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July 21, 2006
Multilane Infiniband 4 Bay SATA Enclosure
A Review of the DAT Optic qBOX-M Four SATA Drive Multilane (Infiniband) Enclosure
By Arthur Whalem
DAT Optic is shipping the qBOX-M four drive SATA enclosure with a Multilane (Infiniband) host connection ($219). The qBOX-M utilizes internal mounting rails that can accommodate up to four SATA hard drives. This SATA enclosure uses a single multilane port on the rear of the enclosure which supports up to four internal hard drives. An internal power supply is mounted in the bottom of the enclosure. A single quiet 80mm exhaust fan cools the hard drives and the power supply. The qBOX-M supports both SATA I and SATA II hard drives. DAT Optic also sells a PCI-X 4x Multilane host adapter model mSATA-PCIX which works with this enclosure. The qBOX-M does not have hot swap trays but mounting hard drives inside it is easily accomplished. The enclosure measures 10.4" deep, 7.25" high and 5.3" wide. The qBOX-M weighs 5 pounds 8 ounces empty and approximately 10 pounds 11 ounces with four Seagate 320GB 7200.10 SATA hard drives installed. The enclosure is compatible with Macintosh, Windows or Linux computers.
System Requirements
Works with any computer with a Multilane (Infiniband) host connection.
Supports Mac OS X 10.3.9 and higher, Windows XP and Linux.
Supports up to four SATA 3.5" hard drives.
Utilizes a Multilane (Infiniband) connection on the enclosure.
What's Included?
The DAT Optic qBOX-M includes the disk enclosure, a two meter Multilane (Infiniband) cable, an AC power cable, hard drive screws, two SATA "Y" power adapters and a users guide.
Rear ConnectionsThe DAT Optic qBOX-M four drive enclosure has a power adapter plug on the bottom left side and a Multilane (Infiniband) connector to the right. This single connection is able to transfer the data of up to four external hard drives between a SATA Multilane host adapter and the DAT Optic qBOX-M enclosure. At the top of the rear panel is a 80x80x25mm exhaust fan. This exhaust fan blows warm air out of the rear of the enclosure. Three thumb screws on the rear of the enclosure secure the exterior black metal cover to the sides and the top of the qBOX-M. You will also notice that there is no power switch on the rear of the enclosure as the power button is provided on the front of the case.
Interface
The DAT Optic qBOX-M is one of the smallest four bay SATA enclosures that AMUG has tested. It is also very quiet. A single 80mm fan pulls air through the enclosure over the power supply and the hard drives to keep them cool. The design of the qBOX-M is very flexible. While the enclosure comes with a Multilane connection, it can also be fitted with four eSATA connectors or a SATA PM board should the users needs change. Most small enclosures are not this flexible.
Multilane
Some users have wanted a method for connecting four hard drives with a single data cable. The qBOX-M Multilane connection provides this feature with a very stable mounting connector. It fits firmly in place and a screw on each side secures the connection. The qBOX-M includes an 80" data cable that allows the user to locate the enclosure away from the computer. However, one draw
back to the Multilane system is that it requires a host adapter that also supports Multilane connections. As of the date that this article was written, few Multilane SATA host adapters are available for Macintosh users. Multilane is a very nice system but if you already have a SATA host adapter you may want to purchase an enclosure that works with your existing connectors.Installing Hard Drives
Once you unscrew the three thumb screws on the rear of the enclosure the metal cover of the qBOX-M can be removed. The front door of the enclosure can also be opened by pulling on the right front side of the enclosure door.
Now that the enclosure is open SATA hard drives can be installed in each of the four bays above the power supply. Simply slide the drives in through the front door and use two screws on each side of the enclosure to hold them in place. I installed the bottom SATA hard drive in about an inch from the front door. I installed the hard drives above it about 1.75" away from the front door to leave additional room for the power and data cables. Once you have gotten this far, its time to connect the hard drives.
