Syba 5 Bay Tool Less Tray Hot Swappable 2.5" 3.5" SATA III RAID HDD External USB 3.0 Enclosure Windows MacOS SY-ENC50118

This is great value.As per other reviews here, I am astounded at the build quality and inclusions with this product. It comes with a couple of dozen little drive screws, which you would only need if you are installing 2.5 inch drives. And it comes with cables for both eSATA and USB 3.0, and they are not the usual short cables that come with drives - there is a little room to play here. I did not measure them but they are good. The POWER cord is only a couple of feet long, but it is a standard 3-prong IEC power cable! You can get one cheap anyplace you are, if you don't already have a couple of spares lying around.The RAID app is fun! I spent the day changing modes and testing speed. I've had RAID appliances before, but I'd never ever built a RAID, and it was pretty easy with the included software. I have to not that I used the software to set up my drives in it. I had an old Promise 6400 4-Bay enclosure from 2009 I think, and bay 4 was crapping out, so I took a chance on this Syba box to replace the failing Promise. I had the most recent 4x 5TB hard drives from that box, and a fifth 5TB drive I had as a spare, so in they went, and it's running fine on my Mac Mini 2012 running El Capitan. I am going in through eSATA into a Thunderbolt-to-eSATA dongle I had used with the Promise RAID. I'm currently running in RAID5. In every mode I was getting about 200MB/s up and down from this thing. It's a great box so far. If anything changes I will update this here review. Have a great day everyone!Update: a week into running this. The unit is fine, but the HW RAID Manager software for Mac now cannot see the enclosure, although the RAID volume does still mount perfectly on my desktop. I switched from eSATA to the USB connection to see if it helps, but it didn't change anything. I deleted the software management app as well as all of it's prefs and did a clean reinstall, and it still doesn't see the unit. It turned out that if I launch the application from my DOCK it won't see the drives, but if I launch the application from inside the Applications Folder the app operates correctly!! So do it that way, and all will be fine. The RAID Hardware is exceptionally well constructed, accessible, and runs very cool temperature-wise. I'm loving this thing!Update 2025: Still running great 5 years later. I've since bought 2 more of these. Love em so much!

Item is smaller than I expected. The item has weight and feels well built. Item comes with no instructions although the hard drive installation is straight forward.The trays install easily and lock into place. A firm pull is needed to remove a tray. The drive indicator lights on each tray are blue for power and red for activity with neither being too bright. On high setting I found the fan noise was not noticeable.The trays use a tool less design to install the hard drive. There are four pins on the side and one on the bottom that align with the screw holes on the hard drive. Be sure to align the pin on the bottom otherwise the hard drive will not fully fit into place.I performed file transfers of pictures to test the speed of the item. Speed is what you would expect from any external USB hard drive. In the 100+ MBS range for a single drive transfer. Multiple hard drive transfers divide this this total.To verify compatibility I installed four previously used hard drives in the enclosure. When the enclosure was powered on Windows 10 automatically recognized all the drives and all their original content was still accessible.I have since installed 4 new Toshiba X300 8TB drives and they worked flawlessly in the enclosure.

I have the new 8 disk USGB 3.2 DAS. It works well, but please note that in my testing, drives larger than 20TB will only read/write at 40 MB/second (USB 2.0). Smaller drives run at normal speed but for whatever reason larger drives cannot go faster. I've tried different trays, different ports, different cables, even different PC's all together. No matter what, my 22TB and 24TB drives flatline at exactly 40MB/sec. I think it's due to the DAS not providing enough power to the drive but that's just a guess. They do work but they are slow (and I'll admit the product description does not say it'll support the larger drives).I'll also say that the build quality is pretty decent as long as you don't plan on moving it around the house. The ability to individually power on/off each drive is awesome, you just remove right lick the "safely remove hardware and eject media" button and select the drive, and once it disappears you can power it down. Likewise, you can power it up at any time while Windows is loaded and it behaves just like you plugged a new external USB drive in.I've seen some complaints about the plastic tabs that hold the drives in the trays. I agree that they are not very sturdy and really hope the manufacturer will offer replacements should mine snap. I have found a trick that works well to get them to snap out without putting much stress on the plastic:On either end is a circle/dot to is for alignment rather than "snapping" in. Gently pull this back with either your thumb or a finger, and then the part that does snap in will easily release. Then repeat on the other side. Do not try to unsnap both ends at once - if you do this the two dots will both be out and both snap sections will be stuck to the caddy, bowing the plastic in the process.Also, as many others have said, the USB cable is hilariously short so if the DAS isn't right next to your computer, buy a decent cable (generally recommend 3ft or shorter unless absolutely necessary).Overall, I give it a 4/5. It does everything it says it would. I wish it'd handle larger drives at full speed but it never claimed to so I can't take a point off for that. The plastic tabs holding the drives are more of a concern long-term. The manufacturer should put a couple of extra tabs in the box as an unsecured drive could potentially have its pins permanently damaged when sliding the filled tray into the DAS. Also a slightly longer cable should be provided.