Installing HDDs into the trays — while not tool-less — was easy enough and the drives felt secure. Ease of setup rapidly degraded from this point onward, however. First, there was no identifying model number printed anywhere on the enclosure and no manual provided. In fact, the only support provided was a mini-CD with PDF files and installation guides for the entire iStar product line. This made matching the product with the installation guide a pictorial matching game. Eventually I tracked down the correct installation guide via e-mail by an iStar rep. The setup guide instructed me slide out all the drives, set the RAID level, and with the unit turned on slowly insert the drive trays one at a time until prompted to build a RAID on the LCD menu. On the third try I successfully got the disk to read and begin initializing. Initializing a RAID is a process that rarely takes more than a minute or two, so you can imagine my surprise when I returned three hours later to find the enclosure still initializing. The total time required to initialize a four-disk RAID comprised of 750GB Western Digital Sata II drives was nearly six hours. I consulted with Matt Jeppsen, who surmised that some sort of write-read disk check must be the culprit. A quick call to the iStar technicians confirmed this. Now the strength of a low-level disk check is that the unit actually verifies each storage sector of the disk as good, so in theory it is more secure for your data. The downside however is obvious; six hours is a lot of time to wait for a RAID to initialize, particularly if the disks in use are known to be reliable. IStar technicians confirmed that there is no way to turn the disk check option off.

Once the RAID was initialized, OS X read up and initialized the disk easily, simply prompting me to format it. Now it was time for the real test, speed and performance. I used AJA’s System Test utility. Under the best possible conditions, RAID 0 over an eSata connection, the four-drive array achieved 65.4MB/s average read speeds and 76.3 MB/s average write speeds. Comparatively, a single internal MacPro Sata II drive averaged read speeds of 68.9MB/s and write speeds of 69.6MB/s.

In conclusion, I found this enclosure needlessly difficult to setup and configure. Drive performance was significantly less than expected from a four-drive RAID running SATA II drives. The array initialization process was inexcusably long, and could not be disabled. I believe most users can find enclosures offering higher performance and simpler configuration for a lower investment. The bottom line is that the iAG420UFE, much like a U.S. Congressman, seems like a good idea on the surface. But, like many elected officials, it is hard to work with, needlessly expensive, and performance is inefficient.

iStarUSA 4-Bay RAID Enclosure

www. istarusa.com/vtmd

$1,113.99

DV Score:

Pros:
Multiple interface options, and on board RAID controller, hot swappable.

Cons:
Pricey, mediocre performance, setup and user interface leave a lot to be desired, long initialization process.

Bottom Line:
Not a best buy.