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.

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.

I bought this on August 20, 2024. It seemed to work great until about February 2025. One day both drives showed up as raw. I did everything known to man to try to recover the data. I was able to recover some, but most of the most useful info was gone. I checked the drives, both drives are in perfect shape, no bad sectors. They're excellent drives made for NAS. I reformatted them. Put data back on them. It happened again. And again and again and again. It will either go RAW, or unformatted.UPDATE: The company sent me a full refund even though it was way past return date. Good that they did that so I don't feel like I wasted money on it. But, I still need to build my data back up. That just takes time.

I have my media library on this and access it via Plex media server running on a Pi4 by USB.No complaints at all. Set up was easy. I did have one hiccup regarding the RAID config, but I solved it quickly and don't even remember what it was. Would buy again if I had to.

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'm pleasantly surprised with the build quality on this, knowing how much sellers on Amazon love to upcharge even the most cheaply built products. The aluminum housing feels sturdy, and the feet on it are super grippy and adequately prevent the bay from vibrating around when the drives are spinning. The indicator lights are an odd choice, as a red light just means the drive is spinning and not necessarily that something is wrong. The fan is not super loud.I immediately switched the unit to RAID 1 and tossed in two WD Red Plus 10TB drives; within 30 seconds of power on and USB connection the drives were showing as one volume within Disk Management. The data transfer speed is as-advertised, and I appreciate the USB-C to -A adapter they stuck on the end of the included cable. I will update this review in the future if I encounter problems, but so far so good. I hear you can get these even cheaper on Ebay from time to time. :)

I had to pull some hdds from my tower because I upgraded to nvmes, which i guess takes power from sata lines (that was a surprise) so I ordered this thing. I've gotten enclosures before and usually they are a pain to set up, basically like putting it into a tower with fiddily sata cables and all that. but this thing you just plop the drive in the drawer of the device, and slide it in. no wires, no muss. just works. Thinking of grabbing another one and a few more HDDs just because they are so cheap. Thanks..uhh cenmate. whatever that is. lol.