IO Crest Syba 8 Bay Tool Less Tray Hot Swappabe 2.5" 3.5" SATA Non Raid External USB 3.0 Enclosure SY-ENC50119

I have had several external drives hooked to my iMac for various purposes, and for this reason, I've always been short of USB ports and really tired of all the power bricks for each drive. I had power strips and USB hubs and cables everywhere. This box is the perfect solution for that problem. I have mounted 5 bare drives in the 8 slots of my unit, getting rid of 4 USB port cables, an extra USB hub (that often gave me issues) and 5 separate power bricks. This thing cleaned up my computer setup immensely. The box is quiet (actually silent sitting on the floor next to my computer desk), compact, and in the month since I bought it, it's worked perfectly. No unwanted disconnects, and hey, it just works! It has a master power switch on the lower left corner of the front, to shut off power to the entire unit. And each drive slot has a switch to power down just that drive. This is very handy, since the drives are hot-swappable, and this allows you to power down only the drive you want to change out, and power up a replacement when you're ready. Within a minute or so of powering it up, the new drive appears in the computer's drive list. This also allows you to have drives "off-line", but ready to go at the touch of a button. All without dismounting the other drives in the unit. This enclosure is NOT a RAID device. Each drive shows up as a separate disk as if it were separately connected to the computer. You could create a RAID array with RAID software if you want, but the enclosure has no such capability built in. It's a JBOD, "Just a Bunch Of Drives," which is exactly what I needed. It's not a NAS, either. It's connected directly to the computer through USB (or a eSATA connection of you want), not to the network router. Its volumes can, however, be shared just like any other external drives within the capabilities of whatever OS you're using. It works like a charm on my iMac, running Mojave, and the mounted drives show up fine in Windows 10 running under Parallels. (If you do as I did and use external drives removed from Seagate's proprietary cases, you'll probably have to reformat them once, because the Seagate interface does something funky to how they communicate. This box has a standard SATA interface for each slot, so any bare SATA drives will slip right in and work like a charm.) It works just like a generic external enclosure for each drive. Yes, the box has a plastic bezel in front, but the rest of the case is made of sturdy steel. (It looks and is made much like a black medium-sized tower PC case. ) The drive trays are made of fairly light plastic with a small metal insert at the front where the latching mechanism lives. But the latches are easy to operate (squeeze from the sides), and the trays are easy to insert and remove. If you're just a bit careful with the trays when they're removed, they will work fine. It would be nice if Syba sold the mounting trays separately, but to my knowledge they do not. The drive mounting trays do fit into the box well, the latches work, and there's plenty of ventilation for the drives, with the high/low speed selection on the internal fan. The trays will work with standard 3.5" drives or 2.5" laptop-sized ones, and they are "toolless", since you don't need screws to mount standard drives. There are springy plastic fingers on the side of the tray that snap into the mounting hole locations on 3.5" drives. The trays have holes in the bottom (and they give you little bags of the proper screws to mount 2.5" laptop drives.) I did have one issue when I mounted a laptop drive. The back right side spring pin hit the side of the drive since there's no hole there, so when you try to install the tray, the spring pin sticks out and makes it quite difficult to slide in. I think that particular spring pin would probably end up broken off if you did that very often. But if I was going to use those drives often, I'd probably just snap that back pin off in those trays anyway, because even with only 3 of the 4 pins in place, the drive would be more than adequately secured. So, small problem, easy solution. My only small gripe was that there was no natural place to put labels on the front of the drive trays to indicate what drive is where. You get up to 8 drive slots, depending on the configuration you buy, and after a while, it can get clumsy to keep referring to an external key as to what drive is in what slot. I solved that by designing and 3D printing a small 1-1/2" wide by 1" high T-shaped name plate that slides into the cooling vent between the latches (there's plenty of other space for sufficient airflow). I put a printed DYMO label on each that's easy to change if I need to. Now it's easy to tell what's where. I did order a longer USB 3.0 cable, because the 1m/3ft. cable that came with it wouldn't easily reach to the back of the computer. When I test the speed on the drives, they are exactly the same speed as when they were individually connected before. (I didn't test the eSATA interface.) All in all, this is exactly what I needed. I'm very happy with this Syba drive enclosure. Update: 10/2022 I'm now using a PC vs. my old iMac, but this box is still exactly what I need. It works just as well with the PC as it did with the iMac. Of course, I had to reformat the drives, but that's because of the change of operating systems, not a fault of the device. The speed is based on the interface you connect it to. I'm. My case, it's USB 3.1, and the transfer speed to WD spinning drives is about 100-12MB/s.

Este articulo parecia una excelente solucion para tener 8 discos duros en un espacio pequeño, ventilados y por USB... Pero no lo fue. Los discos se desmontan aleatoriamente. Se tiene que reiniciar cada 2 o 3 horas para que aparezcan todos los discos. Intente instalar el ultimo firmware directamente de Syba, no funciono. Cambiar de discos y tampoco. Cambiar los lugares de los discos y tampoco. Usar otra computadora y tampoco. Usar otro sistema operativo... Y es lo mismo. Tanto en Windows, MacOs y Linux es lo mismo. Acabe perdiendo muchisimo tiempo. Ahorratelo tu tambien

Got my item, as I tried to install the hard drives, the shelves were drilled wrong and you are unable to screw in the hard drives for secure holding, and also came with an non-UK power cord, forcing me to go out and buy an adapter to allow me to use the item, once the enclosure was plugged in, to electricity and pc, the enclosure was dead, not turning on at all.

Pensé que me estaba arriesgando al comprar este producto después de leer algunas reseñas. Estoy usando este enclosure con MacOS X sin ningún problema, todos los discos son detectados correctamente y estoy usando las 8 bandejas con una mezcla de discos de diferentes marcas, capacidades y tamaños. Le estoy quitando una estrella solo por el hecho de que los discos duros de 2.5" hacen que las bandejas no entren y salgan como lo hacen con los discos de 3.5", esto es por un error en el diseño que esta hecho especialmente para los discos de 3.5". Con los discos de 2.5" los clips plásticos que tienen las bandejas quedan un poco extruidos por el lado donde va el disco y esto hace que tengas que meter y sacar la bandeja a presión como forzando la entrada y salida. Fuera de eso todo ha funcionado muy bien y confirmo que los abanicos del enclosure son bastante silenciosos.

I have had mine for over 6 months and it has worked flawlessly. The drives were very easy to install as well as connecting the USB 3.0 to a port on my PC. I like that I can individually turn the drives on and off as well as turn the complete rack on and off. I used a label maker to identify each drive which helps remembering which drive is plugged into what tray position. The unit runs cool and quiet, the sound from the fan is very low. The design fits nicely on my desk, looks nice and clean, and does not take up much space. I would definitely recommend this product. It is a very good value for the money as you can't beat the price.