Sans Digital 8-Bay eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD Tower Storage Enclosure w/ 6G PCIe Card TR8M+B (Black)

 

Not quite as cheap as two four bays, but way more convenient!

Will this work plugged in via usb as one drive in unraid? As in, could I use a bunch of small drives to create a raid on the box, then use that as one volume in unraid.

Will this work plugged in via usb as one drive in unraid? As in, could I use a bunch of small drives to create a raid on the box, then use that as one volume in unraid.

It is eSATA only from the description on NewEgg.

Yep, my bad. I have a friend who actually has one of these, can't believe that slipped my mind. That being said, could i plug this in via a esata to sata cable or some other method, and use it as one single drive?

Yep, my bad. I have a friend who actually has one of these, can't believe that slipped my mind. That being said, could i plug this in via a esata to sata cable or some other method, and use it as one single drive?

That is probably not possible but I would let someone else give you the correct answer rather then my guess.

Yep, my bad. I have a friend who actually has one of these, can't believe that slipped my mind. That being said, could i plug this in via a esata to sata cable or some other method, and use it as one single drive?

That is probably not possible but I would let someone else give you the correct answer rather then my guess.

 

It comes with an esata controller if you have a spare PCIe slot.  Plug in the card and hook the enclosure up.  Not sure how it would present the disks to your system but I expect you could set it up as a single drive. 

 

As an aside, you can build a storage enclosure with an old case/power supply and a couple of these.  The port multiplier runs about $65 so $130 for a ten drive enclosure if you already have a spare case and power supply...

unRAID will have performance problems is more than two individual drives are used per e-SATA port.

Looks as thought this is a PMP (Port Multiplier) box.

 

1 eSATA per 4 drives, unRAID will see 4 individual drives.

Performance can be an issue during parity checks, You will probably get around 40,000 to 60,000 KB/s max.

Which may be fine for smaller drives.

 

Although this card is talking about 6GB/s, so speed may not be an issue any more.

A point to consider, you may need to use the latest unRAID beta's to support the PCIe controller.

It's highly unlikely unRAID will see these drives as one contiguous drive.

 

In all my tests with unRAID, PMP drives show up individually unless you are using the Steelvine processor that supports RAID1/RAOD0/SAFE33/SAFE55. With that processor, the drives can be RAIDED, but then you loose all the spin and smart access.

 

with a 4x1 or 5x1 PMP and individual drives, unRAID has full spin and smart access.