Recommendation for a USB 3.0 JBOD Enclosure
A drive enclosure for 4 SATA drives, connected to the host via USB 3.0 and presented as JOBDs is a great and inexpensive method of adding a lot of hard drive capacity to your computer, e.g. for backup purposes. The enclosure model I have bought is the Fantec QB-35US3. It is compact, the fan not too loud and vibrations from the four drives are kept amazingly low. It can be connected via USB 3.0 and eSATA, but USB is simpler because eSATA requires a port with a multiplier-capable chipset, which is rare. At a retail price of around € 150 the Fantec is relatively inexpensive.
One thing I did not test specifically is the maximum transfer rate, but it seems to be in the region of 80 MB/s, which is good enough for me.
And yes, this works well with Windows 8 Storage Spaces.
3 Comments
Did also tried Fantec QB-35US3R ?
And yours has silent fan ?
Regards
No, I did not try the QB-35US3R. And I would not say that the fan is silent – quite the contrary. But I use the enclosure only for backups, so it is switched off most of the time.
Nice, I’m also looking for a solution like you have now with this enclosure.
I have a question: When using the drives in JBOD mode over USB 3.0, how do they show up in Windows 7/8, as internal disks or as removable/external disks?
What would also be nice to know is if the drives can be used for a software RAID in a linux environment, just in case you have tried or know this :)
Many thanks in advance!