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December 22, 2006
Compact 8 Bay USB 2.0 Multi-Mode Enclosure
A Review of the DAT Optic eBOX-U 8-Bay USB 2.0 Enclosure for IDE or SATA Hard Drives
By Arthur Whalem
DAT Optic is shipping the eBOX-U eight bay IDE hard drive enclosure with a USB 2.0 host connection ($265). The eBOX-U can also be used with SATA hard drives when an optional Serial ATA to IDE bridge is used with each SATA hard drive mounted inside the eBOX-U. The front panel of the enclosure opens for easy access to the hard drive connections and the internal mounting rails which allow the hard drives to slide into place. The eBOX-U uses a single USB 2.0 port on the rear of the enclosure which supports up to eight internal hard drives. An internal power supply is provided along with a 120mm exhaust fan that cools the hard drives mounted inside the enclosure. Mounting hard drives inside the enclosure is easily accomplished without tools. The enclosure measures 13.75" deep, 13.7" high and 5.9" wide. The eBOX-U weighs 12 pounds empty and approximately 23 pounds with eight 3.5" hard drives installed. The enclosure is compatible with Macintosh, Windows or Linux computers.
System Requirements
Supports any computer with a USB 2.0 port.
Supports Mac OS X 10.2 and higher, Windows XP and Linux.
Supports up to eight IDE 3.5" hard drives.
Can be used with SATA hard drives with an optional SATA to IDE Bridge.
What's Included?
The DAT Optic eBOX-U includes the enclosure, a one meter USB 2.0 cable, an AC power cable, hard drive screws and a users manual.
Rear Connections
The DAT Optic eBOX-U eight drive enclosure has a power adapter plug on the bottom left side along with a power switch just below it. A 60mm power supply fan is located on the bottom right side. A single USB 2.0 connection is able to transfer the data of up to eight eBOX-U mounted hard drives to the USB 2.0 port of the host computer. At the top of the rear panel is a 120mm exhaust fan. The exhaust fan blows warm air out of the rear of the enclosure. Two thumb screws on the rear right side of the enclosure secure the exterior black metal side cover of the eBOX-U. A master power switch is provided on the rear of the enclosure. However, a front power button must be pushed to turn the enclosure on. The six dip switches on the red panel to the left of the USB 2.0 port allow the user to configure the hard drives mounted inside the eBOX-U as individual hard drives, one single volume or allow eight drives to appear as two or four volumes.
Interface
The DAT Optic eBOX-U is one of the smallest eight bay USB 2.0 enclosures that AMUG has tested. The front door of the eBOX-U provides instant access to all of the hard drive connections. Four IDE ribbon cables with connectors for a slave and a master on each cable provide IDE PATA hard drive connections for up to four master hard drives and four slaves. The enclosure provides sufficient clearance to mount SATA hard drives using an optional Serial ATA to IDE bridge on each SATA hard drive mounted. This design allows SATA and IDE hard drives to be used via the USB 2.0 port.
Installing Hard Drives
The DAT Optic eBOX-U package comes with 32 mounting screws. Two screws are installed in each side of the hard drives before mounting them in the eBOX-U. The screws can be hand tightened and act as guides which allow the hard drives to slide into any available bay inside the eBOX-U.
Once the screws are attached to the hard drives users open the front door of the eBOX-U and install as many hard drives as they might need, up to a maximum of eight. The hard drives easily slide into place. To secure the hard drives simply remove two
thumb screws from the rear of the enclosure and slide the right panel off. Once the side panel is off users will see eight white plastic tabs used to lock and unlock the hard drives mounted in the eBOX-U bays. Pushing the tab in locks the drive. Pulling it back releases the hard drive.
