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March 16, 2007
Add an Eight Bay RAID 5 to the Apple Mac Pro
A Review of the EnhanceBox E8-ML SATA Hot Swap Multilane Infiniband 8-Bay Hard Drive Enclosure
By Arthur Whalem
Enhance Technology, Inc. is shipping the EnhanceBox E8 8-bay Serial ATA hard drive enclosure. It is available in two configurations. The E8-ML ($595) model includes two multilane connectors on the rear of the enclosure. Each multilane connector supports up to four hard drives in a "direct connect" configuration. The E8-PM model ($699) includes two SATA PM boards which support up to four hard drives per SATA PM board. Two eSATA connectors are provided on the rear of the E8-PM. The EnhanceBox E8 features eight hot swap hard drive bays enclosed in a silver aluminum enclosure that is the same color as the Apple Mac Pro. It provides an internal universal 300 watt power supply that utilizes an ultra quiet 120mm fan.
The EnhanceBox E8 supports both SATA I and SATA II hard drives. The front access door displays a blue power light and a yellow status light when closed. Each drive bay has its own locking mechanism which supports a key. The enclosure measures 18" deep, 11.5" high and 5.9" wide. The EnhanceBox E8 weighs approximately 18 pounds empty and 29 pounds with eight Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA II hard drives installed. It is compatible with Macintosh, Windows or Linux computers with a compatible multilane SATA host adapter.
System Requirements
Works with any computer with an external SATA interface.
Supports Mac OS X and Windows XP.
Supports up to eight external SATA 3.5" hard drives.
E8-ML requires multilane and E8-PM requires eSATA connections.
What's Included?
The EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure which is the subject of this review includes the disk enclosure, eight 3.5" hard drive trays, hard drive mounting screws, drive tray keys, and a power cord.
Rear ConnectionsThe EnhanceBox E8-ML eight bay "direct connect" SATA enclosure has a power cord outlet on the lower right side of the case and a power on/off switch just to the left of it. On the lower left side, two multilane data ports are provided to connect the hard drives mounted inside the EnhanceBox E8-ML to the SATA host adapter. Macintosh users will find the HighPoint RocketRAID 2322 external Mini-SAS to PCIe SATA II RAID controller is a perfect solution for connecting the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure to an Apple Mac Pro. The RocketRAID 2322 can be used with two external mini-SAS to Infiniband (screw) cables (model Ext-MS-1MSB) to support up to eight hard drives mounted inside the EnhanceBox E8-ML.
The EnhanceBox E8-ML provides a sturdy enclosure for mounting external SATA hard drives. The multilane infiniband connectors on the rear of the enclosure are easy to access and work well with any host adapter that supports multilane screw in cables.
Fan AccessThe EnhanceBox E8 provides a panel on the rear of the enclosure for easy access to the fan assembly. Two thumb screws on either side of the 80x80x25mm fan mounting panel allow the assembly to be removed from the enclosure. This user serviceable fan design allows the 80mm hard drive cooling fan to be removed without disconnecting any wires. The fan is mounted on a perforated cooling access panel with four screws which makes it easy to replace with a different 80mm cooling fan should the user desire to customize the cooling capabilities of this SATA hard drive enclosure. The circuit board design on the right side of the assembly allows the fan to plug directly into the enclosure power socket when the fan panel is mounted on the rear of the enclosure.
This same user serviceable fan design can be found on the Sonnet Fusion 500P and Fusion 400 SATA enclosures. Users that own a Sonnet Fusion SATA enclosure will find that the EnhanceBox E8 style, design and components resemble many of the same features found in the Sonnet Fusion enclosures. As there are only a few SATA enclosure manufacturers in the world, my guess is that the EnhanceBox E8 and the Sonnet Fusion enclosures are produced by the same OEM.
Interface
The EnhanceBox E8 utilizes drive trays that mount the hard drives with four screws on the bottom of the tray. Hard drives are very easy to mount in these trays. Hot swap trays that utilize screws on the bottom of the tray for attaching the hard drives are usually easier to install than trays that use screws on the sides of the hard drives. It is easier to lay a hard drive flat for tray installation than on its side. Be sure that all of the screws are securely attached as a loose screw can cause the tray to be difficult to remove from the enclosure.
