Dual Bay Hard Drive RAID Enclosure with Cooling Fan for 2.5/3.5" SATA HDD/SSD with USB A/C 3.0 Cable, 3.5 Hard Drive Enclosure Support 40TB,4 RAID Modes,Tool-Free HDD Enclosure

Great price, easily configured, worked right out of the box. The fan is quiet and it needs no drivers. Will definitely buy this brand again if needed.

works great. I put two Seagate 8tb drives in the unit. They fit great. I set the switches on the back for raid 0, held the reset button for 5 seconds and my mini pc running openmediavault recognized it as a hardware raid unit and the setup from there was just the same as any other drives you might install into OMV. The unit is quiet and stays cool to the touch after running for 2 days.

I only turned this on about twice a month, to backup files. After about six months, had same issue as other reviewers. The original files/folders became inaccessible. So I decided to reboot and after the reboot the drives no longer formatted, showing as RAW. I had two 16TB drives with about 75% full. I want to vomit. Wish I heeded the warnings of the other 1 star reviews.*********IMPORTANT UPDATE************ Crazy how Amazon automatically "striked-through" my review directly to the seller after they randomly refunded me without message. I am leaving this message on this product page to help whomever I can. When I try to leave a review on another product from the seller, it literally states that I can not, because this seller/brand currently has an unusual amount of negative reviews and only verified purchasers can leave reviews. Please keep that in mind when reading the rest of this.Just making sure that everyone knows that this HDD Enclosure WILL eventually remove the partition/formatting of your hdd's. After it happening to me, months after the return window expired, I left a negative review about it, reported Cenmate to the Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission (even though they are not US based, but Amazon is), due to continuing to sell this product, even though they know about the severity of the defect. I messaged them directly asking them why they would knowingly jeopardize consumer's valuable information. When it comes to HDD/Storage, deleting all info can be absolutely devastating and almost always cause significant financial losses.A few hours after the message, I was just randomly provided credit, with no other message, confirming that they know about the issue and are still knowingly selling a product that destroys valuable data. I am expecting not only the recovery software to be reimbursed, but the HDD's as well, as there is no way of telling if permanent damage has been done to my drives.If you had same issue, please make sure to report to Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission.

Really came in handy for backup drives. Very easy to set up and use.

Packing was good.I've worked with several RAID enclosures over the years.Didn't expect this one to any different but I did read the instructions.Instructions were amateurish. Print was very small. Looked like a shrunk photocopy.But I had no trouble following them, or so I thought.My normal process for a new 2 bay RAID is format new drive 1st.I always use a recent model Startech because for whatever reason, it always creates drives other enclosures can read.I always format NTFS - 64KB and nowadays I usually buy the HST 'renewed' drives for around $75 on Amazon.The instructions explain how to use the trays. I've done so many, that part I didn't read carefully.With the 3.5HDD's, I had to snap off the vertical mini plastic pegs and adjust the horizontal locks. Easily done.Inserting the trays in the enclosure--not so easily done.The enclosure itself was not machined carefully. The upper shelf was not perfectly straight. I never use force when I install a new product. After 10-15 minutes of trying every which way to 'slide' the tray in, last resort was force. With forcel I got the tray in, snapped into place. The bottom try slid in normally.I say it's the enclosure because changing trays and changing HDD's around, the upper shelf always was way too snug. It is so snug, I cannot remove it like I normally remove a tray from an enclosure. I have to remove the other tray first so I can use 2 hands to remove it. Not a big deal now that I know the 'trick' to removing the 'snug' drive.After that I switched to mirroring, following the reset/power instructions. Nothing. Wasn't recognized.I've had this experience with an 'off' brand several years ago. I tried several combinations of powering on/off, resetting, etc. It's kind of fun if you have the time to play. I didn't have the time so it wasn't fun.Eventually, I got the unit recognized and guess what? Formatting was gone.There was something in the instructions about losing the data in the process of changing RAID settings.I formatted normally in the enclosure. No problem.I mirrored a 2TBSSD. Copy averaged 185MB/s. Very respectable.Last step was to turn it off. Remove a tray. Turn it back on. Verify the contents.Do the same thing for the 2nd tray.Confirmed both drives are identical.Next step (haven't done yet) is remove the disks from the trays and check the data using my 'bench' Startech. Many times in the past, (not so much now), different docking stations/enclosures format in their own quirky ways and you cant read a disk formatted on the quirky dock/enclosure on other docks/enclosures.If I dont update this post by 7/10/24, it means the CENMATE format is compatible with Startech--at 64KB.Edit 9/4/24It's been 2 months. I use Raid1. Used it on and off filling up an 8TB with data. Removed the drives. Checked them one by one. They were identical in every way. I bought two more refurbed HST 8TB drives. Put them into the CENMATE. It came up as 2 separate drives, not Raid1. I couldn't find my written instructions and I could not find them on line to see what I was missing. Instead, I held down the reset button and turned on the unit. Turned it off. Set the dipswitches to Raid 1. Turned it on. Came up Raid1. Formatted the drives. All is working fine.Like a lot of Chinese made products, they're not 'tuned' to US customer expectations. My expectations, even as a tech person, are if you set something, that's how it works. If you set the dipswitches to Raid1, you will still get no Raid at all unless you do some dancing. Dancing is where a lot of Chinese products are now. If you buy a quality Chinese product, which is my assessment of this one, it's still in the 'dance' stage of development. My advice is if you're a consumer that expects something to work as you'd expect it to work, dont buy this product. If you're willing to and able to 'dance', this is a great external bay and Raid1 product.Update 9/28/2024Question for the manufacturer...I usually use this product 3-4x a month. I copy a couple of TB at a time. I turn on the Cenmate, copy and turn off.When I took a 2 week trip earlier this month, I ejected the Cenmate but I forgot to turn it off. When I came back, it was busily writing something. I thought I'd caught it in some kind of self maintenance mode. But I left it on to see how long it took. It's 4 days later and it's still writing something. I shut it off. Turned it on and wrote another couple of TB yesterday. Came in this morning. Still writing. Question to the manufacturer is why does the Cenmate continue to write, literally forever, whether it's ejected or not? Good way to prematurely wear out a drive isn't it?

I've been using the Cenmate dual bay hard drive enclosure for a few days now, and I'm genuinely impressed. It's currently connected to a N100 mini PC running Debian 12 (Bookworm) as my media server. The enclosure performs flawlessly, reading my drives at full USB 3.0 speeds. The drives fit securely in the caddies, and the rubberized feet provide excellent stability, minimizing vibrations.This positive experience is a stark contrast to my previous purchase, the MAIWO dual bay enclosure, which I have since returned. Despite its promise of 10Gbps speeds and a sturdy appearance, it was a major disappointment. It only functioned correctly with USB 2.0 connections(40Mbps) and caused excessive vibrations, making it feel like a bad joke. After such a frustrating experience, I felt it was important to share this review for anyone with a similar setup actively looking for a dual bay enclosure.