The DAT Optic eBOX-U is primarily built to be used with IDE PATA hard drives. All of the cables that come with the eBOX-U are for IDE hard drives. However, with the purchase of an optional SATA to IDE bridge ($25) a SATA hard drive can be utilized with the USB 2.0 interface provided by the eBOX-U. The
SATA to IDE bridge is a small board that connects to the back of the SATA hard drive and provides IDE cable connections on the other side of the board that can be connected to the enclosures IDE ribbon cable. A jumper on the bridge board allows the SATA hard drive to be configured as a master or a slave. This is a nice feature that allows users to mount PATA hard drives with the stock enclosure configuration and add SATA to IDE bridges when a user desires to install SATA hard drives.Hard Drive Modes
The DAT Optic eBOX-U uses a Century EX355SW8 USB 2.0 interface with six dip switches that can be used to alter the enclosures features. Leaving DIP #1 in the up position is supposed to place the eBOX-U in auto power mode. When the computer is ON, the eBOX-U will automatically turn on if the rear switch is on. I was unable to get this to work reliably with a PowerMac. I found the enclosure would not turn on automatically if the computer was on. However, turning the eBOX-U on with the front power button worked properly.
Each Drive is its own volume
When DIP #2 is the only switch down the eBOX-U is in the default configuration. Each hard drive inside the enclosure mounts as its own volume. This allows users to install hard drives that already have data on them and use them with the eBOX-U without reformatting. This will probably be the most popular setting for most users.
Master & Slave equals one volumeDIP #3 is the only switch down when users want to combine the master and slave hard drives of each IDE cable into a single volume. This allows up to eight hard drives to be configured to display as four individual volumes on the computer screen.
4 Bays equal one volume
If DIP #4 is the only switch down then the top four hard drive bays in the DAT Optic eBOX-U enclosure will appear as one volume and any hard drives in the bottom four bays will appear as another volume. Combining volumes does not increase the performance of the hard drives. It simply provides less hard drive volumes on the desktop. In addition, hard drives that are configured in a combined group have to be erased with Disk utility to access all of the space available with the new combined volume. Each hard drive in the combined group can mount as an individual hard drive in the case of a drive failure. However, any data stored on the damaged hard drive will be lost. The eBOX-U appears to write data to the hard drives mounted highest in the combined group first. If the top drive fails, I would expect to have substantial data loss if no backup was available. Users could use this configuration to backup the first group of four hard drives to the second group using the restore feature provided in Disk Utility. Another cloning option available would be to setup a software mirror between the two volumes using the RAID 1 function in Disk Utility.
8 Bays equal one volumeWhen DIP #5 is the only switch in the down position all hard drives in the eBOX-U appear as a single volume. As with any combined group of hard drives, erasing the new volume with Disk Utility is required to access all of the available space.
PC Software Setting Access
When using the eBOX-U with a PC with Windows 2000 or XP users can set all six switches to the on position and use the ebox-u.exe software found at the DAT Optic web site to configure the eBOX-U instead of using the DIP switches.
Design
The exterior enclosure design of the DAT Optic eBOX-U is basic. It has a glossy black finish with over 1400 very small ventilation holes on each side panel and over 3,000 holes in the front door panel. The enclosure provides a mounting rack for eight 3.5" hard drives. The left side black metal cover can be removed from the enclosure to access the hard drive locks or to access the internal wiring. Inside a power supply sits in the rear and the USB 2.0 circuit board is mounted in front of it. The eight hard drive bays are located in the front of the enclosure above the USB 2.0 board. The relatively small size of this 8-bay enclosure along with its ability to be customized makes it an interesting choice for mounting large groups of external hard drives with a USB 2.0 interface.
Energy Usage
According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the DAT Optic eBOX-U enclosure uses 0 watts when the enclosure is plugged in but not turned on. When the enclosure is turned on with no hard drives installed it uses 19 watts. Adding a single Maxline 300GB SATA II hard drive increases the energy usage to 29 watts while idle. Once eight Maxtor 300GB SATA II hard drives are mounted inside the enclosure the power usage increases to 95 watts while idle. When eight hard drives begin copying lots of data the power usage rises to between 102-107 watts. Obviously, users can mount any size 3.5" hard drive inside the eBOX-U enclosure but the energy usage will vary.