If you have SATA hard drives that do not have 4-pin molex power plugs, you will need to use the SATA "Y" power adapters. Plug one end into a 4-pin molex power plug and it will provide two SATA power connectors. In the example above, a SATA power connector is mounted on each hard drive. The red internal SATA data cables are also connected to each hard drive.
The ability to open the front door of the qBOX-M and have access to all of the connections is a very nice feature. If you ever need direct access to a powered hard drive the qBOX-M can provide it by simply opening the enclosure front door. I find this to be a very nice feature that is not available with most enclosures.
The front panel of the qBOX-M has a power button on the far right and five LEDs on the left. If you unsnap the front panel from the enclosure you will find that there is a four drive activity light connector in a 4x2 pin configuration along with a 2-pin power light connector. The LEDs work great if a SATA PM board is installed in the rear of the qBOX-M, as the SATA PM can use the connectors to provide a blue power light and four green drive activity lights. However, in the standard qBOX-M Multilane configuration there is no place to connect the front activity lights. It would be nice if the qBOX-M provided hard drive activity lights but I have not found a way to do so.
Design
The exterior enclosure design of the DAT Optic qBOX-M is basic. It has a glossy black finish with over 600 very small ventilation holes on each side panel and about 1,000 holes in a diamond shape on the front door. The enclosure provides a mounting rack for four 3.5" SATA hard drives. A three sided black metal cover can be removed from the enclosure to access the hard drive screws or for access to the internal wiring. Inside is a SATA to Multilane board, a power supply, an 80mm fan and the SATA hard drive racks. These items work together to create the qBOX-M enclosure. The small size, quiet operation, easy customization and the low price of the qBOX-M makes it an interesting choice for mounting external SATA hard drives.
Energy Usage
According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the DAT Optic qBOX-M enclosure uses 2 watts when the enclosure is plugged in but not turned on. When the enclosure is turned on with no hard drives installed it uses 7 watts. Adding a single Seagate 320GB SATA II hard drive increases the energy usage to 17 watts while idle. Once four Seagate 320GB SATA II hard drives are mounted inside the enclosure the power usage increases to 46 watts while idle. When a four drive Seagate 320GB SATA II 1.16TB striped RAID set begins copying lots of data the power usage rises to between 47-49 watts. The Seagate 7200.10 is able to work very hard and not require much more energy than when idle. This is a very nice performance per watt improvement. Obviously, you can use any size 3.5" SATA hard drive with the qBOX-M enclosure but the energy usage will be slightly different.SATA PM Setup
Since the DAT Optic qBOX-M enclosure can be setup with an optional SATA PM board in the rear of the enclosure instead of the Multilane connection, the SATA PM configuration was also energy tested. The qBOX-M still uses 2 watts when the enclosure is plugged in but not turned on. When the enclosure is turned on with no hard drives installed it uses 12-13 watts. Adding a single Seagate 320GB SATA II hard drive increases the energy usage to 24 watts while idle. Once four Seagate 320GB SATA II hard drives are mounted inside the enclosure the power usage increases to 50 watts while idle. When a four drive Seagate 320GB SATA II 1.16TB striped RAID set begins copying lots of data the power usage rises to between 53-55 watts. The SATA PM board requires power while the Multilane connection does not. The increased 4-7 watts difference in energy usage is a result of the SATA PM board power usage.
Multilane Host Adapter
DAT Optic sells the mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter for $119. It uses the Silicon Image SiI 3124 chip set which supports SATA 300 and SATA 150 speeds. It has four independent DMA channels with 2KB FIFO per channel. It supports native command queuing, spread spectrum clocking, hot swap and is compliant with SATA 1.0 and SATA II hard drives. The chip can also support SATA PM but there are very few SATA PM enclosures that have a Multilane connector.
Software
The DAT Optic mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter can be used with a Macintosh that has the SiI3124 1.1.0 driver installed and the hard drives have been configured with the Silicon Image SATARAID5 software. You can obtain this software by clicking on the image below.
