Newegg has a few combos of Sans Digital TR4M 4 Bay SATA to eSATA Port Multiplier JBOD Enclosure + various Hard Drives from as low as $145 with free shipping. Thanks proro1974

Next lowest on Google Products for the Sand Digital TR4M alone (not including the hard drive) is $141 shipped AC (mwave).
Google Products price comparison for the various Hard Drives starts at $90 shipped for the Seagate 1TB and go up from there, so the least you could pay for any of these combos if purchased separately from another store is $231.

• Sans Digital TR4M + 1TB WD Caviar Green WD10EADS Internal Hard Drive $145
• Sans Digital TR4M + 1.5TB WD Caviar Green WD15EADS Internal Hard Drive $170
• Sans Digital TR4M + 1TB Seagate Barracuda ST31000528AS Internal Hard Drive $150
• Sans Digital TR4M + 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS Hard Drive $170

This is an amazing deal! Normally, the enclosure itself goes for $150 (I bought one a few weeks ago from Amazon for around $155, which was the best price at the time), so you're basically getting a free hard drive!

Note that this works great with the Acer Easystore H340 Windows Home Server -- just plug in to the esata port and you've expanded it to 8 drive bays (no need to install the esata PCI card included with the TR4M).

This seems like a pretty good deal. What kind of reputation does this brand have? I see this is near the cheapest at Newegg, so is it high quality? I only intend to use it with my HP media server, so the RAID functionality isn't important for me.

Also, I know it isn't important, but is there a similar deal in black (a white one will stand out amongst my other equipment).

I have the 5 disk version of this and i love it.

That being said please note the following things:

1) The enclosure comes with a PCI-E 1x card that NEEDS to be installed in your computer, unless you have a PORT MULTIPLIER eSATA slot. most computers do not come with a port multiplier esata, they come with normal esata. This is basically to allow 4 (up to 5 per esata cable) harddrives to operate over 1 sata cable. This will impact performance if you are trying to raid or something. which brings up point 2.

EDIT: This one does not have raid as i first thought, JBOD ONLY, so this point is moot.
2) This item has raid, but I would STRONGLY suggest not using it. See point 1, and there have been a lot of reports about raid having to rebuild itself whenever windows does not have a healthy shutdown. I recommend this only for storing all of you pr0n and "other" large files.

3) This item is not very portable. you need to bring the pcie card with you if you want to bring it to a friends house...

4) WD green drives are slow. Not that slow, i stream 13 gig 1080p movies off of a WD 1TB green drive wihtout any performance problems. The drives are cool which is good in a enclosure like this that does not have advanced cooling solutions in it.

All in all, I love it. I have it plugged into my HTPC and have never had any issues with it. It is almost silent (did not add any noise to current ambient levels), and I have never had any performance problems. I have not used its raid features nor will i ever. RAID should only be used if you have fast drives inside your computer. Dont bother using raid for backup. just copy files periodically to a backup disk.

Good find OP.

wow. great deal. just picked up one with the 1.5g Green drive for my Mediasmart EX470. Too bad the combo wasn't valid on the black one.

Quote from myrlin : I have the 5 disk version of this and i love it. That being said please note the following things: ... 4) WD green drives are slow. Not that slow, i stream 13 gig 1080p movies off of a WD 1TB green drive wihtout any performance problems. The drives are cool which is good in a enclosure like this that does not have advanced cooling solutions in it. ...

Is that for the WD EADS model drive that you've had experience with? I've heard that there's a significant performance difference between the EADS models and the previous versions. All in all great info.

not so hot on the reviews... but good price cobmos nonetheless

Array rebuild after each host shutdown? That's a fail. This enclosure actually gets pretty darn poor reviews online...

Great price with the drives though--go with the WD drives!!!

hmm.. not FP yet? i already ordered 4

Does seem like a nice deal! The quality and actual functions of this device seem questionable - based on all the reviews there...I'm tempted, but not convinced. Seems hot. If it wasn't PCI-Ex1, I would get one for my FreeNAS Machine...which has an old MOBO, so I can't connect this.

Quote from Adnan01 : hmm.. not FP yet? i already ordered 4

in for 1 for mediasmart server, FP material to be sure.

Quote from oddsoul : Is that for the WD EADS model drive that you've had experience with? I've heard that there's a significant performance difference between the EADS models and the previous versions. All in all great info.

I have the Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA

AGHH, always stings when you check your newegg invoice history. 6 months ago, I paid $287 for

* 1 x Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
* 1 x SANS DIGITAL TR5M-B 5 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD / RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5 Enclosure (Black) - Retail

Also, Running in WinXP Pro

EDIT: I just reread product description, this drive does not have raid, it is JBOD ONLY - JUST a BUNCH OF DISKS, which is all something like this should be used for anyways. There is not a cheaper solution out there really that can store all that data outside of your case.