CENMATE Aluminum 2 Bay 10Gbps HDD Enclosure with Cooling Fan for 2.5“/3.5" SATA HDD/SSD with USB A/C 3.2 Gen 2, Support Hot Swappable, Tool-Free Hard Drive Enclosure

If you can hear the fan you have bigger problems to worry about. While aged and wearing hearing aids I need to be within 3 feet of the enclosure to hear the fan. The only negative I have is there isn't really a "labeling" space since on the front there are two pinch points to release the drive and a cooling mesh. Installation was a breeze - durable construction, compatible with Linux mint. Supports USB 3.0 so expect decent speeds.

This unit lives up to and exceeds what it promises. I added two hard drives and after plugging into my computer and the power, it provides instant access to two more drive letters and a bunch of extra storage. It works just like an internally installed hard drive and is a very quiet unit which provides zero distractions. I really love this unit and depend on it daily for my added storage.

My wife shoot pictures in raw format. That burns up A LOT of hard drive space fast. And, she is on a laptop. Soo, I got her this with two 8 terabite HDD and there is peace in the valley. Only complant is that the noise level is a tad more then the laptop fan. Love the hotswap ability.

It's a nice little enclosure, solid feeling and weighty. The fan is not loud at all to me, but my environment isn't quiet like a library. There are other fans alreay going in this office so one more isn't making a difference. I tested the included USB-C to USB-C cable using Crystaldiskmark and a 2.5" Samsung SSD and found that it was slower than my own cable (one I had on hand) by about 30%. So if you're going to use an SSD, you'll need to get a better cable. For spinning hard drives the included cable is faster than the hard drives so the included cable is adequate. Though it's too early to say how long it will work, it's build and simplicity do inspire confidence and so far I'm happy with this enclosure.

I don't write reviews, but I'm doing so in this case, in hopes that I'll can help someone make an informed decision based on a review of this product that wasn't generated as an advertisement for the product. I searched extensively for a 2 bay enclosure with USB-C connectivity. I did not need or particularly want a Raid enclosure. This unit kept popping up in searches, and even though it had very few reviews, most were positive, and it was fairly well priced for what it was, so I took a chance. Don't make the same mistake. This unit is loud! The fan runs constantly regardless of the state of the connected drives, and it make a high pitched whine that could drive dogs insane for miles. The "tool less trays" are abysmally cheap plastic and the mechanism for securing drives in the tray is extremely difficult to remove, making hot swapping disks, which this unit advertises, a painful process. Do not buy this unless you have a sound isolated closet to put it into and you don't expect to actually ever remove the drives from the trays. There have to be better options out there.