Once the hard drives are mounted in the EnhanceBox E8 drive trays they can be inserted into the hot swap bays. Users simply push the tray all the way in and close the handle to connect the hard drive to the SATA backplane. The hard drive will click into place once the handle is closed. The EnhanceBox E8 drive trays provide a secure mounting system for external SATA data storage.
To eject a drive tray from the EnhanceBox E8 users push the small arrow on the left side of the drive tray to the right. You can see the arrow circled in red in the image above. This action releases the tray so that it can be removed from the EnhanceBox E8. The release mechanism does not require a key provided that the bay is left unlocked. Users can lock any of the hard drive bays should they be concerned that someone might remove a hard drive without authorization.
Activity Lights
The EnhanceBox E8 provides a blue power light on the right side of each drive bay. The blue light shines once the enclosure is turned on whether a hard drive is mounted in the bay or not. A yellow drive presence light is located just below each power light. The yellow light shines when a hard drive is inserted in the drive bay. It also flashes with an orange color as the hard drives access data. Users can only see all of these lights when the enclosure door is open. Once the enclosure front door is closed, the EnhanceBox E8 displays the power and status light for bay #2. The EnhanceBox E8 LEDs allow users to visually determine if the enclosure is powered up with the door closed and the front door can be opened for inserting hard drives and viewing individual hard drive activity lights.
Design
The exterior design of the EnhanceBox E8 provides clean lines and a sleek aluminum finish. While the enclosure has a boxy look to it, the silver aluminum exterior finish is an excellent match with the Apple Mac Pro desktop. In addition, the ribbed front door and vertical air flow openings add an elegant touch to the design of the EnhanceBox E8 enclosure. The hard drive activity lights are easily viewable with the door open, yet not distracting when the front panel is closed. The EnhanceBox E8 is almost seven inches longer than the Sonnet Fusion enclosure. The extra room is needed to house the high efficiency 300 watt power supply and its low noise (>25dBA) 120mm cooling fan. The EnhanceBox E8 design and tray system are very similar to the Fusion 500P SATA PM enclosure. The hot swap trays included with the EnhanceBox E8 also work with the Sonnet Fusion enclosures and visa versa. This feature adds flexibility for users that own both enclosure types.Internal Design
The EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure is designed for mounting SATA hard drives with a multilane infiniband connector. It requires a SATA host adapter that supports multilane. When using the "direct connect" SATA mounting system supported by the EnhanceBox E8 enclosure with an eight drive striped RAID set, extremely fast hard disk performance can be achieved.
If you look inside the EnhanceBox E8-ML you will see that the hard drives attach to the front of the SATA backplane and individual 11" SATA cables attach to the rear of the backplane. These cables are connected to the multilane bridge board located at the rear of the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure. Individual backplane boards are mounted for each hard drive in the EnhanceBox E8 design. Four pin molex connectors provide each backplane board with power.
Exposed Rear Backplane View
Even though this enclosure design utilizes internal SATA cables it does not seem to impact the hard drive performance. The side aluminum panels of the EnhanceBox E8 easily come off by removing three screws on the rear of the enclosure. In the image below you can view the internal workings of the EnhanceBox E8 with the side panel off. The eight hard drive bays are on the left side and the power supply and multilane bridge board are on the right.
Exposed Side View
If you remove all of the drive trays from the EnhanceBox E8 enclosure and look inside, you will see the backplanes that the hard drives connect to. As shown in the image below, eight SATA backplane connectors are mounted at the rear of the hard drive bays. Ventilation slots are provided between each SATA backplane board. A 80x80x25mm exhaust fan and the power supply fan are located behind the hard drive chamber.
Internal Backplane View
Energy Usage
According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure uses 10 watts when the enclosure is turned on but empty. Adding a single Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA hard drive increases the energy usage to 19 watts while idle. Once eight Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA hard drives are mounted inside the enclosure the power usage increases to 80 watts while idle. When this eight drive striped RAID set begins copying lots of data the power usage rises to 93 watts.