CoolingThe DAT Optic eBOX-U USB 2.0 enclosure does not support SMART hard drive data with Mac OS X. In order to get around this limitation eight SATA hard drives were mounted in the eBOX-U and SATA cables were used to connect them to a PowerMac G5 2.0Ghz Dual with two SATA host adapters. The eight hard drives were worked very hard duplicating a 4.2GB folder of video files up to twenty times simultaneously for 90 minutes. Hardware Monitor 4.0 was used to display the SATA hard drive temperatures inside the eBOX-U. At the end of 90 minutes the four Hitachi 160GB and the four Maxtor 300GB hard drives reported temperatures of 95 to 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The ambient room temperature was 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
The next process of the cooling test was to leave the enclosure turned on with the hard drives mounted for an hour, but with no usage other than temperature monitoring. I wanted to see how well the hard drives might cool down inside the eBOX-U enclosure. After resting for an hour, the hard drives reported temperatures of 89.6 to 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The DAT Optic eBOX-U provides excellent cooling characteristics. The cooling performance of the eBOX-U with eight hard drives is one of the best that I have seen.
Custom 120mm Cooling
As the DAT Optic eBOX-U provides 4-pin molex connectors, users may opt to install a different 120mm fan with this enclosure. The 120mm exhaust fan size allows the eBOX-U to provide outstanding cooling capability but it does produce some wind noise. In order to create a whisper quiet version of the eBOX-U a Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan model D12SL-12 was installed instead of the stock 120mm eBOX-U exhaust fan. The D12SL-12 has a RPM of 1000, moves 36.87 cubic feet or air per minute and has a sound rating of 22.8 dBA. The Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan produces only a whisper sound and any active hard drives in the eBOX-U are usually louder than the fans with this configuration.
I wanted to see if using the Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan would cause the hard drives to run warmer as it is a slower RPM fan. The same cooling test was performed with the Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan and a comparison table was created of the hard drive temperatures in each bay showing how the two fan models performed with the eBOX-U. The results are provided below.
DAT Optic eBOX-U Hard Drive Temperatures in Fahrenheit
| Stock eBOX-U | LED fan | Nexus 120mm | Silent Fan | |
| Location | After 90 min. | After 60 min. rest | After 90 min. | After 60 min. rest |
| Top Bay | 95 | 91.4 - Maxline 300GB | 100.4 | 96.8 |
| Bay #2 | 96.8 | 91.4 - Maxline 300GB | 102.2 | 96.8 |
| Bay #3 | 96.8 | 91.4 - Maxline 300GB | 102.2 | 96.8 |
| Bay #4 | 100.4 | 95.0 - Maxline 300GB | 105.8 | 100.4 |
| Bay #5 | 102.2 | 102.2 Hitachi 160GB | 102.2 | 89.6 |
| Bay #6 | 96.8 | 89.6 - Hitachi 160GB | 100.4 | 95 |
| Bay #7 | 96.8 | 91.4 - Hitachi 160GB | 98.6 | 95 |
| Bay #8 | 95 | 89.6 - Hitachi 160GB | 95 | 91.4 |
The Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan allows the eBOX-U enclosure to operate whisper quiet while still providing great hard drive cooling. The stock eBOX-U fan uses a 2-pin connector that plugs onto the USB circuit board. I simply detached the stock fan from the circuit board and used a 4-pin molex connector to power the Nexus 120mm fan. As you can see the cooling capability of the DAT Optic eBOX-U is fantastic no matter which fan is installed. Finding a quiet eight bay hard drive enclosure that provides this type of cooling is rare.
Acoustics
The DAT Optic eBOX-U enclosure uses a quiet model SDF6015MS 60mm power supply fan. The main 120x120x25mm rear exhaust fan is a Dynaeon DF121225SL 12v 0.27A DC 120mm sleeve bearing blue LED fan. It has a RPM of 1800, moves 73 cubic feet or air per minute and has a sound rating of 34 dBA. The exhaust fan is quiet but produces some wind noise that can be heard by the user. The 120mm fan pulls warm air out of the rear of the eBOX-U, which draws air from the vents into the enclosure and circulates cool air around the internal hard drives.
