MAIWO Hard Drive RAID Enclosure Dual Bay for 2.5 Inch SATA SSD HDD, USB 3.0 6Gbps with UASP, RAID 0/1/JBOD/PM, 16TB Capacity, External Hard Drive Case Reader Aluminum

I don't have a need for another RAID unit per-se. But I've accumulated lots of laptop hard drives over the years. Seemed wasteful to just toss them. So what do I do with them? I use this unit in large drive mode, and use old drives as scratch space. Like temporary quick storage for media files on the go. Large mode means that you get 1 big drive. 1TB + 250GB drives get you a virtual 1.25TB drive with this unit. I just run the drives until one of them finally dies. Figure out which one is bad, get rid of it, reset, reformat and keep going. It just works. And I feel like I'm not wasting old hardware.

Raid is something I MUST have and this case does exactly what I need it to do. It's been in play for a couple months now and I use Veeam Agent to backup daily. I actually tested the mirror raid by removing one drive and it worked seamlessly. The all metal casing is sturdy and well made. For this price I think I got a fantastic product.

I was hoping to build a work device that was faster than a RAID-0 external hard disk pair. I wanted to set up two SSDs in RAID-0 configuration. I was surprised that it isn't faster than other modes at all. You can see that the listing looking at drive speed tests. I ultimately decided to use "Normal" mode, which is even faster than RAID-0 for reading and writing. Pros: Good price Small size Beautiful case Cons: RAID-0 is a joke speedwise Secondary power cable? I'm running SSDs and tried running from the power from the data cable and that seems to work just fine. So far, I think it's quite a bargain even though the RAID-0 just barely works.

Please do not buy. I worked with two of these "raid0" drives for over a week. The simple instructions do not work. The reset button seems meaning less. The system boots up with either all three blue LEDs on or sometimes with only the "Large" mode. No matter where you place the small white switches the reset button has no effect. By separately formatting the two drives on a different system then placing them back in this system you have some hope on a power cycle to get it to "raid0" mode. The system seems to work for a short time. Once you power off/on you have to start all over. The system seems to once again forget what mode your are in. It starts up often in the "Large" mode even though the switches are set for the "raid0" mode. Re-format the drives is needed to start over again. Once again the system seems to work for a short time, but eventually fails to mount the drives. Windows returns an error that "the device is not ready". Disk Manager just shows the system as "unknown" with no disk size displayed. The system also has a "raid1" mode, which seems to be impossible to ever select. As an added feature, I do not know why, but it jams any local wireless mouse hookups. This was tested on two different PC system. I have tried this disk drive unit with both unformatted and formatted drives with similar results. All 4 disks that I used for testing were New. All disks were the same size and same name brand. Just a follow up. Please do not buy these. Once I got them running I left them powered on continuously to see how long they would last. Both of the drive enclosures lasted only 4 months. Both apparently have burnt out the same way. No indicator LED, disk appear to be spinning but no response. Both appear dead.

Gave it a 4 instead of 5 in quality of material because I wish it had a cooling fan. THE THING TO KNOW ABOUT RAID is that after you set the DIP switches, press the RESET button for 3-5 seconds - may take multiple times before your RAID setting stays lit. I have a 1.92 TB and 2.0 TB - both SSDs - running off iMac 2015. With the raid connected directly to the computer, I had only 140 or so GB/S throughput. When I connected it to my Thunderbolt 2 dock, I am at 300+ GB/S up and down speed. I checked both disks before I converted to raid. Interesting thing, both hard drives were 400+ GB/S up and down when connected straight to the computer with a SATA cable. Final note - I put three layers of thermal tape to the SSDs to help transfer heat to the case, and I will probably put a couple of heat sinks on the outside just to help. I have transferred more than 100 GB so far and haven't noticed any heating issues.

<update> I've forgotten that these DYI enclosures have lead to tears. I was looking forward to happily using my 4tb drives and forgot the bad of the past. The faster drives with the enclosure had my Mac warning me "Disk Not Ejected Properly" see attached. It ejected itself, and seemed to corrupt the contents, both in "Large" and "Normal" modes. It seemed intent on going to sleep would be my guess. No dashboard, so I'm not sure. Returned. I've ordered an assembled WD 2GB drive and will be using it. Cost the same as these 2 enclosures. </update> Sadly Drobo Inc (or their parent company) has failed me the dashboard hasn't been updated for MacOS Ventura, so I'm moving on, Beyond RAID or Beyond DROBO (hehe). I'm not sure if I need a RAID. I'm moving my User Folder off of the internal drive on one of these units using the 4X1TB drives from the Drobo. in Large mode. And will have 4TB on 2 drives for backups. I have an existing drive. Playing around with the switch settings last night left me with nothing that would mount, the instructions are hard to read and unusable. I went to bed. This morning they both work (after resetting them). RAID 0 doesn't seem to work for me (see screenshots Raid 0 on the left) perhaps I need to buy faster drives. Opened box, nice presentation tray with enclosure wrapped in plastic. Remove plastic and "Sled" falls out of "Tube". Lift plastic tray and there's a lot of stuff, 4 screws (2 long, 2 short), UBS 3 cable (Data) USB 2 cable (data), and 2 screwdrivers. Bagged nicely. Popped drives in "Sled" plugged used long screws to stabilize drives (1 each), into Mac received "disk unreadable" error (good), put "Sled" in "Tube", put screws in, plugged in and formatted. Good: Inexpensive and fits what I want. Solid box when installed, easy assembly. Metal on outside. Bad: "Sled" is plastic, DIP switches seem fragile, be careful. Not quite sure how to reset drives, but I have them in Large Mode, which is what I wanted. LEDs flicker when you eject the disk, but stay on after, so you're not sure if they are unmounted. No feet on drive. I'll add some. LEDs don't tell you drive is sleeping. Bad documentation. YMMV: LEDs are not too bright, but can't seem them on the shelf under my desk(where they will live, vertical). When not sleeping , they run warm. Don't know if my user folder will allow it to sleep. Satisfied.

Bought the 10Gb/s version (K25272C) to go with the Mac Mini M4. Getting practically the same speed as connecting the SSDs via internal SATA (500+ MB/s) on a PC. (Obviously you can't get more speed than what SATA is rated for.) Have been using it for a few days without turning it off and did not encounter any random disconnect. No issue with thermal as well. (I believe 2.5" SSDs don't really get hot to start with).

I can only assume the previous reviewers are the type if people that buy something and are happy if it works. Does this "work?" Yes. But it does not work well. It does not transfer anywhere close to as it should, and I have to say this is garbage tier hardware. I was planning on installing my Steam library on 2x4 samsung 4tb SSDs, but it cant even seem to make it through one game install without clapping out and needing to be unplugged and plugged back in. The sustained data transfer is such that the device really isn't an upgrade from my existing WD Red 14tb in an external case

Includes screws and a few appropriate screwdrivers to install the SSDs. In 'normal' mode it appears as two disks. Under linux I partitioned them, assembled a raid mirror , formatted them then mounted them. Just a few minutes. JMicron JMS551 bridge in the box.

Easy to install & setup using the dip switches - make sure to turn the enclosure off/on after setting the switches to make sure the change takes effect. I installed 2 X 1tb hard drives in RAID 1. The only thing I noticed is that it gets quite hot as there is no active cooling.

These work great . I am only useing them in the Normal setting to use small drives. I have hooked up the option power and unhooked it. In normal mode there is no diffrence and get 100+ transfir rate to another usb-3 spinning rust ext drive.Very well thought out case.

Bought two to expand my old hard drives, very easy to config and high performance.

works well.