Once you have downloaded the SiI3124 1.1.0.pkg which is the SV-HBA3124-2 (4) IDE Driver for Mac OS X, you can install it on a PowerMac that has the DAT Optic mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter installed in it.
Version 1.1.0 with SATARAID5
To install version 1.1.0, you will launch the SiI3124 1.1.0.pkg on the computer that has the mSATA-PCIX card installed in it and follow the directions. This driver is compatible with 10.3.x and 10.4.x Mac OS X systems.
Now that the SiI3124 1.1.0 driver is installed you will need to install the SATARAID5 utility. You can find the SATARaid5.mpkg inside the
SATARaid5_1.3.0 folder once it is decompressed. Double click on it and follow the instructions to install it. You will probably want to read the User Guide provided with this download too. This installation will place the SATARaid5Manager.jar utility in the Utility:Silicon Image folder.When using the SiI3124 1.1.0 driver, the SATA hard drives have to be configured with the SATARAID5Manager before the DAT Optic mSATA-PCIX Multilane host adapter can mount the drives. This is an extra step that some Macintosh users may not like. However, once the hard drives are configured you will then use Disk Utility to erase the hard drives or to create a RAID set. To use the SATARAID5Manager connect your qBOX-M to the mSATA-PCIX host adapter and turn on the enclosure. Now launch the SATARaid5Manager utility. You will see your hard drives shown in grey. The image below is an example of several hard drives in a DAT Optic qBOX-M enclosure.
To setup your hard drives, click on the RAID Group menu and pull down to "Create RAID Group". This will allow you to setup your hard drives using the "Create RAID Group" preference
menu. Now that the RAID window is open you can set your preferences. I usually leave the RAID Group label and the RAID Group number set at the default, since the SATARAID5 program automatically calculates this information. I also leave the configuration as "Contiguous". This setting allows me to individually setup each hard drive to work with the host adapter and use Disk Utility for working with my hard drives.However, I always have to reset capacity to "MAX". This allows the entire hard drive to be utilized instead of just creating a partition on the hard drive.
You can use SATARAID5 to create a RAID but I have found that using Disk Utility for this purpose creates a faster performing RAID on a Macintosh computer. The SATARAID5Manager does have some features that Disk Utility does not have, like the ability to create a Parity RAID (RAID 5) or a Disk Mirroring and Striping setup (RAID 10). Page 11 of the SATARAID5 manual discusses these options at length. During my testing, I found the RAID5 setup performance was less than 30MB/sec. with a five drive setup. This was so poor that I would not use this RAID5 setup on a Macintosh. However, the RAID10 striped set with a mirror copy did work well. I was able to achieve 104MB/sec. write speeds with RAID10 using four SATA hard drives. RAID 10 requires even numbers of drives. It creates a striped RAID with 50% of the drives and mirrors them with the rest of the hard drives. I do not have a lot of experience with RAID10 yet, but it looks promising.
If you do use SATARAID5 to create a RAID then "Chunk Size" becomes available. Usually 32k or 64k is best. Rebuild Priority also only works when you use SATARAID5 to build a RAID.
Now that your settings are in place, click on each of the hard drives at the bottom of the window and push the create button for each one. This will setup your hard drives and Mac OS X will ask you if you want to initialize them. Once the SATARAID5 setup is completed your hard drives will be displayed as green boxes in the SATARAID5 window as shown in the image below..
Now you can quit SATARAID5 and use your hard drives directly with Disk Utility from now on. SATARAID5 writes the setup code to a non-destructible portion of the hard drive. Normal erasing of the hard drive on a Macintosh will not delete the SATARAID5 information. You will only have to use SATARAID5 once for each hard drive you setup in the qBOX-M. After that, all of your hard disk setup will be done with Disk Utility on the Macintosh.
Once you look at the hard drives using Disk Utility you will see that each hard drive is called by its size and "Silmage Volume" instead of the normal hard drive name. This can make it difficult if you are trying to select a certain brand of hard drive in Disk Utility.
