Recommendation for a USB 3.0 JBOD Enclosure

Hardware, Storage
Published Jun 5, 2012 Updated May 7, 2012

Fantec

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.

Enclosure ESATA Hard Drive SATA USB 3.0

Comments

Comments are powered by Giscus. Please enable JavaScript to view them, or view discussions directly on GitHub.

Related Posts

Windows Setup USB Flash Drive Not Showing Up in BIOS List of Boot Devices

Windows Setup USB Flash Drive Not Showing Up in BIOS List of Boot Devices

There are countless articles on how to install Windows 10 from a USB flash drive. Most of them, however, fail to mention a common problem: the USB flash drive does not show up in the BIOS’ list of boot devices. Here is a simple solution that often works.

Windows General

Ploopy Adept - Ergonomic Trackball With Hyperscrolling

Ploopy Adept - Ergonomic Trackball With Hyperscrolling

If you’re plagued by RSI symptoms, it’s high time you evaluate alternatives to traditional keyboards and mice. For me, moving the mouse to my left hand nearly twenty years ago (even though I’m not left-handed) seemed to do the trick. Ultimately, though, it proved not to be enough. Much later I switched to a lightweight gaming mouse to reduce the weight I’d have to lug around. That helped, but only for a time. I also experimented with various types of split keyboards. But that’s a topic for another post.

Fast & Silent 5 Watt PC: Lenovo ThinkCentre M90t Modding

Fast & Silent 5 Watt PC: Lenovo ThinkCentre M90t Modding

This micro-series explains how to turn the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90t Gen 6 into a smart workstation that consumes only 5 Watts when idle but reaches top Cinebench scores while staying almost imperceptibly silent. In this first post, I’m showing how to silence the machine by replacing and adding to Lenovo’s CPU cooler. In a second post, I’m listing the exact configuration that achieves the lofty goal of combining minimal idle power consumption with top Cinebench scores.

Building a Fast and Silent Workstation PC

Building a Fast and Silent Workstation PC

This article describes how to build a fast workstation PC that is almost completely silent (actually the fastest possible in terms of single-thread performance). It is based on a PC build published by German c’t magazine.

Latest Posts

WSL Disk Space Cleanup

WSL Disk Space Cleanup

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) stores its virtual hard disks in the user profile on drive C:. These VHDX files can grow up to 1 TB in size, making it necessary to clean up and reclaim space occasionally. This article shows how.

Virtualization & Containers

Changing the Location of PowerShell Profile Scripts

A PowerShell profile is an init script that is executed when the shell starts. PowerShell searches for profile scripts in hard-coded locations. This article explains how to move profile scripts to any directory of your choice.

Changing the Location of the Windows Terminal Settings Files

Changing the Location of the Windows Terminal Settings Files

Windows Terminal stores its settings in configuration files that resides in the Windows user profile. This article explains how to move them to any directory of your choice. Where are the Settings Files Located? The location of the Windows Terminal settings file is hard-coded. The exact path depends on the app variant you installed, but it’s always in the user profile:

Fast & Silent 5 Watt PC: Minimizing Idle Power Usage

Fast & Silent 5 Watt PC: Minimizing Idle Power Usage

This micro-series explains how to turn the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90t Gen 6 into a smart workstation that consumes only 5 Watts when idle but reaches top Cinebench scores while staying almost imperceptibly silent. In the first post, I showed how to silence the machine by replacing and adding to Lenovo’s CPU cooler. In this second post, I’m listing the exact configuration that achieves the lofty goal of combining minimal idle power consumption with top Cinebench scores.