Sans Digital 5-Bay USB 3.0 / eSATA Hardware RAID5 Tower Storage Enclosure w/ 6G PCIe 2.0 HBA Card TR5UT+B (Black) $204AR + Free Shipping

Quote from mansoor : That's a good idea but you may not be using full potential of this storage. I don't think any router has eSata and very few new ones (expensive ones) have USB 3.0

It MAY be worth buying one of those expensive ($200+) routers to get the USB 3.0, still cheaper combined with this and 5 bays than a true NAS like Synology or Drobo (although even the expensive routers are pretty slow with attached storage streaming from what I read, they need to fix firmware or something ). Downside is you don't get the cool mixed disk size RAID features, etc. of those, but if you don't need those (I don't, have a stack of 3TB drives about 15 high) then who cares . Then you can use these cheaper expansion devices AND you have a kickass router that probably is 3x3, perhaps has the new AC standard (for whenever they come out with the darn AC NICs), guest networks, and all kinds of other fun stuff... just IMO.

Quote from wolverine88 : I got the smaller version, 4 bay JBOD/eSata only for about $80 with an eSata card (HP 1222 card, this deal includes HP 622 card). Great speed. Much better than using 4 eSATA enclosure. Speed is very good. I got iViewUS 4 bay hardware RAID/eSata/USB 3.0 (support RAID 5) for about $110 with a USB 3.0 card (same card in this deal). Write speed is about 80mb to 100mb via eSATA. Didn't test USB 3.0. I always think eSata > Firewire > USB. I am all set for 16TB external storage. Pair with the Fujitsu MX server deal at $140.

Were you using raid 0 on that second one? Also what drives? That speed isn't terrible BTW, but could be better, not sure.

Quote from Mike C : Were you using raid 0 on that second one? Also what drives? That speed isn't terrible BTW, but could be better, not sure.

using Raid 0, no need to use Raid 5 as I backup them up to 8TB disk, then 3TB Raid 1 NAS, then 3TB external usb 3.0 disk. I am a little bit weird ...

I am using 4 Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM drive as RAID0.

Quote from wolverine88 : using Raid 0, no need to use Raid 5 as I backup them up to 8TB disk, then 3TB Raid 1 NAS, then 3TB external usb 3.0 disk. I am a little bit weird ... I am using 4 Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM drive as RAID0.

If you are weird, I am weird too, I do the same thing . I have mine in RAID 0 as well cos I have multiple backups. I also use Hitachi 7200's, good, fast drives, especially the newer ones.

Anyway, I just tested a large single file 12GB xfer from a pair of Samsung 830 SSDs 128MB in Raid 0 through USB 3.0 (native Intel controller on Z77 board) to my CineRaid($199 SD a month or two ago, came with free 2TB Green Drive) running 4x3TB Seagate 7200 RPM drives in RAID 0 (the new 3 platter 001's), and averaged about 275MB/sec, so your does sound kind of slow . I did it from the RAID 0 SSDs on purpose to rule out source as being to slow, maybe your source was the bottle neck, or your USB 3 controller needs driver update, whether native or not? Also, were you doing a ton of little files(obviously a lot slower if NTFS due to all NTFS overhead), or just big ones? Try one big one, if it is still that slow, I dunno....

EDIT: Sorry, I noticed you just said eSata, try USB 3.0 and eSata both. I don't use eSata cos I am happy with the speeds of USB 3.0 and they are right on front of my case, no eSata plug on the front of my case though... on the back so I can try it though... I am curious which would be faster... the CineRaid has both too.

I didn't test it using anytool, what tool are you sing? Will test it now. here is my setup of vm/file server. (from my beloved deal HP Ex475 server, which went dead this summer)

I am using Fujitsu MX130 ($140 deal at here), upgrade CPU to FX-6100. 16GB RAM. Add an USB 3.0 controller, an eSATA controller, a Firewire controller, and an eSATA bracket (so I have 4 eSATA, 2 USB 3.0 and 3 Firewire ports in total)

a 128GB SSD as boot drive. It has 2 internal 1.5TB (one 7200 and one 5400) as my download drive, and a BD writer to rip/write. It uses eSATA to my online RAID 0 enclosure (4x 2TB 7200 drives). My backup drives are on another JBOD enclosure (eSATA again but in different channel, 1 x 2TB 7200 and 3 x 2TB 5400 drives). Then I backup selected files to my 2 NAS device (one is 3TB RAID0, another one is 1TB RAID1). I often copy out important files to my external USB drives (3TB seagate and 1TB toshiba). I try to keep them into separate floors/rooms.

Is there a good tool to copy files over? I am using SyncToy.

When copy files, I also generate MD5SUM in case of file corruption. I know this is weird. I plan to see doctor next year ...

Quote from wolverine88 : I didn't test it using anytool, what tool are you sing? Will test it now. here is my setup of vm/file server. (from my beloved deal HP Ex475 server, which went dead this summer) I am using Fujitsu MX130 ($140 deal at here), upgrade CPU to FX-6100. 16GB RAM. Add an USB 3.0 controller, an eSATA controller, a Firewire controller, and an eSATA bracket (so I have 4 eSATA, 2 USB 3.0 and 3 Firewire ports in total) a 128GB SSD as boot drive. It has 2 internal 1.5TB (one 7200 and one 5400) as my download drive, and a BD writer to rip/write. It uses eSATA to my online RAID 0 enclosure (4x 2TB 7200 drives). My backup drives are on another JBOD enclosure (eSATA again but in different channel, 1 x 2TB 7200 and 3 x 2TB 5400 drives). Then I backup selected files to my 2 NAS device (one is 3TB RAID0, another one is 1TB RAID1). I often copy out important files to my external USB drives (3TB seagate and 1TB toshiba). I try to keep them into separate floors/rooms. Is there a good tool to copy files over? I am using SyncToy. When copy files, I also generate MD5SUM in case of file corruption. I know this is weird. I plan to see doctor next year ...

I do file copy validation in the tool I use, which I think is doing checksum in the back ground, so make an appt for me too! I use RichTools from Microsoft (awesome copy utility), but for the test above I just used straight up explorer drag and drop. I have a bunch of different bench mark tools, but I never really pay much attention to those, because I have seen them look great, but actual copy performance sucks. More specically, I just grabbed an mkv that was 12GB off of my SSD raid and dragged it over to my just reformatted CineRAID setup. It bounced between 250-300MB/sec, but timing it I got an avg of 275. Nice and simple, and the preformance I really care about . I have like 10 disk benchmarking tools, and sometimes I use them... but I do so less and less vs. just real file copies. Kind of like Synthetic game benchmarks to get some meaningless score to brag about or whatever vs. benchmarking the game I actually want to play, know what I mean?