Limitations
The Silicon Image SiI3124 1.1.0 driver does not support SMART data. This means that Hardware Monitor will not be able to display the temperatures of your hard drive(s). Mac OS X will not work with the DAT Optic mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter without installing the drivers and setting up your hard drives with SATARAID5. The mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter also does not support booting. In addition, I have found that if a boot drive is setup with the SATARAID5 software the boot blocks are damaged so that the hard drive can no longer boot. In the case of the DAT Optic qBOX-M where hard drives are physically installed in the enclosure and hot swap is not supported, this is probably not a big issue. External hard drives in the qBOX-M will be used for additional storage and not booting the Macintosh. However, you should know that in these tests, hard drives that had been setup with the SATARAID5 software had to be reformatted in order for the boot blocks to work again. A simple erase did not correct the problem.
The Silicon Image SATARAID5 drivers write meta data to the end of a hard disk drive and may consequently over write data that had been previously present. This feature is what impacted the Macintosh boot blocks in these tests. Silicon Image is aware of this issue. The next revision of the SiI3124 Mac OS X driver is scheduled to be released to Silicon Image, Inc. partners in early August 2006.
CoolingIn the cooling tests, the DAT Optic qBOX-M enclosure was tested with a 1.16TB striped RAID set using four Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives with a PowerMac G5 2.0Ghz Dual. The four drives were worked very hard duplicating a 4.2GB folder of video files up to twenty times simultaneously for 90 minutes. A SATA PM interface was used with a Sonnet Tempo X4P so that Hardware Monitor 3.7 could be used to display the SATA hard drive temperatures. At the end of 90 minutes the Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives reported temperatures of 109.4 to 123.8 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 qBOX-M enclosure. After resting for an hour, the Seagate hard drives reported temperatures of 105.8 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
By looking at the cooling data below, it was clear that the power supply was not getting enough airflow which caused the hard drives immediately above it to run warm. I removed the stock fan and replaced it with a Vantec SF8025L 80X25mm Stealth fan which provides 27CFM with a low noise factor of 21dBA. You can see the results in the table below.Seagate 7200.10 320GB Hard Drive Temperatures in Fahrenheit
| Stock FloLite | LED fan | Vantec 80mm | Stealth Fan | |
| Location | After 90 min. | After 60 min. rest | After 90 min. | After 60 min. rest |
| Top Bay | 109.4 | 105.8 | 104 | 98.6 |
| Bay #2 | 113 | 109.4 | 107.6 | 102.2 |
| Bay #3 | 118.4 | 114.8 | 111.2 | 105.8 |
| Bay #4 | 123.8 | 122 | 116.6 | 109.4 |
| Power Supply | under bay #4 | Power Supply | under bay #4 |
The Vantec Stealth fan allows the qBOX-M enclosure to still run very quiet while providing more airflow which dropped the hard drive temperatures by 5-12 degrees. The stock qBOX-M fan uses a 2-pin connector that plugs onto the power supply board. To unplug the stock fan I had to unscrew two screws to detach the power supply from the base of the enclosure and then unscrew the two screws that hold the top cover of the power supply in place. Once the cover was off, the stock fan can easily be removed from the power supply board. I put the power supply back together and then powered the Vantec Stealth fan with a 4-pin molex to 3-pin fan connector that comes with the fan. This way, changing the fan does not require taking the top of the power supply off again. You can see the inside of the power supply in the image below.
qBOX-M Power supply with aluminum cover removed.
It is nice that the qBOX-M enclosure can operate with the use of a single fan. However, when you depend on one fan for cooling all of the components, the cubic feet of air moved per minute has to be sufficient to keep everything cool. The use of the Vantec Stealth is a nice fit for increasing the cooling capability of the qBOX-M enclosure. DAT Optic is considering making it a standard feature.
Acoustics
The DAT Optic qBOX-M enclosure uses a single quiet fan. The main 80x80x25mm rear case fan is a FloLite 12v 0,18A DC 80mm sleeve bearing LED fan. This single fan exhausts warm air out of the rear of the qBOX-M enclosure, which brings cool air in through small ventilation holes in the front sides and the front door.
If the qBOX-M enclosure is five feet away behind the PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz, I can hear a slight quiet fan noise while the PowerMac G5 is in sleep mode. Once the PowerMac G5 is turned on, the sounds created by the PowerMac G5 mask any fan sounds produced by the qBOX-M. I would classify the qBOX-M as quiet but not silent.
Sleep
The DAT Optic qBOX-M was tested with the mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter for sleep capability. While this is a function of the SATA host adapter it is nice to know how the mSATA-PCIX, PowerMac G5 Dual and the qBOX-M will work together in sleep mode. The mSATA-PCIX allowed the Macintosh to utilize sleep mode. However, the hard drives mounted in the qBOX-M did not spin down while the PowerMac was in sleep mode. Energy usage was the same as when the Macintosh was awake. Once the PowerMac was awake a 4 drive striped RAID set mounted in the qBOX-M was available for use within 3 seconds.
I was also able to dismount the hard drives in the qBOX-M and remount them using Disk Utility once the Macintosh was awake. I was even able to put the PowerMac to sleep with the RAID mounted, then turn off the enclosure, later I turned on the enclosure and 20 seconds later woke the PowerMac from sleep. The qBOX-M hard drives were still mounted and ready to be used.
RAID PerformanceThe DAT Optic qBOX-M and the mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter were used in this test with the Silicon Image SiI3124 1.1.0 Mac driver. The mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter was installed in slot 4 of a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz, running Mac OS X 10.4.7. The DAT Optic qBOX-M enclosure was tested with four Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives installed in it as a striped RAID set. DiskTester 2.0 10GB read and write tests were performed using a run area test so that this article could display how the RAID performs with this combination. DiskTester is a Terminal application that measures the combined performance of a volume and the Mac OS X operating system. Using the command: ./disktester run-area-test --chunk-size 128M --test-size 10G --delta-percent 10 DriveName, puts DiskTester to work testing how the RAID will perform when empty, 10% full, 20% full and so on. The table below displays how the qBOX-M with the mSATA-PCIX SATA Multilane host adapter compared against several other enclosure setups. The same four Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives were used with all of the enclosures and slot 4 was used for all host adapters in these tests.
Four Drive Striped RAID 7200.10 Performance Using Slot 4
 DATOptic qBOX-M mSATA-PCIX Four Seagate ST3320620AS |
 SeriTek/2eEN4 SeriTek/1eVE4 Four Seagate ST3320620AS |
 Storage Tower eSATA-PCIX Four Seagate ST3320620AS |
 Fusion 500P Tempo X4P Four Seagate ST3320620AS |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 267 | 297 | 266 | 297 | 265 | 297 | 220 | 241 |
| 10% | 279 | 297 | 276 | 297 | 274 | 297 | 224 | 241 |
| 20% | 282 | 290 | 279 | 290 | 278 | 290 | 224 | 241 |
| 30% | 271 | 280 | 270 | 280 | 266 | 280 | 224 | 240 |
| 40% | 263 | 270 | 260 | 270 | 260 | 270 | 224 | 241 |
| 50% | 252 | 256 | 250 | 257 | 246 | 257 | 224 | 241 |
| 60% | 232 | 244 | 226 | 244 | 226 | 244 | 224 | 239 |
| 70% | 219 | 225 | 218 | 225 | 212 | 225 | 213 | 223 |
| 80% | 195 | 211 | 192 | 211 | 188 | 211 | 190 | 210 |
| 90% | 178 | 184 | 175 | 184 | 172 | 184 | 175 | 183 |
| Average | 243.8 | 255.4 | 241.2 | 255.5 | 238.7 | 255.5 | 214.2 | 230 |
| MSRP | $329 | $629.95 | $350 | $799.90 | ||||
| Mounting | Fixed | Hot Swap | Trays | Fixed | Hot Swap | Trays | ||
| Connector | Multilane | Infiniband | 4 eSATA | 4 eSATA | 1 eSATA | |||
| Type | Direct | Direct | Direct | SATA-PM | ||||
| Slot | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
As you can see in the table above all of the direct connect enclosures perform similarly when using the Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives. It amazing how closely the performance matches. The Fusion 500P is a SATA PM enclosure that shares all four hard drives over a single eSATA cable. As you can see the SATA PM connection is substantially slower if the striped RAID set is empty, but once it is 60% full or greater the SATA PM performance is very close to the direct connect examples. While SATA PM may be slower with four empty hard drives it has the advantage of being able to mount up to 20 hard drives using a single four port card. The additional hard drives can increase performance dramatically.
