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I just got a 2TB hard drive for my Windows Home Server.  Swim around in your bigger pool, my precious data!

…Storage is fun.

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.

I finally gave up on naming drives based on what I use them for…

Yeah, I get all the ladies.

Here are some unboxing pictures:

The loading mechanism is really neat.  Here’s a video showing how it works:
<video coming soon>

The connectors are a bit odd…  The rack itself requires power, but rather than pulling power from the regular SATA power connector (which probably has a more technical name), the drive comes with a funny splitter shown here:

The rack is constructed to absorb the vibrations created by the drive to reduce sound.  The result is that the sides flex without much force applied.  (Note: my Antec P180 case requires that I attach little things to the both sides of devices installed through the front.  I put one on for these picture.)

Here they are in my case… pretty!

Here you can see what looking into an open, empty tray look like:

Here is an empty tray, a partially-loaded tray, and a loaded tray:

In this picture the bottom two racks have drives in them, and the top drive is being written to: