Sans Digital MOBILESTORE Hard Drive Enclosure Review

Internal Impressions

Please note that opening your enclosure will void your warranty.


In some ways we believe Sans Digital may have taken the clean smooth look a smidgen to far, especially when it comes to trying to open this sucker up. Maybe it was done to dissuade people from opening the case up and accidentally frying themselves on the now-touchable power supply internals, maybe they’re just bashful. Either way the only way you can open this case is by first moving the four rubber feet and then removing the screws which they were hiding.


With those hidden screws removed, one has to simply slide the black case covering off the back of the silver chassis. On a side note, this is one slick way of doing things and certainly helps contribute to the MobileSTOR’s clean looks.


When the metal covering is fully removed, the very first thing which pops out at you is the internal power supply. For the little amount of juice this unit requires, it was surprisingly beefy with two nice-sized heatsinks strategically located to take advantage of the enclosure's air movement. Even more impressive was the end user replaceable fuse located in the lower left hand corner of the power supply board. This means, for whatever reason the fuse blows you could theoretically replace it yourself. We say theoretically because this will certainly void your warranty and we are certainly not recommending it as once the power supply is energized it is not something you want to be mucking around with.


The only downside which we can see with this internal power supply was the use of Fuhjjyu capacitors. While these caps can be found in some computer power supplies they have been know to swell and fail if put into a high-heat environment. We are not saying these will fail (far from it in fact); but you should be aware of this potential negative before buying a MobileSTOR. Let us reiterate: this unit uses very little juice and should therefore put very little stress on the caps so the chances of failure are just as slim as if they were any other brand. After all, Sans Digital has their good reputation to uphold; and in more mercenary terms; if the failure rate was unacceptably high they wouldn’t be able to make a profit, now would they?


When one has carefully removed not only the power supply and its plastic anti static shield but also carefully unplugged the power connectors from the back of the unit you can then remove the whole power supply from the chassis. By doing this, it allows you the option of then removing the control PCB from the unit. This is accomplished by simply removing a couple more screws and removing the controller board from the back of the chassis.


The very first thing which stands out on the PCB is that there is a small chip “missing” from the back of the board (just above the reset button and RAID controller knob). This makes it fairly obvious this PCB is used in multiple enclosures and the missing controller chip is either a Firewire controller or a NIC. Either way, this is a tried and true method which manufacturers use to help keep costs down. After all, why stock 4 boards when you can get a better deal on four times the amount of one board? So if you have gotten this far on your own MobileSTOR enclosure A) don’t panic…it didn’t fall out B) if you're nuts enough to try this at home we take absolutely no responsibility for it…we won’t even dial 911 for you…so there.


The heat and brains of the MobileSTOR is the Silicon Image 5744 “SteelVine” RAID Storage Processor. The 5744 was released in late 2007 by Silicon Image and it is this processor which allows the MobileSTOR the ability to have not only JBOD, RAID 1 or RAID 0 capabilities but also SAFE33 and SAFE50 features. The 57xx series is the 2nd generation of the processor family called “SteelVine” and builds upon the initial success of the 47xx series. These controller chips are capable of supporting 3GB/s “SATA 2” hard drives and when bought in large quantities go for about $5 USD each. Needless to say these are very high end controller chips and it was great to see it being used as the controller for the MobileSTOR. It will be interesting to see how this controller chip’s test results stack up against not only previous eSATA enclosures tested but also USB controllers as well.


The active cooling of the MobileSTOR enclosure is provided by one Y.S.Tech FD124010LB 40 x 40 x 10 mm fan which is capable of moving 4.3CFM of air. While this doesn't sound like much air movement, hard drives really do not need active cooling so any air movement at all is more than enough. This helps explain the temperature warning indicator located at the front. Of course, this lil’ guy is only held in place with the two screws and uses a standard 3 pin connector; so it can be easily swapped out for a more high performance fan if the need should arise (say cooling a pair of Raptor 150s). One thing worth mentioning is this fan is actually fairly loud; when we looked up its specifications we were shocked as we were expecting a high performance fan to justify its noise output. Don’t get us wrong, it is no where near buzz saw levels but it is louder than Scythe E fans.