Review on 💾 Enhanced Rackmount eSATA External Hard Drive Enclosure: Sans Digital ER104UT+B by Dave Cavazos

Saves space for us, but the rackmount ears are secured with threaded studs that protrude from the sides of the case, rather than the usual cone-head screws that point inward. .By removing the slotted nuts from the plugs I was able to get one side through the post of the post and then I had to adjust a few jigs to squeeze out enough vertical space for the threaded plugs on the other side to pass by the other post. I then lost about an hour trying to fit the slotted nuts onto the end caps in the tight space between the strut and the body. When I found it worked, I tried threading the machine screw into the rackmount nut and found that the ring on the front of the rackmount ear interfered with the nut, causing the screw to go in crookedly and making it impossible made them screw it into the nut. To align the nuts with the bolts, I removed the nuts from the posts, and then I had to remove the mounting nuts and cut about half the width of the tabs holding them into the posts. Use a carborundum cut-off saw and pliers to spread the mounting nuts further apart. That helped, but it ended up taking me two hours to complete the rack installation step instead of the usual 5 minutes. The 4 front bays of the device take up the entire available internal width of the case and leave no room for screws penetrating the interior of the case so the manufacturer didn't seem to have a choice, but this type of limitation usually encourages -of-the- Box thinking to find the best solution. It seems that the thought process in this case has not yet taken root or brought any results. I haven't opened the case to see what's inside, but it looks like the electronics can be at least partially housed in the space above the drive bays, so the bays will need to be placed on the bottom of the case. Suggestions for Sans Digital: 1. Move all electronics back to free up vertical space above the bays.2. Arrange the bays vertically in the chassis.3. Remove the mounting dowels from the structure and use the threaded nuts flush into the case wall like almost everyone else does.4. Includes traditional recessed ears without rings, as well as a pair with rings, allowing buyers to choose the best solution without having to order ears separately.5. Include tapered head screws to secure.6. If that solution isn't practical, consider making custom ears with flat tabs that fit and snap into slots above and below the trays, much like some drawers snap onto their slides. , with a thin lever to remove. I haven't launched it yet for logistical reasons, so I can't yet critique the functionality of the device. If I figure out how to add a review I'll let you all know if I get there or run into any other hurdles. 7/23/14: Okay, sorry for the long wait. We launched it a few months ago with three drives in RAID 5 and one hot spare. Since then it has been working like a top. We connected it via eSATA to get the best speed it has to offer. We're happy with that, but we'll likely need more power soon as we don't have space in the rack to add another of these devices. We have another one for our Seattle office, but it has multiple LAN ports, and we configured it with teaming to increase streaming speed and make it available to all users. The operating system isn't as reliable as we hoped, but it's definitely functional and stable. We bought this first one to avoid buying a SAN module that costs at least five times as much for the same capacity. This device lacks some features that would be useful, but as long as it's not enough to get the job done, it helps us avoid the prohibitive cost of a SAN module. Meanwhile SAN prices have come down quite a bit and could reach the price of a high performance NAS device in a few years if this continues. I hope that our device will continue to meet our needs, at least until then. Think of it as a good, inexpensive step in the door of rack storage solutions and build it up until you need to move to a SAN appliance. We would also love to hear your stories as we need to keep up to date with the latest developments in our gear.