The EnhanceBox E8-ML is a very energy efficient 8-bay enclosure. Being able to mount eight hard drives while only using 80 watts while idle is excellent. The Seagate 7200.10 hard drives and the EnhanceBox E8-ML provide a good combination for energy efficiency.
Stability
The EnhanceBox E8 enclosure supports hot swap. This feature works well when the EnhanceBox E8 is used with a SATA host adapter that also support hot swap. However, the HighPoint Technologies RocketRAID 2322, that was used with the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure during this review does not support the traditional Macintosh host swap feature. Instead, the HighPoint web interface is used to mount and dismount hard drives installed in the EnhanceBox E8-ML.Why would AMUG choose the RocketRAID 2322 for use with the EnhanceBox E8-ML? The reason is that when the RocketRAID 2322 is used with two external mini-SAS to Infiniband (screw) cables (model Ext-MS-1MSB) it can support up to eight hard drives mounted inside the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure with a single PCIe card. In addition, the RocketRAID 2322 supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 1/0 and RAID 5/0. No other Macintosh compatible PCIe SATA host adapter provides all of these features with the EnhanceBox E8-ML.
RAID Types
The HighPoint web based RAID management software that is included with the RocketRAID 2322 provides many extended RAID functions that Macintosh users may not be aware of. While Mac OS X supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 using Disk Utility, the HighPoint RocketRAID 2322 can provide additional RAID configurations while using up to eight hard drives.
RAID 5 - stripes data at the block level across several hard drives while distributing parity among these drives. If a single hard drive fails, a RAID 5 setup can usually recover using the rebuild features of the RocketRAID 2322. If more than one drive fails the data on the RAID will be lost. This system provides redundancy with the least amount of hard drives. Backing up data is still necessary with RAID 5, but this system provides some crash protection while a striped RAID set provides none.
RAID 1/0 - creates a striped RAID set with half of the hard drives and a mirror (RAID1) of each hard drive is created so that an exact duplicate of the striped RAID set is available. This configuration can still operate should a hard drive failure occur when using the RocketRAID 2322. Unmounting a failed hard drive and inserting another hard disk of the same capacity or larger will allow users to rebuild the RAID 1/0 disk array. Any single disk can fail and no data will be lost as long as the mirror of that disk is functional. Backup of critical files is still prudent but the redundancy of a RAID 1/0 disk array is very good.
RAID 5/0 - utilizes two RAID 5 disk arrays in a stripped RAID 0 configuration. This setup provides high performance while also providing redundancy. One hard drive in each RAID 5 group can fail and the data should still be able to be saved with a RocketRAID 2322 rebuild. If more than one disk is lost in any of the RAID 5 arrays all of the data on the disk array will be lost. Backup of critical files is necessary.
As part of the stability test, I wanted to see if a large RAID 5 volume mounted inside the EnhanceBox E8-ML could recover if one of the hard drives was removed while the RAID was accessing data. This action would simulate a hard disk failure. To facilitate this test, a 2.04TB RAID 5 volume was created inside the EnhanceBox E8-ML using eight Seagate 7200.10 320GB hard drives. The RocketRAID 2322 web interface was used to initialize the RAID 5 volume. During this process, the parity data is configured so that the RAID 5 disk array can provide redundancy. The initialization process was completed within one hour and fifty minutes using an Apple Mac Pro 2.66 GHz. At this point, 511GB of data was copied to the RAID 5 volume. After the RAID 5 was populated with data it was time for the recovery test.While the 2.04TB RAID 5 volume was actively copying data, the hard drive mounted in bay 4 of the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure was removed. The HighPoint web RAID management software indicated that the RAID 5 status was critical, but it
still allowed me to copy data to the volume. I inserted a new Seagate 320GB hard drive into bay 4 of the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure and initialized it with the HighPoint RAID management software. Next, I pushed the maintenance button in the RAID management software for the RAID 5 volume and selected "Add Disk". The new Seagate 7200.10 320GB hard drive was displayed as an available hard disk to add to the RAID 5 volume. Pushing the submit button started the rebuilding process for the eight drive RAID volume mounted inside the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure. During the rebuilding process the RAID 5 volume was still usable and approximately two hours later the RAID 5 volume was completely rebuilt with all of the data still intact. The redundancy of RAID 5 is a very nice feature to have available with a large RAID setup. You never know when a hard drive will fail. RAID 5 provides data redundancy which allowed the Mac Pro to recover from the simulated hard disk failure in this test. Using the EnhanceBox E8-ML with the RocketRAID 2322 provides the very cool feature of RAID redundancy to the Apple Mac Pro user.
