Mediasonic PROBOX 4 Bay 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure – USB 3.0 eSATA Support 24TB HDD (HF2-SU3S3)

I highly recommend this enclosure

I got my original boxes that were USB 2.0 and eSATA and have used them non-stop for over 10 years... they are simple to use but required a esata card with port multiplier to use, which made them a bit complicated to set up. The only situation I had for all those years was a power supply for one that died and had to be replaced. When COVID hit, one of the boxes died and I replaced it with a newer esata/USB 3.0 model but it was used as all new stock were impossible to find. And 2 years later, that is the box that has now died on me, but it is possible that it's due to power surges and such as these last few months, the city has had a lot of problems due to many storms and such, and it may have also damaged my UPS that should have prevented damage to my devices including these boxes... I'll never know. But that said, this box is replacing that other one (and is the exact same) and I will hope that it will last as long as my other older boxes that are still going strong so far. These boxes are simple to use, with only one annoyance of needing a small handle to be installed on the drives. The fans are very silent and aside the situation that requires me to get a replacement, have been very solid and working very well for a lot of year. In time I will most probably need to replace them for a more modern setup as the old boxes are supposedly limited to 4TB drives (while the newer ones are able to use much larger drives) and will switch to USB 3.0 (or better) and leave the eSATA in the past so to prevent the headaches I've had due to that. I almost went with the 8-bay boxes, but reviews have been alarming in reference to the number of issues that people have had compared to the 4-bay ones, so I'll have to see when the time comes. But for now, these boxes have been great, have been through constant use (24/7) and I've enjoyed them greatly, and for a price range that left all competition far behind.

Bought this to house 4x SATA drives from a broken PC. Really easy to assemble and place the drives, and no problems accessing them once seated. Intructions are fairly idiot-proof as well.

Works well as a JBOD, good data transfer speed. Front cover is held down by a flimsy plastic catch the broke on the second opening.

Replaced an old Proliant Micro server (NxxL 1st gen) that would keep losing cheap Flex ATX power supplies every year or two. Was looking for a replacement that also had 4 bays, low power consumption and no need for RAID to drive a headless Linux media NAS with several Docker apps installed. Paired it with an older EliteDesk USFF which was already doing other related duties. Fit and finish is fantastic, better than expected. It's still slightly on the cheesy side and the lights are excessively bright (I'd recommend some black tinting tape). Drive installation was very easy. Much smaller than I expected. Options are dead simple and you basically know how to operate it from the small labelled picture on the folded quick start guide. Fans are quiet, even on max, although I'm not yet sure how well they are cooling the drives. Auto-sleep function also works well (I wouldn't use the auto-off as it fully powers down and doesn't power back up). I have been using it in USB mode since I am using a tiny, slim desktop with no expansion options and it has worked well so far. Drives were detected right away. I have not yet gained S.M.A.R.T. visibility but hope to at least get a basic "healthy" status. It's not technically supported (Linux that is) so not something I'd ding it for since I can read :-) Really nice unit so far. If all goes well, may pickup the 8-bay version for my backups. MAY 2025 UPDATE - Still running strong, no new fan noise/vibration, good disk health, never once had to reset due to disk communication loss. Have had power loss in my home where I had to manually turn the enclosure back on, but basically non-issue. Maybe people have problems with the USB 3.2 version and/or RAID? Was happy to see Mediasonic back in stock so immediately ordered the 8-bay eSATA/USB 3.0 when it became available. Both connection options exceed the network connectivity to the attached PC so no need for 3.2