Areca ARC-4036 6Gb/s SAS/SATA JBOD Enclosure Review – Unboxing

We received the unit in a plain box, and on opening it, we found this very sturdy box packed inside which, of course, contained the unit.On opening the box, we were greeted with bubble wrap and air packs to cover the top items as you see here; the power cord, manual, screws and connectors.The unit itself was packed perfectly, well encased in thick sheets of Styrofoam packaging, and the device itself was wrapped thoroughly in an anti-static bag.Once unwrapped, the first thing that caught our attention was the excellent construction of the unit. It is somewhat heavy at around 15lbs, and very sturdy. All of the components that comprised the unit itself were well manufactured. There are large rubber feet that supply excellent gripping to the surface that the unit is placed on. The finish is an attractive beige and silver color scheme. You can see the two status indicator lights along the right side of the drive trays, and we will get into that a bit more later in the review.

A quick check of each individual tray was certainly in order. Each tray slides in and out easily and is obviously machined to very precise, exacting standards. There is enough room for them to slide freely, yet they are certainly on a very “tight” track in order to keep them lined up with the internal ports that the devices will connect into.

On some lower quality devices that we have encountered, an excessive amount of “play” in the trays can result in loose connections for the devices. This also unfortunately leads, more often than not, to chipped and broken connectors on the devices themselves. This is definitely not an issue with this enclosure and every single device that was inserted was snug and perfectly aligned. Definitely a nice job by the engineers, and the assemblers! We tested with numerous SSDs, HDDs and even EFD (Enterprise Flash Devices) that follow several form factors. Not one had an issue and all were a breeze to install. Feel free to click the picture below for closer inspection.

NEXT:  INTERNALS

~ INTRODUCTION ~ CONCEPTS AND USAGE ~

~ UNBOXING ~ INTERNALS ~ CONNECTIVITY OPTIONS ~ CONNECTING DRIVES ~

~ ENCLOSURE MANAGEMENT ~ TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL ~

~  SANDISK LIGHTNING RESULTS ~ PATRIOT WILDFIRE RESULTS ~

~ CONCLUSION ~

JOIN THE DISCUSSION IN OUR FORUMS!