Need Drive Enclosure that Reports SMART

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mjohnsonn

Commendable
Oct 20, 2016
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I'm having the same problem finding a suitable enclosure. I think a very important item you left out of your criteria is that the enclosure must allow the drive to report SMART information. That is apparently a tall order, but is absolutely necessary if you are serious about your data and the condition of the drive. I need to put an 8TB drive in an enclosure that:

1. Has a fan -- I'm in a bit of a warm environment
2. Connects by USB 3.0 or eSATA or LAN
3. Will accept large capacity enterprise class drives
4. Will report SMART data
5. Will allow the drive to be removed from the enclosure, connected directly to a motherboard via SATA and have data still accessible.

Any ideas? Thanks
 
Solution
M
OI finally found the ONLY really viable solution for serious backups. Rather than use a separate enclosure, use one of the CRU DataPort products. If you are serious about backup and are using expensive drives the CRU removable products like the DP10 allow these:

1. The DP10 or DP25 mount in your case so you will automatically get proper ventilation.
2. They don't use your drives' edge connector when you remove/insert the carrier. They have a special connector rated for 30-50k insertions.
3. They connect right to your SATA or SAS ports so your drive diagnostics are guaranteed to work.
4. No strange formatting like with a NAS. You can take your drive anywhere and read it in an emergency.
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Samwell9854

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Jun 17, 2015
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This external enclosure seems to suit your requirements:
Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2
Manufacturer: http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1357290977
1. It has a fan
2. You have USB3 & eSATA available
3. It can support up to 8TB drives, BUT if by "enterprise class drives" you mean SAS (not SATA), then I have big doubts you'll be able to find anything which is small, cheap and corresponds to your needs.
4. From their forum (link: http://forum.mediasonic.ca/viewtopic.php?f=109&t=3128&p=14640&hilit=smart#p14634 ), they mention it CAN report SMART info, but only by using USB 3.0
5. [The following content is guessed and so without owning, without previous experience, and without any testing with this device: you are free to think what you want.] Since I haven't found any info concerning any possible RAID type compatible with this enclosure, and that no drivers are required either, I expect the enclosure to directly "hand over" to the system the drives as is as they are added to the enclosure (I mean by that see them separately per drive, format them on your own and so on like you always do from your OS), and it's hot swap compatible. Thus, you should be able to simply remove them from the enclosure and be able to see the drive's content directly from any PC's motherboard without any problem. Of course this is a guess, no proof provided.
 
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mjohnsonn

Commendable
Oct 20, 2016
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That was a good plan, unfortunately I already went down that path and the Mediasonic products will not report SMART correctly. You can check their forum entries where they say it will but users report it won't. I actually purchased the Mediasonic device myself and tried it. After multiple threads with their folks and also the recommended Disk Sentinel software support, it turned out that the hardware people pointed fingers at the software people and vice versa. Thanks for the attempt, but Mediasonic won't work. Here is action on their forum showing negative results:
http://forum.mediasonic.ca/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=3655&sid=8bb77477d88c494df6288c13715a8ea3
 
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mjohnsonn

Commendable
Oct 20, 2016
6
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It appears we are getting some really positive action from the Mediasonic people on this issue! They have updated their instructions for getting SMART data using Disk Sentinel and JMicron Raid Manager. Turns out that you can force Disk Sentinel to do the job from the command prompt and they say the next version of Disk Sentinel will have the process worked into the main GUI.

This is really good news, because the Mediasonic HUR3-SU3S3 two-bay enclosure is an impressive piece of gear at any price and it's only around $60!

I had already sent one back before they published the updated instructions and I'll have another one here tomorrow. I'll post how it works. If it does, this is apparently the only enclosure that you can use to back up your data where you can get the SMART status, keep the drives cool, and be able to attach the drive directly to another system via SATA if the enclosure electronics fail. If you tried to take the drive out of a NAS, you couldn't read it anywhere else like you can the Mediasonic--at least in "Single" (non-array) mode.

The updated instructions are here: http://forum.mediasonic.ca/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=2750
 
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mjohnsonn

Commendable
Oct 20, 2016
6
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1,520
The Mediasonic product did not work even after their effort described above. Following their instructions did indeed get some SMART data back but it would not work when two drives where in the device. In fact with both drives in JBOD mode (or "Single") the whole device disconnects and shuts down during any transfer of a multi-GB file. The unit was connected directly to the motherboard USB 3.0 via a cable used all the time with other devices so this was not a hub or cable issue.
 
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M

mjohnsonn

Commendable
Oct 20, 2016
6
0
1,520
OI finally found the ONLY really viable solution for serious backups. Rather than use a separate enclosure, use one of the CRU DataPort products. If you are serious about backup and are using expensive drives the CRU removable products like the DP10 allow these:

1. The DP10 or DP25 mount in your case so you will automatically get proper ventilation.
2. They don't use your drives' edge connector when you remove/insert the carrier. They have a special connector rated for 30-50k insertions.
3. They connect right to your SATA or SAS ports so your drive diagnostics are guaranteed to work.
4. No strange formatting like with a NAS. You can take your drive anywhere and read it in an emergency.
 
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