Rosewill RSV-S5 SATA 3G 2.5" & 3.5" HDD 5-Bay RAID 0/1/5/10/5+spare/Spanning/JBOD Storage Enclosure System with 120mm cooling fan/ Port Multiplier/ PCIe card included/ Tray design

Pros: Price to storage density ratio is excellent, speeds in RAID-0/1/10/JBOD are as expected for the interface and drives, around 80-110MBytes/sec sustained. Recovers gracefully from drive failures when configured for redundancy and hotswaps seamlessly without complaining. Seems faster than the RSV-S8, albeit with slightly newer drives.

Cons: The old Java management software is very poor, as are the drivers. The management system service has to regularly be restarted for the management software to detect any controllers. Half of one RSV-S8 randomly drops out and has to be either unplugged or the system restarted for it to be recognized by Windows again. In its defense, this is in a system with three PCIe cards, two RSV-S8's, and one RSV-S5, all full of drives in RAID-5. I'll point the finger at Silicon Image for these issues anyway, not Rosewill As with the RSV-S8 and other products using port multipliers, initial RAID-5 array builds are very slow to write parity data, as are rebuilds when a drive is lost or errors are detected. Redundancy restore operations also seem to begin without obvious cause and at random, slowing down performance for sometimes days at a time. Write operations to RAID-5 volumes are also predictably slow, with speeds peaking at 20-25MBytes/sec when the array is otherwise idle. This is to be expected, though, with what is essentially software RAID through a tiny port multiplier card. RAID-5 read operations are tolerable. Besides software and performance, the only thing that doesn't make this a 4-5 egg product for me is the lack of 6.0Gbps SATA support.

Other Thoughts: All around it's a pretty solid product that could probably stand some polishing, but well worth the money for anyone looking for lots of cheap local storage.

Pros: Inexpensive. 5-bays. Ubuntu 12.10 sees the card automatically. Quiet.

Cons: Orange light is a bit bright. Blue would have looked nicer. The trays could have been designed a little better; I would have preferred a screwless design.

Other Thoughts: I am very satisfied with this enclosure. I'm not using the controller's RAID as I have read the bad reviews on it. Software RAID5 on Ubuntu 12.10 works great with it.

Pros: I'm giving it 5 stars because it does everything I need. Note, I'm not using the BIOS on the supplied card.
I built a 5-disk RAID5 array under Linux. Linux sees all of the drives as individual disks, since I did not set anything up with the card's BIOS. This is exactly what I wanted and expected, therefore the 5 stars.

I like the sleds, they work fine.

Cons: I can't think of any.
I saw some negative reviews, but that's not my experience at all. your mileage may vary.

Other Thoughts: The box and the server that I attached it to are tucked away in my basement so I'm not concerned about noise, but it doesn't seem noisy.

Pros: - Relatively inexpensive
- 5 drive bays w/ drive carriers
- Comes with a port-multiplier card

Cons: - Does not have an industrial build quality

Other Thoughts: I bought this enclosure in Jan 2010 to house 5 Seagate 1.5 TB HDs connected to an Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS 32-bit server and configured using software raid-5 (mdadm). The initial setup was eady, ableit long to form the raid-5 array (which should be a given using this setup). The enclosure and the array has been running without a problem ever since. Never a problem is dropping the array or disks, array rebuilds on reboot... nothing. Oh, and for those who like to be critical of consumer grade or brand <insert name here> drives, I've never lost a drive either.

If you just getting started or need a simple expansion, I highly recommend this unit.

Pros: None. Well, I suppose the initial setup was simple enough. Minus trying to get SATARAID5 working with UAC on Windows 7. Once that was setup, I was able to create my RAID 5 within a couple minutes. It took forever to set up, but that was expected given 4x1TB HDD in a RAID 5. Probably took over 20 hours

Cons: Where to start....
1) Took forever to build the RAID 5 volume. Over 20 hours.
2) Rebuilds every time my computer restarts or goes to sleep. Sometimes the rebuilds will take 15 minutes, other times it'll take upwards of 3 hours
3) Random drive(s) drops every couple of weeks. No rhyme or reason to which drive drops. All drives have been independently tested using manufacturer tools and all come back clean. I've put them in different systems and they have no problems, so the HDD's are fine. The box will drop one drive, and then a couple minutes later drops a second drive bringing the RAID 5 down. I will need to pop the HDD's and reinsert them MULTIPLE times along with power cycling the unit a couple times and then eventually it'll successfully rebuild after 15 hours.
Luckily I have yet to lose data with all of these drops while I've been actively using the files on the RAID. But the frequency at which this happens and the inconsistency of the fix needed means I don't trust this unit beyond its abilities as a paperweight.

Rosewill support - don't bother responding. I've tried updating firmwares, drivers, the works and the issues still persist. And judging by the other reviewers on here I'm not the only one with the issue.

I bought this unit thinking it'd be a great cheap RAID 5 box. I've totally learned my lesson and will fork over the extra money for a real RAID box instead of continuing to deal with this paperweight.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer, Please contact the Rosewill support team either at 800-575-9885 or Email us at techsupport@rosewill.com so that we may further assist you. Thank you Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: I have no had a single positive experience with this unit, except for the Silicon Image BIOS flasher, which was conveniently built into the driver information page in the device manager.

Cons: Almost everything.