Four Drive mSATA-PCIX Striped RAID HD Speed Comparison
DATOptic qBOX-M mSATA-PCIX Four Seagate ST3320620AS |
DATOptic qBOX-M mSATA-PCIX Four Maxline 7V300F0 |
DATOptic qBOX-M mSATA-PCIX Four Maxline 7L300S0 |
DATOptic qBOX-M mSATA-PCIX Four Hitachi T7K250 |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 267 | 297 | 258 | 274 | 224 | 250 | 229 | 243 |
| 10% | 279 | 297 | 258 | 269 | 220 | 245 | 227 | 236 |
| 20% | 282 | 290 | 247 | 261 | 215 | 240 | 216 | 228 |
| 30% | 271 | 280 | 244 | 255 | 210 | 233 | 213 | 220 |
| 40% | 263 | 270 | 241 | 250 | 200 | 220 | 210 | 215 |
| 50% | 252 | 256 | 227 | 235 | 195 | 213 | 202 | 203 |
| 60% | 232 | 244 | 221 | 225 | 181 | 198 | 193 | 196 |
| 70% | 219 | 225 | 203 | 208 | 175 | 191 | 175 | 178 |
| 80% | 195 | 211 | 195 | 200 | 158 | 173 | 149 | 160 |
| 90% | 178 | 184 | 177 | 178 | 140 | 151 | 132 | 142 |
| Average | 243.8 | 255.4 | 227.1 | 235.5 | 191.8 | 211.4 | 194.6 | 202.1 |
| Slot | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | ||||
| Size | 1.16TB | 1.09TB | 1.09TB | 613GB |
In the test above four different model hard drives were mounted in the qBOX-M using the mSATA-PCIX Multilane host adapter. While the Seagate 7200.10 320GB performs very well, the write speeds of the Maxtor Maxline III 7V300F0 300GB and the Maxline III 7L300SO are a little slower than when used with the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter. You can see these same Maxtor hard drives tested in a four drive configuration with the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 in the table below. Based on these results, I would consider the Seagate 320GB 7200.10 a good match with the qBOX-M and the mSATA-PCIX Multilane host adapter.
Four Drive 1eVE4 Striped RAID HD Speed Comparison
FirmTek 2eEN4 SeriTek/1eVE4 Four Seagate ST3320620AS |
FirmTek 2eEN4 SeriTek/1eVE4 Four Maxline 7V300F0 |
FirmTek 2eEN4 SeriTek/1eVE4 Four Maxline 7L300S0 |
FirmTek 2eEN4 SeriTek/1eVE4 Four Hitachi T7K250 |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 266 | 297 | 278 | 277 | 251 | 247 | 233 | 242 |
| 10% | 276 | 297 | 271 | 269 | 247 | 245 | 228 | 236 |
| 20% | 279 | 290 | 265 | 262 | 240 | 236 | 219 | 228 |
| 30% | 270 | 280 | 256 | 253 | 234 | 234 | 214 | 220 |
| 40% | 260 | 270 | 251 | 249 | 222 | 218 | 212 | 214 |
| 50% | 250 | 257 | 236 | 234 | 215 | 213 | 203 | 204 |
| 60% | 226 | 244 | 228 | 225 | 200 | 199 | 195 | 196 |
| 70% | 218 | 225 | 210 | 209 | 192 | 192 | 176 | 178 |
| 80% | 192 | 211 | 201 | 200 | 175 | 173 | 134 | 160 |
| 90% | 175 | 184 | 179 | 178 | 154 | 153 | 128 | 142 |
| Average | 241.2 | 255.5 | 237.5 | 235.6 | 213 | 211 | 194.2 | 202 |
| Slot | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | ||||
| Size | 1.16TB | 1.09TB | 1.09TB | 613GB |
When using the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4, the Maxtor Maxline III 7V300F0 write speeds on average are 4.5% faster than when using the mSATA-PCIX host adapter. In addition, the Maxtor Maxline 7L300S0 write speeds on average are 11% faster with the SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter. As FirmTek and Sonnet do not sell Multilane SATA host adapters your choices will be limited when selecting a Macintosh Multilane SATA host adapter for use with the qBOX-M.
