Reddit reviews Mediasonic USB 3.1 4 Bay 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure – USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps Type C/USB-C (HF7-SU31C)

DAS is Direct Attached Storage, so you'll need a pcie card on your main PC so it can connect to. There are DAS via USB, but I wouldn't advise that. I haven't tested a Type C connector DAS, but it might be ok. This USB hub would be your cheapest setup improvement. The next level up would be to buy new, buy used, or build your own NAS. If you buy used or build your own then you'll have to spend time to learn an OS to setup a network share so you can access it via ethernet cable. You could spend more to get a closer to a turnkey solution, but the price goes up fast if you need a lot of storage with this solution.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LLUEJXW/

Here is a slightly more expensive Mediasonic but you get a Type C connector.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078YQHWYW/

I run Windows 10 pro on my HTPC/server and I use this Mediasonic case for my hard drive storage.

It can hold 4 drives and each drive can be up to 12TB each. It uses usb c with speeds up to 10GB/s.

I use Stablebit Drivepool to manage my drives. It’s well worth the money.

If I ever need to add more drive enclosures and I’m out of usb c ports I can just add a PCI card in to give me more ports and then I can just add the new drives to stablebit.

It’s a very simple solution that works for me.

Here’s my setup.

I'm using a Probox with shucked 10tb Elements and Easystores. No issue. I use Drivepool instead of Storage Spaces though.


Edit: I'm using this one and haven't had to cover the pins or anything on the drives.

Mediasonic makes a USB 3.1 4 bay enclosure. I've been running it for about two weeks and I've been pretty happy. Temps are fine but I do have the fan set to max as it sits in my basement so noise isn't an issue.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078YQHWYW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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EDIT: This model does NOT do RAID.

Just get a media sonic enclosure, 2 bay, 4 bay or even 8 bay. It will be cheaper than building your own. Youll still need a case, power supply, and the das card.

Mediasonic USB 3.1 4 Bay 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps Type C/USB-C (HF7-SU31C) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078YQHWYW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GMf3Db66ZDC25

Not sure I have an answer to your question but I moved my unraid box to my old gaming laptop (a lot faster than my previous computer) and I bought this for drives: https://smile.amazon.com/Mediasonic-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B078YQHWYW/


It's doing a good job. 4TB of data takes around 6 hours (give or take) for a parity check @ 130MBps roughly. If you use the box like what I have, I think you can set it as RAID and it will expose it as one device. I'm not using raid and I have access to both the drives as if they were connected internally. (Actually you may need http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1358153144)

How about the Mediasonics?

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR2-SU3S2-PRORAID-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B003YFHEAC

$150, Internally managed Software Raid (it's basically a toggle in the back), and uses USB 3 so you can get support for Windows and Macs and all that Jazz.

Sadly, they only have a non-RAID version in Thunderbolt :(

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B078YQHWYW/

I have this: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B078YQHWYW/

My old gaming desktop had been my server for years. The drives were failing and it wasn't keeping up anymore (AMD 965, ASUS Crosshair 3, 12 gb ram, etc). I replaced it with an ASUS G75VW laptop awhile back since I was traveling when I moved and started a new job - but I have since built a new computer so it was just collecting dust. I don't actually care about it, and I hate asus now days.

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That little mediasonic box works wonders! Sometimes it'll boot up and not have the right UIDs for the hard drives and it confuses Unraid. As long as I notice it and don't start, simply rebooting fixes it.

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I had a power outage today but everything has worked flawlessly! I use it for Plex, Bitwarden, radarr/sonarr/sab/file storage/etc. I can stream 4k movies from it as well. If you got a decent laptop and want to repurpose this definitely works! It doesn't have USB C sadly but I wanted to be future proof for when I do get a new laptop/server built. My current desktop has USB C ports as well.

What's the difference between these two hard drive bays which one is best for my use?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078YQHWYW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074VB8DY7/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&th=1

Tbh, it might be easiest to just switch to a separate desktop/laptop altogether or get a cheap system with TB3 that you use just for those hubs/interfaces if that fits with your workflow.

With desktops it's pretty feasible to add a thunderbolt 3 port, but with a laptop it might not be possible or really janky at best. Your best case would be that there is a PCIe slot inside your laptop, that you can then add a PCIe riser (extension cable basically) to. Then you can turn that into a thunderbolt slot with another adapter. The PCIe slot would have to have enough bandwidth and power delivery though which I doubt would be the case in a laptop. Power delivery can be solved by getting a riser with an external power supply. Also, the PCIe slot is likely occupied by something like a wifi card or card reader as laptop manufacturers wouldn't waste any space like that. Even if everything works out, the laptop would either not be portable anymore or you'd have to unscrew the laptop chassis and remove the PCIe riser each time you want to move it. Here is a video where a guy does about the same thing, only that he adds a GPU to the PCIe riser instead of a PCIe to TB3 adapter card.

Edit: also, if you tell me exactly what you need to connect to the laptop, we might be able to find a workaround. Also if you need to connect HDDs, then the 10gb/s bandwidth is enough for multiple drives and you should be able to find several external drive bays like this one that support USB 3.1