The Edge10 DAS 501t
This morning, I took delivery of an Edge10 DAS 501t storage box. It’s an external eSATA box with room for 5 drives, running with a port multiplier. Thus, it only needs a single eSATA connector to join all 5 drives to the host machine.
Coming out of the box, it feels well-built. The front door of the unit is black ABS, which clicks shut. It has little flex in it, and probably won’t fly off the hinges if given an accidental knock. The tray locks pop open and click closed with a satisfying heavy click. The trays themselves are just your usual computer-case mild steel, but don’t flex much, and they slide out of the case smoothly, probably helped by the plastic runners on the right-hand side of each tray.
The back of the unit has a large fan grating (the whole width of the case – a 120mm fan), a miniature (40mm) fan grating for the on-board PSU, a 3-pin “kettle-lead” power socket, and a single eSATA socket. Also in the box are a power cord, a 1xPCI-E 2-port eSATA board, with both normal and low-profile backplates provided, a single eSATA cable, a driver CD, and a large bag of mounting screws.
Sadly, the box was totally dead when it arrived. It showed no flicker of life when I plugged it in and pressed the power button. Fortunately, the guys at CCI Distribution (Freecom’s UK support people, who also ship these devices), and tech support at Edge10 were all friendly and helpful, and I will be returning it for a replacement as soon as the RMA label comes through. It’s a shame, because it feels like a really solid piece of kit.
I’ll report more when I get to play with a working one. :)