Discussion
The DAT Optic qBOX-M and the mSATA-PCIX SATA host adapter combination provides nice performance with the Seagate 7200.10 at a reasonable price. The two meter Multilane cable allows for extended placement of the qBOX-M while also providing a secure connection. If you are looking for a small, quiet, inexpensive four drive RAID enclosure with multilane connections that works well with the Seagate 7200.10 its hard to beat the DAT Optic qBOX-M.
The qBOX-M does have some limitations. It does not provide hard drive activity lights and the enclosure does not support hot swap hard drive trays. In addition, the SiI3124 1.1.0 driver does not support booting and does not pass SMART data. However, Silicon Image is working on a new Macintosh driver that looks like it will be a nice upgrade. Once the new Mac driver is available you will find that SiI3124 SATA host adapters will have more Macintosh functionality. If you have Maxtor SATA I and SATA II hard drives, I would lean toward using the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 SATA host adapter for direct connect uses. DAT Optic sells the qBOX-S for $189 that has four SATA connections. The qBOX-S can be utilized with the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 SATA host adapter.
Direct connect hard drive mounting provides a nice interface for stripped RAID sets and the Multilane connection included with the DAT Optic qBOX-M and the mSATA-PCIX provides the most secure SATA connection I have seen. The small foot print of the qBOX-M and the ability to upgrade the 80mm fan or put a SATA PM board inside classifies the qBOX-M as a very small four bay enclosure construction kit. When an optional SATA PM board is installed inside the qBOX-M, the front LEDs can be connected to it for power and hard drive activity lights. The SATA PM setp looks very nice in the qBOX-M. However, when you need direct connect speed, the Multilane connection provides a little faster interface and a very secure SATA connection.
Pros
Works with any OS with SATA Multilane (Infiniband) capability.
Mounts up to four external SATA hard drives.
Single secure Multilane data cable for mounting up to four drives.
Easy thumb screw access for mounting hard drives.
Mounts single drives or a RAID configuration.
Can be configured with optional SATA PM or 4 eSATA connectors.
Optional SATA PM configuration provides activity lights.
Works well with Seagate 7200.10 hard drives.
Power switch on the front.
Easy to use and install.
Small footprint.
Quiet operation.
Inexpensive.
Cons
No hard drive activity lights in stock configuration.
No hot swap drive tray capability.
Maxtor write speeds may be slower with the mSATA-PCIX.
mSATA-PCIX does not work with PCIe.
SATARAID5 may damage Mac boot blocks.
DAT Optic qBOX-M gets 4 AMUGs out of 5!
If you like the qBOX-M but want four SATA cables on the rear of the enclosure instead of a Multilane connection, DAT Optic sells the qBOX-S for $189. I like the qBOX-M Multilane connector but some users may want an enclosure that works with their existing SATA host adapter. In that case, the qBOX-S is a nice option. If you purchase a Multilane connector and the two meter Multilane cable separately they are selling for approximately $115 by themselves. Considering that fact, the $219 price for the qBOX-M which includes the enclosure, the Multilane connector and the two meter Multiline cable is very reasonable. It is difficult to find a small quiet four bay enclosure with the capability to be customized. The qBOX-M provides a very nice value for external Multilane SATA users.
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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