Enhance Technology introduces a new storage that can accommodate up to four (4) bays of 2.5" drives supporting SAS, SATA and SSD drives and is ideal for space saving, power consumption and of course performance.

Enhance Technology introduces a new storage that can accommodate up to four (4) bays of 2.5" drives supporting SAS, SATA and SSD drives and is ideal for space saving, power consumption and of course performance.

	Company:Enhance Technology, Inc. Model: QuadraPack X14 Author: Alemax Date: 04-07-2010

Introduction:

It’s always interesting to analyze new product’s performance, capacity, convenience and cooling. We received a remarkable product, the QuadraPack X14 from Enhance Technology, which basically allows to accommodate small sized disks (such as SSD) to form a RAID system by providing comfort to the user at the time of installation and further handling them. In addition, the box is made by environment care.
further handling them. In addition, the box is made by environment care.
La caja en cuestión se suma al cuidado del medio ambiente (dadas sus características).

Once we open the box, we find the QuadraPack X14 well protected at the ends (to avoid bruising during transport) where security keys are attached, screws and of course the corresponding manual.
Better, but also more free: … well protected (to avoid damages during transport) and security keys, screws and the corresponding user manual attached.

It presents the dimensions of 5.25" (like common readers) with acceptable terms of quality since it contains a solid steel-based construction.

Now, why would I use this unit? There are several alternatives such as its use for server purposes, editing audio or video, mass storage with performance (RAID), among other things.

In the front, it contains four (4) bays of 2.5" SAS, SATA and SSD drives allowing easy transport and safe protection. Each bay has a "Security Key Lock" or a security key for protection and LED activity indicators. The blue button allows to eject the tray smoothly as shown in the image, which is a simple and practical way.

There are two (2) fans of 40 x 100 mm located in the back in order to cool the system without affecting too much the degree of human hearing. In the center there are two (2) power connectors (molex) essential for the functioning of the disks and of course the data ports (4x SATA and 4x SAS). If we are having some doubts about the connections, it is explained easily what each connectors is used for.

We remove all four bays without any problems in order to show the structure of QuadraPack X14.

Undoubtedly the 2.5" trays are of excellent construction, very solid and well established. They do not allow any type of unwanted vibration since the restraint system seems quite effective (with screws).

Installation:

To test the product, we get four (4) SATA Seagate Momentus 5400.6 of 250GB which will give us a total of 1 terabyte storage, enough to house information, and other HD movies for some time.

We put each SATA hard drive into the trays and tighten the screws of each tray, the process is easy and safe, just have to be careful not to hit the disks. Then proceed to put them in their place of origin, I must admit that it is a bit difficult to get the discs fitting with the SATA ports of X14 since the trays don´t fit properly in the first attempt. Finally, after ascertaining the performance of each disk we can proceed to configure the RAID.

Operation and Development of RAID configuration

SATA cables are available for the system but must be purchased separately; however we employ our own cables to test the unit and to reach a successful installation, appreciating the blue LEDs showing that the disks are initializing.

Very good, let’s proceed to configure RAID on a motherboard with X58 chipset (Intel) identifying correctly the four (4) hard drives.

We did some modifications to the configuration indicating the name, level of RAID (RAID0 because we are interested in performance) and capacity, selecting the maximum capacity available (more than 900 GB). Once the process was finished, we went to the operating system.

Technical Specifications:

MODEL	X14
Form Factor	5.25"
Disk Interface	Serial Attached SCSI
Host Interface(Available I/O)	8 SAS channels (Primary + Secondary)
System Fan	4CM Ball Bailing fan x 2
Fan Air Flow	5.4 CFM per fan
Fan Speed	4000 RPM
Fan Noise Level	21dB
Dimensions (L x W x H)	176mm" x 146mm" x 42mm"
Internal Cable/s	optional
Power	Standard 4-pin x2

Evaluation:
To evaluate the product we will use the 64-bit of Windows 7 by informational programs and test the performance through a series of specific programs in order to harvest information and make a final conclusion about its operation in general.

