[AV_Integrated]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817198044

Would like to drop 2 (or more?) of these directly onto my Dune Base 3.0. Was wondering if anyone has done this or had any experience doing this. I know SATA won't allow it, but can I do this with USB 2.0?

I would really like to hear the experience that people have actually had if at all possible.

Also, would it be possible to format this NTSF so that I can hang it directly off my PC for transferring, then going back to the Dune directly? This is not at all critical, but I have a lot of files to transfer.

Any experience with OTHER Icy Dock products with the Dune?

Not really a network question, but not a lot of solid information in the Dune section.

[AV_Integrated]

Well, I went ahead and ordered an Icy Dock. I have used now my My Book World edition 2TB NAS box to store some DVDs on, and they seem to be okay. Not sure how quick they really are or if when I go to my GB network it will help speed, but I do want all storage local to the Dune so I've got 3 2TB hard drives coming and a Icy Dock which will be here next week.

Things are about to get interesting in my setup. I expect that I have about 4TB of Blu-rays and about 3TB of DVDs, so with 8 TB of local storage, I should have the basics of my current collection covered. It'll take about another 1-2 months to get the collection moved, but I will provide updates as I find things out.

2 TB (Samsung) hard drives: $79 (newegg)
4 bay Icy Dock: $199 (newegg)

So, under $600 for 8TB in storage. If it is as quick and smooth - or close - to the internal hard drive, I will be extremely happy.

[JFlo]

Clicked the wrong button but whatever haha.. Please post back how it goes as I also have been looking at icy dock products.

[AV_Integrated]

Just a quick update as I haven't loaded anything to the drives yet and am still running some experiments, but I put 3 Samsung 2TB hard drives into the Icy Dock that I purchased.

They were on sale, so $80 a drive from NewEgg and another $180 for the Icy Dock.

The Icy Dock is well built, but the drive trays were a bit flimsy without the drive actually loaded into them. Not a big deal, and the drives went onto them easily. One I mistakenly put on upside down, so I had to correct that (easy) but just be aware that it's easy to mess that part up if you aren't paying attention.

The three drives slid right into the chassis, locked in place, no issue.

I then used the supplied USB 2.0 cable and connected it to the Dune Base 3.0 and plugged it in.

It took a couple of minutes for the Dune to recognize the drives, but they showed up on the main interface of the Dune without me having to do anything at all. They were just 'there'.

I had NOT formatted the drives and when I went to the drives on the Dune they were not browsable. The Dune indicated that they likely were not formatted and asked if I would like to format them as EXT2. I said "Yes" and it let me know that it would erase all data from the drives. This was fine, so I confirmed that I wanted to do this.

It took about 8 minutes per drive to format to EXT2 and I had to repeat the same steps for each drive.

It gave me some funky long file name, as Dune likes to do, which I just renamed to something much shorter after asking a few questions here:
http://www.mpcclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26017

What I have NOT done yet...

I have not loaded any files onto the new drives yet, but will likely do so tonite. This means I have not verified clean BD ISO playback from these drives and have not seen the speed of them in use.

I keep my player in another room so I have no idea (or care) how loud the Icy Dock is, but there is some fan noise from the included fan for sure. This may matter a great deal for those using it in the same room and you may want to upgrade to a much better fan.

I will follow up with performance while in use, and I am going to consider doing a reformat on my PC so that they can be in NTFS format instead of EXT2 so if I stop using the Dune and want to keep using the drives I can just run hang them off a new player that uses NTFS easily as this is more of a industry standard.

[AV_Integrated]

Update - March 28th, 2011 - I've now been using the IcyDock with the Dune Base 3.0 unit for a couple of months and have had solid results. I have 3 Samsung 2TB hard drives installed currently using Dune's normal formatting of the drive. I have no played back Blu-ray files from the drives, but I have hundreds of TV shows and a couple hundred DVDs on the drives so far all of which have been playing back without issue.

I have one more Samsung drive which I will likely format to NTFS and see if I can figure out a local hot-swap dock from IcyDock that I can use with my PC, then swap it back into the Dune's IcyDock unit.

I don't have the Dune in the same room as I watch TV in, so any noise from the IcyDock I have not noticed.

So far so good, and I'm happy with it.

[sgargilli]

AV_integrated thanks for your feedback.
Just a couple of question.
Did you connected the dune using the usb port and can you watch video material flawlessly?
If using e-sata port it doesn’t works?

[AV_Integrated]

I have connected it via USB. My understanding is that because the Dune doesn't support port replicating via eSATA, that it won't work that way. So, I have it setup using USB directly.

I have no issues when using it this way and have now been running it for a few months. My biggest concern is that it is not a RAID setup at all, but 4 independent discs.

I expect I may get a Drobo (or similar) unit with 5 drives in it to maintain 8TB of storage but add the redundancy that I want/need/demand for my collection.

As for the Icy Dock - It truly has been simple to use as a USB drive bay. New drives are added to the Dune, the Dune sees them, I had a folders.txt file to rename the drive to something nice, and I have about 5 or so TB already filled up on it. No playback issues to note. I've strictly been running DVDs (ISO, full copies) on the IcyDock - I have not yet put a full blown Blu-ray onto one of the drives to see how playback is... I know I need to do this at some point.

[AV_Integrated]

August 18, 2011 - Follow up.

Nothing really but good news.

The Icy Dock is still performing flawlessly with my Dune Base 3.0 unit. I have thousands of TV episodes and hundreds of movies on it which I watch daily and my family is actually fighting over who gets to use it.

Because of this, the Icy Dock is probably going away in favor of a RAID solution. I'm really scared to lose my significant amount of unprotected data from it, so I suppose the Icy Dock may be relegated to something else or go via eBay.

I picked up a RAIDON - which is horrible. I will write a review on that in a bit.
I then got a Thecus N4100PRO which is fantastic so far. Review in that section.

The Icy Dock and Thecus both work well with the Dune, but the Thecus is a network raid unit so I can use it with mulitple Dunes (in theory) and enjoy my collection.

I'm overall very satisfied with the Icy Dock which I've been using, but the lack of redundancy, for that much data, is just scary. It's certainly the easiest setup I've ever used, and I'm very glad I've had that experience. But, it's all about how good the hard drives are, and that's just not worth my fear of losing a lot of data.