Other Thoughts: From day 1 this thing was a travesty to configure and set up. Getting the latest bios and drivers was a Herculean task - a newbie would have been lost even considering the idea - even if they found the download pages, there is practically no system of organization or an organized release structure that lets you know exactly what you need for your device and which are the latest versions. The Rosewill website is truly awful in this regard - the Silicon Image website was miles better but would still be confusing for somebody who just wanted the latest files.

The Silicon Image controller letting me flash a new bios from the driver page in device manager was nice, but this thing should have never been put on the market.

SATARAID 5 (the GUI RAID configurator) was clearly designed by chimpanzees, as nothing about it is useful or intuitive either. A day after my first RAID 5 configuration (5x 2TB drives) was finished initializing, 1 drive dropped out, then a second dropped out a few hours later. Rebooting brings the drive(s) back but of course SATARAID wants to re-initialize the thing, thereby rendering the unit practically useless. All 5 drives in the unit have been independently tested and thrashed in another machine using a specialized version of linux designed only to thrash a whole bunch of drives at once, report results and whether any died, and then power down. All drives were fine after a 72-hour thrash, with perfect health scores and throughput ratings. However, drives are randomly dropping out of this RAID unit. It's a different drive almost every time. I have tried swapping cables, swapping which port on the SI card the cable goes into, Ive tried it in another machine, a different version of windows, etc etc, and this unit consistently fails to provide a complete, healthy RAID 5 configuration for more than a few hours before dropping one or two drives.

Avoid at all costs.

I will be saving money for an Areca card and Areca enclosure instead. This will teach me for trying to save a few bucks.

I will be RMA'ing this through Newegg immediately for a full refund.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer, Please contact the Rosewill support team either via phone at 800-575-9885 or via email at techsupport@rosewill.com if you still need assistance. Thanks, Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Quick way to add 5 hard drives.

Cons: Drives disappear, slow down or stop during transfers.

Other Thoughts: I have had four of these for a couple of years now. They all worked fine with no issues. I am using a Syba 4 port esata card with PORT MULTIPLIER, (thats the key when selecting an alternate controller card). A power supply died on one of them, so I simply wanted to replace it. All kinds of trouble since putting this one in. Thinking drives were failing, I'm convinced it something to do with this unit. When I move drives into any of the other ones, no problems. I am past Newegg's return policy so, I might just gut this one for the power supply and put it into the one that did work with no issue. Rosewill RMA process is not exactly user friendly or well automated like many other companies. Maybe I just got a dud. Like I said above the rest of these units I own are just fine and have worked great with near 24/7 operation for weeks at a time.

2 eggs for a letdown on a product I found to be decent previously, and for a difficult RMA process by the manufacturer. Newegg has nothing to do with this, I simply waited too long to install this unit. At least I have a replacement power supply for the one that did work.

Pros: After two years, the unit is still working.

Cons: It's noise as I stated in my first review.

Other Thoughts: Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit. We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers. Please contact the Rosewill support team either via phone at 800-575-9885 or via email at techsupport@rosewill.com and I'm sure that we can assist you with this. However, please keep in mind that all electronics will make some kind of noise.
Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care
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Not All the electronics make noise like your product. I purchased "Mediasonic H82-SU3S2 3.5" Black USB3.0 & eSATA ProBox 8 Bay External Hard Drive Enclosure" from newegg. And to me, it's completely quiet when it's operating. The high pitch noise your product made isn't pleasant. For the reputation of your company, this is something need to be changed. I also don't believe it's hard to make a fix for it.

Pros: - Nice looking box
- easy to access trays
- well ventilated
- low price

Cons: Documentation in the box and what little is on the Rosewill website is poor, bordering on worthless. The design of this enclosure is also very poor; where to begin:

1. the status indicator lights cannot be seen when the door is shut. Truly, this is a minor issue. If there's a problem with the drive, I'm probably gonna know it before I check the lights.

2- the status indicator lights \cannot be seen from an angle more than 5 degrees above horizontal level with the drives. Translation, if you put the box anywhere lower than line-of-sight with the drives, you cannot see the lights.

3- The trays are cheap. The latch is really unintutitive and isn't really a tension/release latch at all, only an awkward handle to pull the drive out with.

4-the installation routine installs a very outdated version of java and doesn't function correctly without THAT version. Reinstalls ignore/overwrite any other Java version.

5- The quality of the included card is so bad it's stunning.

Other Thoughts: Review the drivers and control panel downloads on the Rosewill site carefully. Do NOT assume that the installer with correctly recognize your OS - it won't. Update the firmware from the Sil website.

Rosewill ought to be ashamed of this product; it is poorly conceived, poorly designed, and misrepresents both capability and compatibility in it's description. I would not suggest that anyone who is concerned about their data use this product. Both the hardware and software are outdated and very poorly implemented. I would return it, but the cost and headache of doing so outweighs any satisfaction I might gain. I'll just add a REAL raid card to it and move on. Can't say I'm very keen to make another Rosewill purchase.

Pros: You can stack 5 drives- great- they all come through one pipeline which reduces speed.

Cons: Troubleshooting a single drive is a crapshoot- this isnt natively windows 7 supported as advertised... I urge you to seek alternative routes as after a month I havent been able to keep this thing mounted for more then 3-4 hours without shutting down or crashing my computer. The raid card that is provided is trash as well.

Other Thoughts: This may be effective on an xp or vista system. I bought this with 4 256 Crucial M4's to create a 1TB SSD Stack for all my media- backing up regularly to an internal drive- still not working- bought a new raid card and the icy dock and called it a day.