14 DAY TRIAL // Although Addonics Technologies definitely isn't a household name, the company develops a wide array of storage solutions, one of their most interesting products being the Multi-Media Tower, a compact multi-drive enclosure that can accommodate a wide series of storage devices and connects them all to your computer via a single eSATA port.
Available in two models, the Multi-Media Tower is compatible with a wide series of operating systems, Addonics stating that “only” a port multiplier compatible eSATA port is required in order to connect this to your desktop or notebook computer.
Compared to regular eSATA ports, that allow only for point-to-point connections, port multiplier eSATA ports function in a manner similar to that of a USB hub, enabling users to connect up to 15 drives at a time, the bandwidth available being split between all these disks.
No special driver or any additional software is required in order to get the Multi-Media Tower to work, as data stored on different media can be opened by any application or drag-and-dropped to different storage drives.
This functionality is retained for both modles, although the Multi-Media Tower Deluxe is limited to supporting four 3.5" SATA hard drives and one DVD-RRW drive.
On the other side, the Multi-Media Tower Pro comes with dual 3.5" SATA hard drive bays, a Blu-Ray player and DVD+/-R/RW combo optical drive, a built-in micro SATA reader, which supports any micro SATA hard drive or SSD and CFast card, as well as an on-board flash memory reader compatible with 15 different popular digital media formats.
For both of these units, the maximum transfer rate is set at 300 MB/sec, although this depends on the speed of the media and the number of drives in use.
As far as pricing is concerned, the Multi-Media Tower Deluxe is available for $415, while the feature rich Pro version comes at $525.