When we entered the Windows 7, we looed for the name of the volume we created in the device manager, which is Raid_Volume.

We format the full capacity (NTFS) as a unit R. With no doubt, it’s impressive the number especially taking into account the level of RAID.

The test machine is formed as follows:


	Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition
	MSI X58 Pro
	Corsair DDR3 1600 MHz 6GB Kit Triple Channel
	Seagate 320Gb SATA2 HDD
	WD SATA2 HDD 1600AABS
	Source Powercool PS-1050HE de 1050W ATX PS

Informational Programs:


	HDTune

Synthetic Tests:


	HDTach
	HDTune
	ATTO Disk Benchmark
	Crystal Mark

Test Copy/ Writing:


	FC-Test- Creating files
	FC-Test- Copy (Read-Write-Remove)
	FC-Test- Read

Informational Programs:

HD Tune

At the beginning, we start to reap information to the disks where the program indicates the features supported. It is good to have alternatives to choose from when assembling a storage configuration because it would be ideal to get SSD discs if we look to improve performance by over-capacity, however the cost is still very high in Latin America to get SSD.

Synthetic Tests:

HDTach

We achieve interesting values of performance where the average of reading is located around 206.1 MB/s although the search result is somewhat higher of 20.1 ms. On the other hand, the Burst Speed reaches 300 MB/s being an extremely attractive value.

If we compare with other configurations, our system with SATA drives is positioned competitively in the chart below determined SSD disks and not far from Velociraptors RAID0.

Here, the velociraptors takes the lead but QuadraPack X14 is in the second place.

HDTune

Here, in the performance segment, the transfer values has an average of 188 MB/s, however, the access time is high (17.8 ms) which creates some uncertainty in this aspect.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Both reading and writing have outstanding results (in different sizes from 64 MB to 1024 MB) showing a great potential at least using this program. There’s no doubt to make better use of X14 and is ideal to form configurations RAID for the performance.

Crystal Mark

Here we observe the behavior of the disks working together in read-write sequentially and in blocks (small 512K and 4K). These results are very good, especially in writing surpassing even in this last stretch to SSD (which is due to architectural limitations).

Test Copy/ Writing:
Finally we turn to actual tests to analyze how the system plays in creating, reading and deleting files of different sizes.

FC-Test- Creating files

Through the FC test program, we created directly in the partition or volume R 414 files of installation thus delaying 1.48 seconds compared to a traditional disk that shows a huge difference.

We also created, with greater capacity, three ISO image files (1.7 GB total) delaying 12.23 seconds, being another gratifying value.

FC-Test - Copy (Read-Write-Remove)

If we read, write and delete is a demanding job for disks, however, through 414 files, we perform these tasks consuming a time of almost 5 seconds! Really perfect.

FC-Test- Read

For FC test read, the time is 0.21 seconds away from crashing to a standard solution. Clearly the QuadraPack X14 uses the advantages that can provide 2.5" drives.

Conclusion:

Enhance Technology has worked with major companies such as Fujitsu, Hitachi and Seagate with the aim of providing the user with a useful and durable product for the transport of data with 2.5" drives. The QuadraPack X14 features a robust construction that can accommodate up to 4 drives of SAS, SATA or SSD allowing RAID configurations (if the motherboard supports it) to achieve a bulky capacity, excellent levels of performance as demonstrated in most sections of the article.

In addition of providing security (through the Security Locker key) and status of the disks (blue LEDs), the X14 reduces the space facilitating the manipulation thereof and fulfilling a proper role in the cooling issue by including a dual-fan solution to remove the heat that can be generated internally.

The creation of QuadraPack X14 has its foundation and it does help with the tasks of user / client and is undoubtedly a recommended product.

Strengths:


	5.25” bay (which allows the installation of four bays of 2.5").
	Solid construction.
	Supports SAS, SATA and SSD.
	Contains individual security keys as operating indicator LEDs.
	Contains Dual-Fan Cooling 40 x 100 mm.
	Ideal to carry 2.5 "drives.

Weaknesses:


	It is difficult to fit discs into the tray of QuadraPack X14 in the first attempts.