UnBox 19 – the RAID

I came home from work at my usual late hour and found a big box on my doorstep. Aha! The folks at Micronet finally came through with an evaluation unit of their neat new 4-drive RAID array!

Here’s the box as photographed on my patio:

I opened the first set of flaps and found a second box:

I opened the top of the next box and saw a foam top which I moved aside, and then saw the drives.

Here’s a better view of the drives.

I also realized I should take the inner box out of the outer box to more easily deal with the contents.

I pulled the drive layer out of the box. The drives were securely mounted in a piece of foam packing, and wrapped in antistatic bags. I looked inside one of them and found the fine folks at Micronet already mounted the Western Digital 500 GB drives to the hot-swappable drive mounting plate, saving me a fair amount of time needed to put this together. When I pulled the drive layer out, I found the second layer with the actual RAIDBank4 enclosure, also securely mounted to a piece of foam.

Next, I pulled everything out and took inventory. 4 drives? Check. RAIDBank4 enclosure? Check. Baggie with USB, eSATA, CAT5 ethernet, and power cables? Check. Baggie with CD, quick start guide, and other paperwork? Check. Antistatic baggie with the eSATA RAID5 host controller PCI-X card? Check.

All in all, the unit and its pieces were well-packed and well-protected. Even if the proverbial American Tourister gorilla got his hands on this box, it would likely emerge unscathed.

www.micronet.com
Price: $999

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