Introduction:

Sans Digital MobileSTOR MS2UT+B

Sans Digital is a purely storage centric company. The gambit of consumer and enterprise level setups. They are trying to offer something for every situation, large or small. Their website even has a list:

"Sans Digital specializes in, but is not limited to, serving these vertical industries: Audio-Video Editing, Data Backup, Surveillance Systems, Database Storage, Imaging, File Servers, and etc."

That pretty much covers everything don’t you think?

Sans Digital has sent out one of their many 2 drive external drive enclosures. They are all very similar, but each offers one or two different features. The MS2UT+B is one of the most advanced units they offer.

MobileSTOR

Specs

pay attention!

Features:

First impressions:

Well first off. I’d like to point out that this isn’t actually –just- a review of the MS2UT+B, note the small little extra on the box that says “Free MS1U inside”. I’ll get it to it in a bit.

The MS2UT is very compact, with its black brushed aluminium case, LCD screen and chrome buttons it is also very clean.

In the box

Wrapped up

Packing

The power supply is internal, which means there is no extra power adaptors required, but it won’t make temperature control any easier. The small fan seems to do enough to prevent any damage to the drives inside, but it’s not keeping things “cool” by any stretch.

Installation:

Matte finish

Rear ports

Cables and stuff oh my

Similar to other enclosures I’ve tried out, this one has the two standards, USB and eSata. Also similarly, the MS2UT offloads most of the work to the PC it is connected to. It has enough intelligence to maintain the array assignments and display the drives to windows.

To install the drives, you require a “key” to open the drive sleds.  While this does offer some semblance of security, I really dislike it. Obviously the keys are easy to lose, and finding something to use it their place isn’t something to look forward to.

2 USB cables

Key for the sleds

Open

After you unlock the sleds and slide them out, screw down a drive, and slide it back it. It latches down easily but still keeps everything snug.

Selecting the RAID level is done with a small dial that is recessed at the back. A small screwdriver or some other thin tool is required to spin the dial. There is no indicator on the dial that shows what level is actually selected, so I had to spin it all the way left or right just to be sure where it was at.

I'm going to lose that

Slots

Drives mounted

Testing:

Sans Digital make a big deal about their having the “First 7 mode RAID”. This is where they add their “SAFE30” and “SAFE50” RAID levels. In reality, what they do, is partition each drive twice. Then one partition from each drive is placed in RAID 0 for faster access, while the other is mirrored between both drives for redundancy.

2X500GB

Installed

MS1U

This should work in theory, for something like having games stored in the RAID 0 partitions for faster loading, while keeping the savegame folders in the RAID 1 sections in case one drive fails. You end up losing everything on the RAID 0 areas, but should be able to keep what is on the other. You should even be able to take the working drive out of the enclosure and use it in another system in case the MS2UT is damaged as well. This is actually an advantage of not having any special hardware processing power internally, as some proprietary RAID setups become unusable on any other system.

SD cards

USB ports

another angle

The problem however, is that I was unable to use both the RAID 0 and RAID 1 setups at the same time with USB 2.0. With eSata, there were no issues and windows could see both, but I could only ever get the RAID 0 partition to show up. This was universal across Window and OSX.

Compact Flash

And even more

Ready for a drive

When the selection dial is turned to any of the other RAID options, I had no problems with USB or eSata operation.

The “extra”:

The MS1U was actually a surprise. Just looking at it, I thought it was a card reader. Then I realized that it held a laptop hard drive. Ok that’s pretty cool. A card reader that can store what it reads. Very handy, I could really use something like this.

Instructions (good spot)

Drive installed

120GB

So I slapped in a 120GB drive I was going to use in another enclosure. No problems here, pretty simple. Then.. well. I accidentally hit a button on it, and the damn thing spun up the hard drive! I was shocked. No wires connected, I had *NO* idea it had its own battery! How blooming handy is that?!

Running on Battery

Backlit

I take a lot of pictures out in the mountains when I get the time to go, but only having 3 compact flash cards means I either need to carry my laptop with me, or shoot in a lower quality to get more shots on the cards. Being able to offload the images on a really compact self powered unit out in the middle of nowhere is ideal. It charges with the same USB cable you use to transfer data off to your computer.

It’s not fast when it’s battery powered, copying a full 4GB compact flash card takes almost half an hour. But it works, and even if it runs out of power, you don’t lose the data on the CF card.

Conclusion:

I’m not entirely convinced of the usefulness of the extra RAID levels in Sans Digital’s “7 modes”, without the ability to use them with USB, I don’t see much point. I also don’t like the RAID selection dial and “key” to open the drive sleds.

Digi Drive

It's all normal

Everything else, I like. The finish, the LCD, compact size. $170 seems like a lot, but look around at the competition, this falls right into place with everyone else. If you then include the extremely handy battery powered laptop drive enclosure, it switches from “right in line” to “a hell of a good deal” I actually fail to understand why the MS1U retails for $50, but I’m not going to complain.

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