Good 2 bay enclosure with esata

[Phantomaniac]

Hey all. Looking for a decent 2 bay enclosure with esata to use my old 500GB drives as a backup system. Just needs to be JBOD, don't care about RAID capabilities since I will be using software RAID 1. I looked around on newegg but there seems to be no middle ground between the really cheap ones with no esata and the high end ones with hardware RAID. Willing to do USB3 if its cheaper for that + a USB3 card.

Recommendations?

 

[kleinkinstein]

Have you poked around Newegg, Amazon, nnn?

 

[Phantomaniac]

Have you poked around Newegg, Amazon, nnn?

Yeah, though I was hoping to get recommendations from people who actually owned them.

 

[WT]

I don't own either, but these 2 are the ones I had on my wish list:

http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-Dual-Single-Enclosure-HUR1-SU3S2/dp/B004L637P4/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=162UXRX7WM0V&coliid=ILQEGBZFXRMQ4

http://www.amazon.com/Cavalry-eSATA-External-Enclosure-EN-CADA2B-ZB01/dp/B004KKXLLG/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pdT1_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=162UXRX7WM0V&coliid=IUIPIF5NEB1X5

Of the two, I'd recommend the Mediasonic. I was initially looking for a 2 bay but moved on to a 4 bay simply to allow my storage needs some growing room. This one specifically, if used for eSATA, is a great choice:

http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HF2-SU2S2-ProBox-Enclosure-Drives/dp/B002UUPWP6/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=162UXRX7WM0V&coliid=I3U2QTKCB7Z9MN

The most important thing to keep in mind is whether your board supports eSATA port replication, as otherwise only 1 drive will show up in any external box. Also note that USB 3.0 support is not very good at all with the JMicron controllers used by Mediasonic.

 

[blastingcap]

I had a Probox and it worked fine with eSata but was useless with USB 3.0 as it kept disconnecting almost immediately, and that's with three different USB 3.0 chipsets, so the common denominator is the horrible JMicron controller, as WT noted.

 

[WT]

Ya, its a shame that the controller is as bad as it is, as a lot of guys wanted the USB 3.0 that the newer Probox version offered, and it just doesn't work right no matter what you do.
There were rumors that Mediasonic had a firmware fix on the way, but I didn't pursue it since I just want eSATA and eSATA only. I'm quite lucky in the fact that my WHS EX470 does offer port multiplication and will work well with any eSATA enclosure.

 

[WT]

One more thing to keep in mind if you are planning on using 2TB+ sized drives - make sure your enclosure will support those large drives. Many of the older ones, including the two dual bays I linked, will only support up to 2TB drives.

To me, 2TB is acceptable for storage, but with the advent of 4TB HDD availability, some users will want to maximize their storage potential. Just do your homework, read reviews both on Amazon and Newegg on any model you come across, and you should be fine.

 

[Phantomaniac]

Thanks, that Mediasonic looks pretty nice and in my price range. Just looked up my mobo and the esata port is supposedly from the jMicron 363 controller which supports port multiplier.