I admittedly haven't had this DAS for long (at the time of writing this review), but I will keep this review in mind and edit it should any of the below change. I was running Ubuntu Server 24.04 with Frigate (Linux-based NVR software) at home, but as I added cameras over time, the old server was a little too weak. I moved the Ubuntu/Frigate install to a higher powered micro tower which solved the first set of problems, but of course I had no room for a 3.5" HDD for the video storage in the replacement system, which is where the Cenmate 2 bay unit comes into the picture. I have a single 6TB drive in it. It's USB'd right into my micro tower. Ubuntu mounts it via UUID on startup, and Frigate takes over recording footage to it without issue. So far, it's a very boring unit - which is exactly why I like it. I was concerned about throughput speeds, so for kicks I generated a bogus 10 GB file and transferred it from the onboard NVME SSD in the micro tower to the WD Purple within the Cenmate DAS. It sustained 170 MB/s transfer. According to random searches online, that WD Purple is expected to handle about 180-200 MB/s write speed, so seeing 170 MB/s sustained write made me pretty happy. I should note, I am not using the included USB cable. I read a few reviews that suggested the included USB cable is problematic for some folks, so I opted to use my own existing USB A/USB C cable from the get-go. Another concern I had was the behavior of the unit in the event that the power switch is left "on" but power is lost and then restored, as it's critical for my particular setup that the DAS simply always be on if power is available. I decided to test this right out of the gate, so once I unboxed the DAS, I put my HDD in it, flipped the power switch on, and then after that I plugged it into the wall outlet for the very first time. It lit up and I could feel the drive motor spinning up. I tested this in total 3-4 times, and each time it simply fired up the drive since the switch was set to "on" already. While this may seem like a "duh" thing, some different units I compared contained some reviews that suggested even if they had an explicit on/off toggle (like this Cenmate does), if power is lost, and then restored, some of these other units reportedly still required turning the switch off and then back on. This didn't seem to be the case with the Cenmate, which is great as this would have been an instant deal breaker where I would have returned it. In my setup, it's a requirement that if power is lost and then restored, that the DAS kick on automatically since the NVR micro tower is also simultaneously booting up which would be expecting the storage drive to be present to begin recording feeds. It was a relief to see that the Cenmate behaved as I hoped it would with auto-power-on after power is restored. I can't comment on using two drives in the unit as I haven't had a need to yet, but with a single drive it does the job well so far. It's simple, but I needed simple as well as predictability. Given I have an available bay open, it is tempting to pick up another matching HDD and doing some sort of Linux LVM group to span the two drives for more CCTV storage, but that's a project for another day. No issues with this relating to Linux. My Ubuntu Server install simply saw the drive when I ran "blkid", I added it as an automatic mount point, rebooted, and there it was - ready to be used. The jury is still out on long term reliability. For now, I rigged up a script on the Linux system using the Cenmate DAS along with my uptime monitor server which will check for the presence of the Cenmate/CCTV HDD every 5 minutes and email me if there's an issue. I'm hopeful this will reveal no surprises over time, but if it does, I'll update my review here. For now, it's serving my Linux/Frigate NVR micro tower just fine and ticks what few (but important) boxes I needed.

It is as described by seller however, the cooling system is GARBAGE and my hard drives both hit over 52 celsius within about 30 minutes of first use just sitting there idle. one drive went over 54C and started clicking a lot which if you know anything about computers is very BAD. Unless you plan to use only SATA SSD drives or just need QUICK external access to a mechanical hard drive to grab a small file i would not buy this, instead spend a little more for a better quality brand that has a sufficient cooling system. This has one tiny 5v fan attempting to push air IN from the back rather then PULL heat out which will never work. its probably about a 5-10 CFM fan at best.

This works if you do not expect RAID or Storage Spaces. Both drives are displayed with the same ID, so they can't be addressed separately by mirroring software. It works fine as a drive array for two separate disks. It's quiet and we've had no issues with transfer speed or reliability.

case valido, comoda anche l'estrazione di un singolo hd

Works perfect, have a 1tb and 16tb drive in it. Have mounted it upside down under the desk.

It was delivered to Australia with a plug that is not compatible with Australian electrical outlets. I have contacted the seller and wait for their response.

Excellent boitier, la qualité est au rendez vous. Le boitier est en aluminium (ou équivalent métallique en tout cas), ce qui lui donne une bonne rigidité. Les tiroirs en plastique coulissent bien, le système de verrouillage est bien pensé, efficace. Les ventilateurs sont très bruyants, je les ai enlevé. En ayant acheté 2 boitiers, je les ai superposés et confectionné un caisson avec un ventilateur de 120mm qui rend le refroidissement "silencieux". Les ventilateurs d'origine sont le seul souci. Côté perfs, je monte à 310mo/s débit max de mon disques le plus rapide. Le WD red Pro 4to plafonne à 220mo/s, limite technique du disque également. Acheté il y a env 1ans, je pense que le boitier est un bon investissement. Acheté x2 pour que le serveur gère les 2 boitiers avec 2 contrôleur USB 4 indépendant. Je craignais une perte de perf avec un boitier de 4 disques (ou +) et des accès sur les 4 disques indépendamment, géré par 1 seul contrôleur USB.

good