the fan button so these are all the LEDs and whatnots another thing that's interesting about this particular drive enclosure is that it looks very nice see it's got like a nice matte black finish going on there on the back we can see 280 millimeter fans and what's cool about those fans as they are easily user replaceable yes media sonic will not void you or your warranty for replacing those fans with something else I think that is a great feature right there there's our built-in power supply down there at the bottom that's part of what gives the unit its weight finally at the back we have a Kensington lock right here so that nobody just runs along steals your whole 24 terabyte Tower of precious family memories and then runs off with it and I think that is pretty much everything I wanted to say about this eight-b-- a hard drive tower so I'm going to go ahead close it up take the key and swallow it