When the eBOX-U enclosure is five feet away behind the PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz, I can hear a slight wind noise while the PowerMac G5 is in sleep mode. Once the PowerMac G5 is turned on, the sounds created by the eBOX-U usually mask the sounds produced by the PowerMac G5. I would classify the stock eBOX-U as quiet with some wind noise.
If the Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan was installed instead of the stock eBOX-U 120mm fan, the enclosure became whisper quiet. If the PowerMac G5 was on I could hear it and the eBOX-U was silent. If the PowerMac G5 was in sleep mode I had to listen carefully to hear the whisper quiet wind noise of the eBOX-U. However, if the eBOX-U was loaded with several hard drives I could usually hear them when accessing large blocks of data.
Sleep
The DAT Optic eBOX-U was tested with a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz and a Mac Pro 2.66 GHz for sleep capability using the USB 2.0 port. The eBOX-U was able to utilize sleep mode properly. While in sleep mode the hard drives mounted in the eBOX-U spin down. The energy usage of the enclosure drops to about 20 watts with two IDE hard drives installed. Once the PowerMac was awake the hard drives mounted in the eBOX-U were available for use within 4 seconds.
I was also able to dismount the hard drives in the eBOX-U by dragging them to the trash. When the hard drives were dismounted in this fashion they spin down and energy usage is reduced from 33 watts with two IDE hard drives installed to 20 watts. Launching Disk Utility spins up the hard drives again even if they are not mounted. Turning off the enclosure while the computer is in sleep mode causes the computer to wake without the hard drives mounted. Mac OS X displays a dialog box stating that the drives were improperly dismounted. If you leave hard drives mounted while in sleep mode it is best not to turn off the enclosure.
PerformanceThe DAT Optic eBOX-U was connected to a Apple Mac Pro 2.66GHz, running Mac OS X 10.4.8. The DAT Optic eBOX-U enclosure was tested using a Maxline 300GB SATA I model 7L300SO hard drive with a SATA to IDE bridge. A number of disk intensive functions were recorded. Performance was compared using the USB 2.0 interface provided by the eBOX-U and by opening the front door of the eBOX-U and running a SATA cable from the SATA hard drive to a Sonnet Tempo E4P SATA host adapter installed in the Mac Pro. The same hard drive was used for each test. The 300GB Maxline SATA hard drive tested in the eBOX-U enclosure has 29.25GB of data on it including Mac OS X 10.4.8.
DAT Optic eBOX-U USB 2.0 Interface Speed Comparison
| Mac Pro 2.66 GHz eBOX-U test | USB 2.0 | SATA E4P |
| Startup | 32 seconds | Cannot Boot |
| Repair Disk Permissions | 15 seconds | Cannot Boot |
| Duplicate 4.25GB | 7:34 minutes | 2:22 minutes |
| Xbench 1.3 Disk Test | 18 | 121 |
| Xbench 1.3 Mac Pro Score | 84 | 192 |
| DiskTester 2.0 10G Write/Read MB/sec. | 17.8/20.9 | 60.9/61.2 |
While USB 2.0 by design is slower than when using a SATA host adapter, there are times when a USB 2.0 connection works well. The USB 2.0 eBOX-U interface works great for connecting up to eight hard drives to a Mac mini as a home video server for AVI, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or .VOB files. I have used the eBOX-U as a video content server for an Apple Mac mini and it provided sufficient bandwidth while allowing me to utilize up to eight hard drives with a single USB 2.0 cable. While USB 2.0 will never have the copy speed of a SATA connection it works fine for many lower bandwidth uses.
