With the Sans Digital TowerRAID TR8U+B, we might finally be able to see a device which can take full advantage of the ultra wide bus USB 3.0 offers. In the past, USB 2.0 really was never a great solution for more than single bay external drive enclosures; neither was e-SATA a great alternative, as it too was easily saturated by only a couple hard drives in an external RAID array. This meant SOHO users who could not afford a dedicated SAN had to either make due with USB 2.0, e-SATA or even network based storage devices. All of these are less than optimal solutions for all situations. It is funny, but where the TowerRAID TR8U+B can harness the performance potential of 8 high performance hard drives, this 8 bay external enclosure may in fact be able to not only fully utilize but actually saturate a USB 3.0 bus. This really makes this device one storage powerhouse.
What is more impressive is the fact that this device can accept pretty much any SATA hard drive out there with everything from a 500GB to 3TB drive. Also noteworthy is the ease of installation, as the
TowerRAID TR8U+B takes full advantage of drive caddies making for quick and painless - yet still secure - drive installation. There is only two sticking points with this unit. The first one is its price, which starts at $459 for the base model (sans hard drives) and goes up to a whopping $5,059 for one fully loaded (24TB) with 8 3TB hard drives. The other issue is it only supports JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) and thus does not support any data redundancy and the only way to really saturate a
USB 3.0 bus is to access all 8 hard drives - individually - at the same time. On the upside, nothing says you have to use all eight slots at once, so this unit will grow as your companies (or individual) needs grow; and you need only connect one cable to gain access to upwards of eight external hard drives. The TowerRAID TR8U+B is available now online.
Finally a USB 3.0 to eSATA Adapter Powerful Enough to Handle Performance Drives?
By Ian Chiu on May 31st, 2011