CoolingIn the cooling test, the EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure was tested with a 2.33 TB striped RAID set using eight Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA hard drives with an Apple Mac Pro 2.66 GHz. The eight hard drives were worked very hard duplicating a 4.2GB folder of video files up to twenty times simultaneously for 90 minutes. The HighPoint web based RAID management software was used to display the SATA hard drive temperatures. At the end of 90 minutes the Seagate hard drives reported temperatures of 120.2 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 EnhanceBox E8-ML enclosure. After resting for an hour, the Seagate 7200.10 320GB hard drives reported temperatures of 109.4 to 116.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The ambient room temperature was 78 degrees Fahrenheit during this test and the enclosure front panel was closed.
In order to determine if the hard drive cooling capability of the EnhanceBox E8 could be improved, the air flow of the enclosure was examined. In the stock configuration, much of the air being vented from the EnhanceBox E8 is entering the enclosure through the 140 holes on the right side panel of the enclosure. This design reduces the amount of new air coming into the enclosure through the hard drive bays which impacts hard drive cooling. As a test, the top eight rows of holes on the side panel were covered with black electrical tape inside the panel. Four sections of tape were used, with each one covering two rows. This left two rows of 14 holes still open at the bottom of the side panel. In the front of the enclosure the bottom row of vents was also covered, leaving one row still open for air circulation.With this alteration applied, less air enters the side of the EnhanceBox E8. Instead, more of the incoming air is pulled through the hard drive bays which enhances the hard drive cooling capability of the enclosure. In addition, leaving the front door open while 80% of the side holes are taped shut can improve hard drive cooling even more. The heat test results are provided below:
Seagate 7200.10 320GB Temperatures in Fahrenheit
| E8-ML | Stock | Door Closed | Taped | Door Open | Taped | |
| Location | After 90 min. | Hour idle | After 90 min. | Hour idle | After 90 min. | Hour idle |
| Top Bay | 120.2 | 109.4 | 113 | 105.8 | 109.4 | 102.2 |
| Bay #2 | 123.8 | 114.8 | 116.6 | 107.6 | 113 | 105.8 |
| Bay #3 | 123.8 | 113 | 116.6 | 107.6 | 113 | 105.8 |
| Bay #4 | 122 | 111.2 | 113 | 105.8 | 109.4 | 104 |
| Bay #5 | 123.8 | 114.8 | 114.8 | 109.4 | 111.2 | 107.6 |
| Bay #6 | 123.8 | 116.6 | 116.6 | 109.4 | 113 | 107.6 |
| Bay #7 | 123.8 | 114.8 | 116.6 | 107.6 | 113 | 105.8 |
| Bay #8 | 122 | 111.2 | 114.8 | 105.8 | 109.4 | 104 |
As you can see in the table above, once the air flow on the right side panel is reduced, the amount of cool air coming in through the hard drive bays is increased which provides additional hard drive cooling. Opening the front door while the enclosure is operating reduces hard drive heat by an additional 2-3 degrees. While the stock cooling design of the EnhanceBox E8 is certainly within most major hard drive manufacturers environmental guidelines, users can easily increase the cooling capability of the EnhanceBox E8 with a few pieces of tape.
Custom Cooling
The EnhanceBox E8 has a user removable fan assembly that can be used to setup a custom cooling solution. The EnhanceBox E8 is very quiet in its stock configuration. It uses an Everflow 80X80X25mm cooling fan, model F128025BL. This 12v, 0.10 Amp fan uses 1.2 watts at full power. It has a rated RPM of 2050, moves 32.4 cubic feet per minute and has an acoustical rating of 21 dBA. The built-in removable fan design incorporated in the EnhanceBox E8 allows the user to install any 80x80mm fan. This feature provides additional cooling options.