SATA HD User Tip
If users mount SATA hard drives that have 4 pin molex power adapters like the Hitachi and Western Digital hard drives, the eBOX-U molex connectors can be used to directly power these SATA hard drives. As the hard drive connections are available right behind the front door of the eBOX-U, users can purchase the proper external SATA cables and connect the hard drives directly to an external SATA host adapter. SATA hard drive models that do not have 4-pin molex power plugs, would need to use a SATA "Y" power adapter ($2.49). Plug one end into a 4-pin molex power plug and it will provide two SATA power connectors. The ability to open the front door of the eBOX-U and have access to all of the hard drive connectors provides users with additional connection options.
The DAT Optic eBOX-U provides eight hard drive bays and the ability to use the hard drives as individual volumes or combine the volumes in various ways. The cooling capability of the eBOX-U is amazing. When used with a Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan, the eBOX-U is one of the quietest multi-bay external enclosures I have ever used.USB 2.0 connections are not as fast as FireWire or SATA enclosures but I find that I do not always need high speed for accessing large libraries of compressed video archives, music or photographs with the computer. What I really need in those situations is a quiet large capacity enclosure and the eBOX-U can provide these features. The eBOX-U can also double as a home server that is used for sharing data with the family. Using the eBOX-U with a Mac mini or any USB capable Macintosh can provide a home server with lots of storage capability.
The eBOX-U does have some limitations. It does not provide individual hard drive activity lights (even though it does provide a master activity light). In addition, USB 2.0 connections do not support SMART data with Mac OS X. While the new Intel Macintosh models support booting with Mac OS X installed hard drives mounted in the DAT Optic eBOX-U, PPC models will not boot using USB connections.
The hard drive mounting system provided by the eBOX-U requires no trays or tools. Sliding the hard drives into the bays is easy and pushing in the plastic lock tab secures the hard drives in place. Most of us have older IDE hard drives sitting in a closet or in several hard drive enclosures. Placing all of these hard drives in a single 8 bay IDE enclosure provides a centralized location with easy access for removal or additional hard drive installations.
While using the eBOX-U with an external SATA host adapter is not one of its intended uses, this can certainly be done with the front door open and the proper cables. In this configuration SATA striped RAID sets can be created in the eBOX-U that have as much speed as more expensive SATA enclosures.
Pros
Works with any OS with USB 2.0 capability.
Mounts up to eight external IDE hard drives.
Easy no-tool required HDD installation system.
Hardware can combine volumes or mount them individually.
Can be used with SATA hard drives if a SATA to IDE bridge is used.
Nexus 120mm fan can be used for whisper quiet operation.
USB 2.0 supports booting on Intel Macintosh models.
Front door access to hard drive connections.
Master drive activity and power light.
Provides fantastic cooling capability.
Thumb screw side access panel.
Can easily be customized.
Power switch on the front.
Includes USB 2.0 cable.
Easy to use and install.
Small 8-bay footprint.
Quiet power supply fan.
Inexpensive.
Cons
No individual hard drive activity lights.
PPC Macintosh models cannot boot from USB 2.0.
DAT Optic eBOX-U gets 5 AMUGs out of 5!
The DAT Optic eBOX-U has a MSRP of $265. This is the least expensive eight bay external hard drive enclosure that I have ever used. The 120mm exhaust fan design of the eBOX makes it one of the coolest operating hard drive enclosures on the market. Enclosures with 80mm fans cannot provide the cooling capability that the eBOX-U produces. DAT Optic has informed AMUG that they plan to introduce three new versions of the eBOX enclosure at the end of January 2007. The new models include the eBOX-F which is an 8 bay FireWire 800 enclosure with two host connections, the eBOX-E which is an 8 bay eSATA enclosure and the eBOX-M which is an 8 bay SATA enclosure with two multilane host connections plus a PCIe eight lane SATA host adapter with hardware RAID 0,1,10, 5, or 6. These enclosures will support the Apple PowerMac, Mac Pro, Windows and Linux computers. The design of the eBOX cooling system and its competitive price make it a nice option for users to consider when looking for an eight bay external hard drive enclosure.
Contact Information:
DAT Optic Inc.
1815 E. Wilshire Ave # 906
Santa Ana, CA. 92705 USA
Phone: (714) 558 1808
Info@DATOptic.com
Copyright 2006
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