Installation

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It's funny, only after spending countless hours simply trying to get this product to function properly, I realized just how out of control things got at one point.  I stood up for a sec and took a picture.  The picture above requires no words to explain this ordeal!  I've setup a number of RAID arrays and have never encountered the problems I faced when first attempting to get this up and running.  At one point, I was up for almost 24hrs straight trying to find a solution.  Absolutely everything was checked and tested, including an install on both Vista Ultimate and MCE 2005. 

So, in the end, what the outcome of troubleshooting?  Very simple actually...one bad channel and one bad BIOS!  That is why I decided to dedicate a very large section of this review strictly on installation.  I will not only cover installation thoroughly, but also provide some very valuable tips to ensure you won't encounter a number of the issues I faced.  For those looking to setup this product, I strongly suggest you read this section thoroughly.  Also, I was very determined to get this setup up an running on a Vista HTPC.  There were quite a number of issues here as well and I'll elaborate on them.  Let's start with the hardware installation...

Hardware Install

The DS351 comes with everything you need to get up and running.  There are some nice combo power/SATA cables, an eSATA cable, some tie wraps and finally, a PCI-Ex1 to eSATA card that features the Sil3132 chipset.  Note though that you can indeed connect the DS351 directly to a motherboard with a built-in Sil3132 chipset.  In this case, you do not need the included card.  In our setup though, we will be using the card and will cover the issues faced when using it.

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For testing, I chose to use a total of four 500GB Samsung Spinpoint T Series drives.  These are excellent drives for HTPC use.  They are quiet, fast, high capacity drives that sport a large 16MB cache.

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The first thing you'll want to do is remove the large hard drive cage.  Note though that there are six large holes there for a reason.  They will allow you to remove the cage quite easily, provided you have a long enough screwdriver on hand.  If you don't, you'll definitely have difficulty removing it, particularly the three screws located on the front end of the enclosure.  There just isn't enough space to remove them any other way.  Have a long screwdriver handy!

Once you have removed the cage, you can start mounting your drives, each of which are held in place securely with six screws.  However, do not mount all drives at the same time.  Why?  Well, the DS351 allows you to monitor the temperature of each installed drive via the LCD on the front of the unit.  Start by flipping the cage over and mount the first two drives.  After they are mounted, take two of the temperature probes and tape them on the bottom side of the drive away from the circuit board.  Next, you'll want to attach the rest of the probes to your other drives prior to mounting them. 

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If installed properly, you should have them looking like the picture above.  The bottom of the drives face each other on the cage and is why I recommend you attach the temp probes as I have shown you here.  After you're done, turn the cage over and mount it back on the enclosure.  If installing the fifth supported drive, you can easily do so by remove the bracket on the rear end of the enclosure.  Only four drives can be mounted on the cage itself.

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The next step is to connect your drives to the internal board.  This is easy thanks to the cables provided, which combine power for one quick connection to your drives.  This kind of connection is quite nice because as most know, SATA cables don't usually provide a very snug fit.  The large connector that combines power does provide a very good connection and Silverstone provides all five of these excellent, high quality cables. 

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Connect the Molex plugs to each of the power connectors from its power supply.  Finally, connect the other end of the SATA cables to each of the ports on the internal board.  As a finishing touch, you can use the included tie wraps to secure all cables in place.  My suggestion is to secure them with three tie wraps onto the lower three holes on the drive cage as demonstrated in the picture above. 

Now, one of the two major issues I had with this product was the fact that one of the channels, SATA port 1, was faulty.  It took me forever to figure this out!  With that said, make sure you have a clean connection to each drive and that all drives are recognized every time you power the unit.  In my case, it would not always pick up the first drive due to the faulty connection.  This caused quite a number of issues, including multiple failed attempts at creating this large array.  It was only after careful inspection that I found that the status LED on channel one would not also remain on. 

However, this should definitely not discourage anyone.  This was a sample from Silverstone and their products are of the highest quality.  Although rare, these things do happen...unfortunately.  I just found out the hard way with this install.  In fact, after contacting them regarding the outcome of the issues I encountered, they assured me that with the DS351, they do test each PCB before assembling them into the aluminum case and then test a second time to make sure it correctly interfaces with all five hard drives connected.  Coming from a company with such a high reputation for quality, I seriously do not doubt this one bit.  Thankfully though, the DS351 does have five available channels and the four drives used for testing were connected to SATA ports 2-5.

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If your motherboard does not have a supported Silicon Image RAID chipset, the final step is to open up your HTPC and install the included SATA card to your PCI-Express X1 slot and connect your PC to the DS351 using the included eSATA cable.

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I highly recommend you keep the enclosure open and power it up along with your HTPC.  If everything is working properly, you should see a red LED for power, red LED's for each hard drive you have connected and a green LED for activity.  If you do not see all, then you have a connection problem and you'll want to find the source of the problem.  After what I went through, I do highly recommend you do this to ensure that everything is functioning properly.  For example, if one of the red channel LED's goes off on you, then chances are you have a connectivity issue with that particular drive or channel. 

The DS351 is one very unique product and primarily designed for a home theater environment.  It will blend in quite nicely and a majority won't be able to distinguish it from any other standard A/V component. 

Next: Installation Continued