I really like the Vantec 80X80X25mm Stealth fan. It is quiet yet has the ability to cool down hard drives. However, in an A-B test between the Stealth and the stock Everflow fan installed in the EnhanceBox E8, I found that the Everflow model F128025BL was almost as quiet as the Vantec Stealth Fan and provided a little more air flow. As this is the case, I probably will not change the fan in the EnhanceBox E8 unless I want more air flow and do not care about the added noise that a high RPM fan might produce.
As I enjoy quiet enclosures that also run cool, I will stay with the stock EnhanceBox E8 80mm fan for now. If a quiet fan is available later that provides additional air flow I may change my mind. The beauty of the EnhanceBox E8 is that users can easily change out the 80mm cooling fan should they desire to do so.
Acoustics
The original EnhanceBox E8 that AMUG received was quite loud. Enhance Technology was informed that the power supply fan created significant noise. Within a short period of time Enhance Technology upgraded the EnhanceBox E8 design with a new quiet power supply. The new power supply has a 120mm ultra quiet fan. If I remove the 80mm fan and turn on the EnhanceBox E8, I hear no fan noise at all. This amazingly quiet new EnhanceBox E8 design is being used with this review.
The new power supply design and the fact that the user can install any 80mm cooling fan of their choice, allows the new EnhanceBox E8 to be utilized in just about any acoustical demanding environment. One of the loudest components in many multi-bay SATA enclosures is the power supply fan. The ultra quiet power supply provided inside the EnhanceBox E8 is a massive step forward for multimedia users that want to maintain a quiet working environment.
Image of the Power Supply provided in the bottom of the new Enhance E8-ML.
During this review, the EnhanceBox E8 was loaded with eight Seagate 7200.10 320GB hard drives and placed beside an Apple Mac Pro 2.66 GHz. The Apple Mac Pro is ultra quiet. The wind sound generated by the stock EnhanceBox 80mm cooling fan can be heard over the Mac Pro from three feet away. It is a soft, quiet wind sound. Once the hard drives are configured in a striped RAID set and are copying lots of data, the noise generated by the eight hard drives can easily be heard above the quiet wind noise generated by the 80mm cooling fan. I would classify the new EnhanceBox E8 power supply as one of the quietest designs I have used in an 8-bay external SATA enclosure.
Sleep
While the EnhanceBox E8 can be used in sleep mode with a host adapter that supports sleep, the HighPoint Technologies RocketRAID 2322 used in this review with the EnhanceBox E8-ML does not support sleep with Mac OS X. That is one of the few drawbacks to using the RocketRAID 2322 with a Macintosh. However, the multiple advanced RAID configurations available with the RocketRAID 2322 more than make up for this short coming.
RAID PerformanceA HighPoint Technologies RocketRAID 2322 host adapter using universal firmware version 103-1219 was installed in slot 4 of an Apple Mac Pro 2.66 GHz, running Mac OS X 10.4.8. The EnhanceBox E8-ML eight bay enclosure was filled with eight Seagate 7200.10 320GB model ST3320620AS hard drives for this test. 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. 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 EnhanceBox E8-ML performed in several RAID configurations.
