The pervasiveness of USB and the availability of high speed connections like Firewire and eSATA have made external hard drive solutions more viable than ever before. Systems can become smaller without sacrificing storage capacity or performance. Although plugging in a drive instantly gives you more room to store your stuff, what it does not give you is redundancy for your precious data. When a single drive fails, your stuff is gone. Enhance Technology, a leader in external storage systems, fired over a solution called the T4H CR EnhanceRAID that is sure to please not only your appetite for speed, but also your need for data redundancy.
Features
The Enhance Technology T4H CR posses an impressive list of features that will have any storage geek drooling. Because the unit is OS Independent, plugging it into an eSATA port turns it into a regular hard drive, which means that you could technically install other operating systems onto it in addition to using it as external storage. In addition to eSATA support, the unit also offers other connectivity options which include USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 and 800, making it ideal for notebook users or Mac users.
The unit supports RAID levels 0 for performance, 1 for redundancy, and 5 for users that want both, which will be the focus of our testing today. This is accomplished using a Hot-Swappable 4 x Removable HDD Trays. Each tray also gives Power & Access LED indicators as well as the ability to lock each one to ensure that they don’t get popped out by accident.
What’s Inside the Box?
Because the solution is built with the enterprise level or high performance user in mind, it came to us in a well packaged plain cardboard box. What we got inside was pretty much everything we’d ever need to get it going except for your hard drives of choice.
- Firewire 800 Cable
- Firewire 400 Cable
- eSATA Cable
- USB 2.0 Cable
- Power cable
- Serial 9 Pin Cable (for flashing firmware)
- Keys for locking drive trays
- Four Hot Swap Drive Trays and Drive Mounting Hardware
- Quick Start Guide and CD Manual
I was very pleased to see every possible cable you would need to connect this enclosure to any system you wanted. However, the inclusion of a 9 pin serial cable for firmware flashing really makes no sense in this day and age. Part of the package, but not included as a tangible item is an Enhance Technology 3 year warranty.
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