I currently have the files that will be going onto my readynas on 4tb Western Digital drives enclosed in CRU DX115 bays, my question is can I use the E-sata port on the readynas with my drive bay (self powered, has e-sata connection) to load content onto the nas or is it strictly for the expansion bays? i'm assuming loading in via e-sata will be faster than via USB (I also have a usb dock if e-sata can't be used)
If your drives are on a caddy and is self-powered (or has its own PSU) then connecting it to the ReadyNAS via e-SATA cable should be fine. Kindly test it and let us know what happens.
USB-3 and eSATA are about the same speed, and (assuming NTFS or FAT32) both are much slower than loading the content from a PC over a gigabit ethernet connection.