EnhanceBox E8-ML Eight 320GB 7200.10 Striped RAID Set
 RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 0 Eight 7200.10 |
RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 0 Eight 7200.10 |
RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 5 Eight 7200.10 |
RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 5/0 Eight 7200.10 |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 585 | 579 | 585 | 582 | 509 | 510 | 421 | 437 |
| 10% | 587 | 581 | 587 | 583 | 507 | 510 | 434 | 436 |
| 20% | 572 | 568 | 572 | 568 | 496 | 496 | 420 | 427 |
| 30% | 553 | 550 | 554 | 552 | 479 | 482 | 411 | 413 |
| 40% | 532 | 529 | 534 | 532 | 463 | 464 | 396 | 398 |
| 50% | 511 | 508 | 512 | 510 | 441 | 444 | 378 | 380 |
| 60% | 478 | 473 | 478 | 477 | 414 | 416 | 355 | 356 |
| 70% | 445 | 442 | 445 | 443 | 387 | 387 | 331 | 333 |
| 80% | 412 | 404 | 412 | 407 | 357 | 357 | 305 | 306 |
| 90% | 364 | 358 | 364 | 362 | 317 | 316 | 271 | 271 |
| 100% | 295 | 295 | 296 | 285 | 258 | 258 | 220 | 221 |
| Average | 485 | 481 | 485 | 483 | 421 | 422 | 359 | 362 |
| Type | Disk | Utility | RR2322 | RR2322 | RR2322 | |||
| Size | 2.33TB | 2.33TB | 2.04TB | 1.75TB |
As you can see in the table above, the eight drive Seagate 7200.10 320GB setup was able to provide about the same RAID 0 performance when using Disk Utility to configure the RAID set or when using the HighPoint web interface provided with the RocketRAID 2322 host adapter. When the Maxline III 7V300F0 hard drives were tested, Disk Utility provided slightly faster performance results than the RocketRAID 2322 web interface with a RAID 0 configuration. However, the Seagate 7200.10 setup was able to perform approximately 10% faster than the Maxline III 7V300F0 setup when testing with DiskTester. As a result, the Seagate 7200.10 eight drive striped RAID set was used with the DiskTester performance test.
The RAID 5 configuration uses the space of one hard drive for parity information, while RAID 5/0 uses the space of two hard drives for parity data. This causes the RAID size to shrink and the performance to be slightly reduced in each of the corresponding columns. However, RAID 5 and 5/0 will provide redundancy while RAID 0 does not. Users that are looking for redundancy in a disk array while still supporting over 420MB/sec average performance results, will find that using the EnhanceBox E8-ML with the RocketRAID 2322 in a RAID 5 configuration provides a powerful option.
The RocketRAID 2322 also supports RAID 1/0 which provides a complete backup of four striped RAID set hard drives to four other drives. The downside to RAID 1/0 is that the size of the volume and the performance are only 50% of what the same hardware can provide when configured as a striped RAID set.
Using the EnhanceBox E8-ML in conjunction with the four internal bays on the Apple Mac Pro can accommodate a ten, eleven or even a twelve drive striped RAID set. If a twelve drive striped RAID set is configured an external boot drive is necessary. Disk Utility allows users to configure the eight hard drives in the EnhanceBox E8-ML with the internal Mac Pro bays when the RocketRAID 2322 is installed. You can see the performance results in the table below.
Additional EnhanceBox E8-ML Mac Pro RAID Configurations
RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 1/0 Eight 7200.10 |
RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 0 Plus 2 Internal Ten 7200.10 |
RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 0 Plus 3 Internal Eleven 7200.10 |
RocketRAID 2322 - RAID 0 Plus 4 Internal Twelve 7200.10 |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 288 | 296 | 721 | 715 | 779 | 758 | 871 | 845 |
| 10% | 293 | 296 | 721 | 710 | 794 | 770 | 846 | 840 |
| 20% | 285 | 290 | 705 | 697 | 773 | 770 | 840 | 833 |
| 30% | 276 | 279 | 685 | 683 | 755 | 752 | 827 | 818 |
| 40% | 266 | 267 | 661 | 655 | 728 | 719 | 795 | 786 |
| 50% | 253 | 256 | 634 | 628 | 691 | 687 | 753 | 747 |
| 60% | 239 | 242 | 590 | 585 | 645 | 644 | 707 | 699 |
| 70% | 222 | 225 | 556 | 551 | 613 | 607 | 668 | 661 |
| 80% | 206 | 207 | 503 | 500 | 554 | 550 | 597 | 597 |
| 90% | 181 | 183 | 445 | 442 | 490 | 487 | 532 | 530 |
| 100% | 147 | 149 | 365 | 363 | 402 | 398 | 437 | 434 |
| Average | 241 | 244 | 599 | 593 | 657 | 649 | 716 | 708 |
| Type | RR2322 | Disk | Utility | Disk | Utility | Disk | Utility | |
| Size | 1.16TB | 2.91TB | 3.2TB | 3.49TB |
As the results demonstrate, a very fast "direct connect" RAID setup can be configured with many options when the EnhanceBox E8-ML is used with an Apple Mac Pro.
