Customer Reviews

Eagle Tech ET-CSDU2J-BK 3.5? SATA to USB dual bay JBOD enclosure

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't have the time to write a 45 min. review,
but I'll just say that it works well, and I'm very
pleased with my purchase. It's a hard drive enclosure,
not a television. It's been reliable for over 6 months.
I would buy it again... A+++

this is a great value for my 2 x 1tb drives. usb is a tad slow but more than enough for my media collection.
fan is a bit noisy in my opinion but i am not complaining at this price point.

simply works and its cheap!

Eagle Tech ET-CSDU2J-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB Dual Bay JBOD Enclosure reviewed here has excellent value compared to other HDD enclosures as it houses Dual SATA HDDs and has the capability of spanning two drives to make it look like a bigger drive to the operating system (RAID-0 JBOD)

I found out that everyone complains about FAN noise and or SATA cables too big for this enclosure. I do agree it is very tricky to put the HDDs into this enclosure, But with some tips (See Below) you can get this thing working in no time.

TIP:
----
(*) Make sure the HDD power cables do not to touch the FAN thereby eliminating the FAN noise. Just grab the HDD power cables and pull them away from the fan and tuck them behind SATA cables.

(*) Just let the SATA cables bend on it's own as you press and as you close the lid after HDD installation, Do not try to bend the included SATA cables yourself as they can easily get damaged or worse damage the SATA connectors.


PROS
[+] Cheap and does the job well
[+] Decent transfer speeds (USB 2.0)
[+] RAID 0 (Spanning) possible with 2 drives
[+] Does not need any additional drivers for XP/Vista or Linux OS
[+] Comes with Screws, Cables, and Power Adapters ready to go


CONS
[-] Somewhat cheap construction
[-] Getting HDDs into the case is tricky as SATA cables are very stiff
[-] Poor Quality FAN which can be noisy for some


Eagle Tech ET-CSDU2J-BK works fine as advertised, Frankly speaking for the money it is well worth it, Agree that there are some cheap looking plastic parts and the whole assembly is very small but for what it is designed for it works quite well. Free Shipping from Amazon, great price - Go get one!

ET-CSDU2-BK == HAS RAID 0

ET-CSDU2J-BK == DON'T have raid

Be aware although you see Raid 0 easter-egged all over the reviews on the vendor website and even "reviews" here the ET-CSDU2J-BK model don't support raid 0. Nor does the vendor ever state that it supports RAID 0 anywhere. (I am sure the vendor or Amazon are responsible for the reviews portion of their webby) On the one I purchased there is a nice little jumper on the PCB that says "Raid" but mine don't let the drives show up as a Raid striped set. As JBOD it shows the 1TB (2x500GB drives) you would expect and it will show each drive as two seperate 500GB drives. The internal LED's are housed on a small afterthought piece of plastic that was broken upon initial inspection (not really a big deal to me but beware). Additionally the cables that connect the leds are taunt, similar to every other cable in the case. Truly it is a tight fit for everything, but functional thus far.

Remember, NO RAID 0 on this model, on the side of my box (and vendor site) there is another model (ET-CSDU2-BK) <- NO "J" in this model number, with a different chipset that DOES support the RAID 0 functionality.

This product works as advertised, although I have to say it is defective in a few ways. First, the unit I received has LED's/lights on the front which do not light up! At first I didn't notice it because I did not know that it even had lights, but apparently it does, as I saw the labels above them, and then I noticed that they were supposed to light up! But, besides that, the unit performs, and it works decently. The file transfer time is more than adequate for me... I put two 500 GB drives in it, which equals a Terabyte of storage, with no problems. However, the unit does get VERY hot if it is left on for very long, which worries me about shortening the life expectancy of my drives. Also, the rear fan has stopped working. This worries me even more, because now there is even LESS air flowing through the drive than before. Both of these problems could be solved easily, I suppose, with a little work on my part. I have read of another user boring a hole through the front to allow more airflow, and replacing the fan shouldn't be too hard... but it would have been nice it if had just worked perfectly from the get go. I have only used this unit a total of maybe 20 hours before it developed these problems (the LED's never worked), so it is kind of disappointing. However, despite these flaws, the drives still perform admirably in the unit, and I have not had a problem accessing them. I would say, be wary ordering this unit, but if you are a bit of a DIY'er, then these are cheap units that make a decent external enclosure for some extra SATA HDD's you may have laying around.

I consider myself pretty technologically savy, as the setup and use of this product was quite easy; however, I used the product maybe 5 times throughout a week and now it does not work very well. It will turn on and occassionally connect to the computer but it kicks off at various times, etc. I am going to continue using it because I have to but I would not recommend anyone to jump up and buy this product due to the faulty and unpredictable operation.

The enclosure does what it needs to do. Installation of the SATA drives was simple. The case design is flimsy, but for the price acceptable. The fan, however, is rather noisy and the product would therefore not be so great for a quiet environment.

The installation is easy and it performs well, I don't like Jmicron chipsets, I prefer oxford but this enclosure has been dependable and the jmicron has been reliable.

I have used this product for several weeks now and have no complaints. It assembled easily, was recognized properly by my computer and is plenty fast enough for my purposes.

I got it so that I could expand my storage capacity with drives of the latest SATA standard. My computer would not ordinarily recognize the drives without the purchase of a special card. The cards tend to be more expensive than the enclosures. Besides, I didn't have any available PCI slots.

I installed two 1TB drives as JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks). XP recognized them as a single drive with 2TB capacity. I formatted them as NTFS.

It is not clear to me how JBOD stores directory information so I may be in for a rude surprise down the road if one of the disks fails. I understand that information on each drive is accessible should either drive fail but there seems to be some contention on this issue. Since I use this drive for backups only I am willing to take a chance. In any event, that's a JBOD standards issue that has nothing to do with the reliability of the enclosure itself.

I can recommend this enclosure without qualification.

The Eagle Tech 'Consus' external drive housings do what they are supposed to. They use more plastic than I am comfortable with but, as long as they are not subjected to abuse, then they will be fine (unless the installation is in close proximity to a strong RF (radio signal) field, such as would be the case if near a high power AM broadcast station).

Anyone thinking about buying an Eagle Tech 'Consus' external drive housing needs to be aware that there are (at least) two different versions. Externally they are identical but the controlling printed circuit board (PCB) is different in the two devices and the way they access capacity of the two hard drives (user provided) is different. The two versions of the 'Consus' device have different part numbers but the literature is not sufficiently clear on that (in my opinion).