Sans Digital TowerRAID TR4M 4 Bay Enclosure
October 16th, 2008I began to run out of slots inside my computer for hard drives, so I decided to get an external enclosure. I had a few requirements: The enclosure would have to store at least 4 drives, make each drive individually visible to the operating system, and be eSATA compatible. The TowerRAID TR4M meets all of those requirements… it even comes with 2-port eSATA card.
Here’s what the box looks like: 
At the very top of the package is the eSATA card, shown here:
The card has a PCI-e x1 connector. To install the card I powered off the computer, unplugged all of the cables, opened up the side of the case, and removed the slot cover of the slot in which I wanted to install the card. 
Next I slid the card into the slot and screwed it in. 
With the card installed, two eSATA ports are now available in the back of the computer. 
After starting up the computer I got this message: 
It’s too bad that Vista didn’t have the drivers locally, but as the following pictures show, the drivers were on Windows Update, making the driver install very easy. Clicking on the little “installing drivers” icon in the system tray brings up the install status. 
On to the enclosure itself. 
Here are some pictures of the enclosure with the cover removed: 
The back of the enclosure looks like this: 
For better or for worse, the ban in the back glows blue. The fan also seems easily replicable if I were to ever want to do so. It is pretty quiet though. 
When I start up my computer with the enclosure plugged in (whether drives are in it or not) I now get the following message from the BIOS about RAID. I don’t want to use RAID, so I just ignore it. 
The although the enclosure supports hot-swapping (inserting and removing drives while the computer is running), it should be noted that for the drives to be properly installed securely the cover has to be removed to gain access to screw holes. It seems that for temporary drive access where the enclosure isn’t moving, it isn’t necessary to screw the drives in. Other than the screws, the drives simply slide in through the front door.
Plugging in the enclosure to the eSATA card and installing drives into the enclosure didn’t require Windows to install any drivers. Taking advantage of the hot-swapping, I installed all of the drives while the computer was on. 
Here’s a picture with the drive enclosure filled with drives. The bottom three are Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB drives, and the top one is a Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drive. (The serial numbers are blurred out.) 
The trickiest part of this enclosure was putting the cover back on. This is because there are a bunch of prongs inside the case that fit over the edges of the enclosure. This is a good design, as it make the cover fit more snugly, but I simply didn’t realize that it was designed like this at first and had trouble screwing the case back on. 
Finally, the enclosure comes with 11 thumb screws for securing the hard drives in place (2 per drive) and holding the cover in place (3 in the back). 
Ah, gratuitous amounts of storage. It’s so nifty. 
3 comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Read more
« MOAR STORAGE! — What do three Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB drives look like? »
My Piece of the Inter(.)net » Ripped DVDs + Media Center, Better with Cover Art posted on December 25, 2008:
[...] student site.) Since each disk contains about 7.2GB of data, this did require getting a little more hard drive space. Since I started I have ripped about 250 DVDs, but I had only taken the time [...]
Sure way to always max out your CPU | My Piece of the Inter(.)net posted on June 27, 2009:
[...] while ago I got some extra storage and since I have been ripping full DVDs left and right. I wrote a piece of software, [...]
You know you envy my home-server-on-a-fridge | My Piece of the Inter(.)net posted on October 27, 2009:
[...] fridge. This moves it away from the TV room, where it makes noise and can get bumped around (my precious hard drive enclosures!), and it also moves it off the ground… you know, in case there’s a food or something. I [...]