The EnhanceBox E8-ML Multilane Infiniband SATA enclosure provides a high quality eight bay storage system that works well with an Apple Mac Pro with a RocketRAID 2322 host adapter installed. The new EnhanceBox E8 ultra quiet power supply and the user serviceable 80mm fan design provide users with a powerful, yet quiet eight bay SATA enclosure. The EnhanceBox E8-ML can be connected to the Mac Pro using two multilane cables (not included) which support up to eight external SATA hard drives. The styling, stability, cooling capability and the acoustics of the EnhanceBox E8-ML make it a pleasure to work with. Mac Pro users that desire high powered RAID functionality will find when the EnhanceBox E8-ML is matched with a RocketRAID 2322 host adapter, the capability of the Mac Pro is expanded to support large RAID 0, 1, 5, 1/0 and 5/0 configurations. These features add RAID redundancy to the powerful Apple Mac Pro platform.
The EnhanceBox E8 activity lights provide excellent user feed back and can be seen with the hard drive access door open. Users that do not want to view the activity lights can simply close the front door of the enclosure. The hard drive trays provided with
the EnhanceBox E8 are interchangable with the Sonnet Fusion 400 and 500P enclosures which provides a nice feature for users that work with both of these excellent enclosures. In addition, the EnhanceBox E8 is easily modifiable. The side panels can be removed with three screws on the rear of the enclosure. The 80mm cooling fan assembly unscrews and the front door can be removed by releasing an enclosure foot and loosening three screws on the bottom. The EnhanceBox E8-ML is one of the few enclosures that supports eight hard drives in a single quiet SATA enclosure. All of these features make the EnhanceBox E8 a strong choice for Apple Mac Pro users that want to expand their computers hard drive capabilities.
Pros
EnhanceBox E8-ML works with any OS with Multilane SATA capability.
If used with RocketRAID 2322 adds RAID 0, 1, 5, 1/0 and 5/0 features.
Mounts up to eight external SATA hard drives.
Measured 420MB/sec. average performance with RAID 5.
Measured 480MB/sec. average performance with RAID 0.
Ultra Quiet power supply.
Quiet 80mm fan operation.
User serviceable 80mm fan module.
LED activity lights.
Lockable hard drive bays.
Looks great with the Apple Mac Pro.
Can be easily modified for better HD cooling.
Easy access enclosure for modifications.
Mounts individual hard drives or a RAID configuration.
Well designed, easy to use and easy to install.
Cons
No power switch on front panel. (Only on the rear)
Side air vents could be reduced to help increase air flow to drive bays.
Enclosure corners may seem sharp.
EnhanceBox E8-ML gets 4.5 AMUGs out of 5!
Using the EnhanceBox E8-ML with the RocketRAID 2322 provides a wonderful storage expansion solution. This combination includes an 8-bay quiet hard drive enclosure that uses a single PCIe card to control all of the hard drives mounted in the EnhanceBox E8-ML. Many Mac Pro users would like to have RAID 5 capability. The EnhanceBox E8-ML and the RocketRAID 2322 work together to make this possible. Mac Pro users looking for an eight bay, high performance storage system that works great with the RocketRAID 2322 will discover that the EnhanceBox E8-ML is an excellent choice.
In the near future, AMUG will review the EnhanceBox E8-PM which is the same EnhanceBox E8 enclosure with SATA port multiplier support. The EnhanceBox E8 design offers users several connection options.Contact Information:
Enhance Technology, Inc.
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA. 90670 USA
Phone: 1-562-777-3488
http://www.enhance-tech.com/
info@enhance-tech.com
Copyright 2007
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG). Visit AMUG at www.amug.org for news, discounts and friends. JOIN AMUG!