Sans Digital MOBILESTORE Hard Drive Enclosure Review

Installation

Unlike other enclosures which we have reviewed in the past, MobileSTOR requires tools for proper installation. Namely, it needs a good old fashioned Philips screw driver, which is not included. Actually, we are getting a little ahead of ourselves here so let’s start at the beginning of the installation process.


To install a hard drive into this unit the very first thing one must do is open the front door on one of the two drive bays. As mentioned earlier in the review this is accomplished by using the small plastic key and inserting it in the front door opening hole. You will instantly know when you have inserted far enough as the spring loaded door handle will pop open when free of the locking mechanism. Then just like a server hard drive tray you gently tug on the door handle and slide out the drive tray.


When the drive tray is free of the enclosure you then have to use a screwdriver to remove the long chrome post which helps protect the drive tray and keep it from getting deformed during insertion/removal of an empty drive tray. Once this simple task is accomplished one simply has to line up a hard drive inside the drive tray so the three screw holes on each side of the drive tray line up with their counterparts on the drive itself. Then you simply screw in the included screws to hard mount the drive to the drive tray.


At this point of the installation you are ready to remount the now loaded drive tray back into the MobileSTOR enclosure. You should notice the long plastic runner located on each side of the drive tray, these runners have to line up with the keyed cut-outs in the enclosure’s sides or you will not be able to successfully mount the tray. It was found during testing that in order to make insertion as easy and smooth as possible one should hold the drive tray as perfectly parallel to the floor as possible; this greatly increases your chances of a successful insertion, while lowering friction. It is not that inserting a drive is difficult, but as with any new device, the drive tray runners are “sticky” and have not worn down with use. After about a dozen or two insertions and removal this stickiness went away and the process becomes smooth as silk.

To install the second hard drive (which is completely optional unless you want RAID capabilities) you simply follow the above steps again for the second drive tray. We would strongly recommend you do not throw away the chrome protection bars as they should always be reinserted when a hard drive is not being used in a given drive tray. When you have installed the hard drives the only things left to do is pick your RAID level and plug in the device. To chose your RAID level one simply needs to use a small flat nose screw driver and twist the recessed selector knob located on the back of the MobileSTOR. If you wish to use eSATA and your system is does not have eSATA capabilities you will need to install the included PCI bracket first, but this is fairly self explanatory and we will not go into any more detail than that.

If you have selected JBOD, or RAID 0 the installation is now complete and you will get the full capabilities of the device as soon as you turn it on for the first time. However, if you selected RAID 1 or SAFE33/SAFE 50 when you first turn on the device it will start to build its array. You will be able to use it right away but it will take a few hours for the array to be built and thus give you its full speed potential. During this time you will also not have any data redundancy so please be careful. In testing it was found that two 320GB hard drive took about 3.5 hours for the array to build. Your time may vary (depending on speed of drives used) but this should give you a rough idea of how fast it is.

At this point your MobileSTOR is now ready for action and unless you want too you do not need to install the included software. The included backup software is NTI Shadow copy and it is an extremely easy to use yet highly effective backup program. While it will not replace Acronis or Norton Ghost, this software should be all the average user needs or wants.


To install NTI shadow copy, one simply inserts the included CD Rom and answers the questions the install wizard asks of you. If you are like us and you have “autoplay” disabled you may have to manually start the process but otherwise as soon as your computer recognizes the CD a window will pop up asking if you would like to install it and then where it should install the software. Once this painless procedure it done you are now the proud owner of a NTI Shadow Copy. As the name suggests, it will run in the background and as soon as you save a file to your hard drive it will automatically be saved the enclosure as well. Of course you can setup manual backups as well, but for the most part this easy to use piece of software will do it for you as long the enclosure is turned on and available. What more could you ask for from a free piece of software?