Page 3: TR5UTP
TR5UTP
Sans Digital sent us the black version of the TR5UTP. You can also opt for the silver variant that has all the same features. The TR5UTP is basically a 5-bay drive enclosure with some additional electronics for RAID and external connections. The finish is very shiny and looks great when on display.
The front of the TR5UTP has a grated door that opens to access the drive bays. On the bottom of the front are the indication LEDs for drive activity and power as well as the power button.
The door swings open fairly easily. There is no locking mechanism, you'll need to have some physical security if this is out in the open. It should be located in a server room, though. Each bay is independent and a push to the right flips the level to pull the bay out.
After tugging on the bay, the installed drive can be removed or replaced. To install a drive, pull the bay out and mount the drive. Since this is a Serial ATA enclosure, the TR5UTP is hot-swappable.
One of the best features of the TR5UTP is the very large fan in the back of the unit for the hard drives. Since it is a single large fan, the fan spins slower than multiple smaller ones which means less noise. The one problem is the fan for the power supply is one of those whiny types. It is the small fan on the bottom right of the picture.
There are jumpers and a reset button to allow you to set how you want to configure the TR5UTP without any software. While the product comes with RAID management software, we found that it wasn't too great to setup an array through it. It also only works on Windows. The jumpers are pretty much the best way to setup the array. If you want to have a four drive RAID5 array with a hot spare, simply unplug whichever drive you want to be a hot spare and set the jumpers for RAID5 (up/down/up). Hold the reset button and turn on the power. You can let go of the reset button after 5 seconds. The array should be built and you can plug the hot spare back into the TR5UTP. Be mindful that doing this will wipe the data from the drives. Any time you make a new array, be sure to backup the data.
Each bay is sturdy since it is made with tough metal. There are screw mounts for traditional hard drive mounts. Each bay is a 3.5" hard drive bay. Using SSDs probably isn't the best use case with the TR5UTP as it is made for RAID level redundancy.
Installation of the drive was simple. Screw it in and go.
Sans Digital sent us the black version of the TR5UTP. You can also opt for the silver variant that has all the same features. The TR5UTP is basically a 5-bay drive enclosure with some additional electronics for RAID and external connections. The finish is very shiny and looks great when on display.
The front of the TR5UTP has a grated door that opens to access the drive bays. On the bottom of the front are the indication LEDs for drive activity and power as well as the power button.
The door swings open fairly easily. There is no locking mechanism, you'll need to have some physical security if this is out in the open. It should be located in a server room, though. Each bay is independent and a push to the right flips the level to pull the bay out.
After tugging on the bay, the installed drive can be removed or replaced. To install a drive, pull the bay out and mount the drive. Since this is a Serial ATA enclosure, the TR5UTP is hot-swappable.
One of the best features of the TR5UTP is the very large fan in the back of the unit for the hard drives. Since it is a single large fan, the fan spins slower than multiple smaller ones which means less noise. The one problem is the fan for the power supply is one of those whiny types. It is the small fan on the bottom right of the picture.
There are jumpers and a reset button to allow you to set how you want to configure the TR5UTP without any software. While the product comes with RAID management software, we found that it wasn't too great to setup an array through it. It also only works on Windows. The jumpers are pretty much the best way to setup the array. If you want to have a four drive RAID5 array with a hot spare, simply unplug whichever drive you want to be a hot spare and set the jumpers for RAID5 (up/down/up). Hold the reset button and turn on the power. You can let go of the reset button after 5 seconds. The array should be built and you can plug the hot spare back into the TR5UTP. Be mindful that doing this will wipe the data from the drives. Any time you make a new array, be sure to backup the data.
Each bay is sturdy since it is made with tough metal. There are screw mounts for traditional hard drive mounts. Each bay is a 3.5" hard drive bay. Using SSDs probably isn't the best use case with the TR5UTP as it is made for RAID level redundancy.
Installation of the drive was simple. Screw it in and go.