Question Are there any good USB RAID enclosures?

[Genralkidd]

I've been trying to find a good USB 3.0 RAID enclosure for my 2 laptop HDD's. Wanted to turn them into 1 big RAID 0 drive with 1.5 TB of storage however every enclosure I've seen out there has pretty bad reviews. The first one i tried, a Hornetek model kept disconnecting and eventually wouldn't even be recognized as plugged. The 2nd one, a Glotrends model, worked fine at first with only the occasional periods of time where it would also keep disconnecting and reconnecting but then today when I tried reconnecting it, the drive wouldn't read anymore and I'd get an error saying it's corrupted and unreadable now. So I'm assuming total loss of data in this case but I'd still like to try again with an external USB RAID dirve. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good and reliable USB RAID enclosure?

 

[DSzymborski]

Let's start at the beginning: why? There are very few reasons for a consumer to actually want to use RAID0. For the average consumer, RAID0 increases complexity and performance only in benchmarks and in return, greatly increases the risk of losing all your data. And in those rare situations where a RAID setup is actually warranted, you really want a proper setup with a dedicated RAID controller.

For 99 out of 100 reasons someone that someone talks about RAID and the issue isn't an enterprise server, there are better, more practical solutions. Making two consumer-grade, slow laptop hard drives look like a single hard drive is not that one reason out of 100.

 

[Genralkidd]

Let's start at the beginning: why? There are very few reasons for a consumer to actually want to use RAID0. For the average consumer, RAID0 increases complexity and performance only in benchmarks and in return, greatly increases the risk of losing all your data. And in those rare situations where a RAID setup is actually warranted, you really want a proper setup with a dedicated RAID controller.

For 99 out of 100 reasons someone that someone talks about RAID and the issue isn't an enterprise server, there are better, more practical solutions. Making two consumer-grade, slow laptop hard drives look like a single hard drive is not that one reason out of 100.

It wasn't out of necessity or anything. I simply had 2 spare unused 750 GB laptop drives that I wanted to get some use out of so rather than buy another external hard drive, I figured I'd re-use the two in a RAID 0 configuration to install some games onto and move non essential files to as well. The PC I'm using it on is an Intel Skull Canyon NUC so I don't think a dedicated RAID controller is an option for me hence why I opted for a USB RAID enclosure.

 

[DSzymborski]

It wasn't out of necessity or anything. I simply had 2 spare unused 750 GB laptop drives that I wanted to get some use out of so rather than buy another external hard drive, I figured I'd re-use the two in a RAID 0 configuration to install some games onto and move non essential files to as well. The PC I'm using it on is an Intel Skull Canyon NUC so I don't think a dedicated RAID controller is an option for me hence why I opted for a USB RAID enclosure.

Playing games off slow laptop drives hooked up by USB in RAID0 would not be a pleasant experience. The main use for a setup like this would be external backup, but for that purpose, you'd be far better simply using software to schedule nightly backup to the two hard drives in a regular ol' two-port dock that this needless complexity.

 

[Genralkidd]

Playing games off slow laptop drives hooked up by USB in RAID0 would not be a pleasant experience. The main use for a setup like this would be external backup, but for that purpose, you'd be far better simply using software to schedule nightly backup to the two hard drives in a regular ol' two-port dock that this needless complexity.

The drives are actually 7200 RPM SSHD's so they're not too bad. I'm actually only keeping older less demanding games on then so I can free up more space on my SSD for the more important games. So is there no good USB RAID enclosure then that's reliable enough for simple backup of less important stuff? I don't mind the risk of data loss as long as the enclosure if reliable.

 

[DSzymborski]

The drives are actually 7200 RPM SSHD's so they're not too bad. I'm actually only keeping older less demanding games on then so I can free up more space on my SSD for the more important games. So is there no good USB RAID enclosure then that's reliable enough for simple backup of less important stuff? I don't mind the risk of data loss as long as the enclosure if reliable.

I've seen people have good results with https://www.amazon.com/Akitio-NT2-U31C/dp/B079STYXDT.

But again, I'm not recommending any of this as a practical use of RAID. For the price, you could get a 1 TB SSD and an enclosure and still have $75 left over. This is a solution in search of a problem.

 

[Genralkidd]

I've seen people have good results with https://www.amazon.com/Akitio-NT2-U31C/dp/B079STYXDT.

But again, I'm not recommending any of this as a practical use of RAID. For the price, you could get a 1 TB SSD and an enclosure and still have $75 left over. This is a solution in search of a problem.

Hmm yeah you're right, at that price I could even just buy two 1 TB external HDD's from a best buy and still have a bit left over as well. That's unfortunate since I was hoping for a cheap easy solution. I'll look into those dual drive bays you mentioned though, are there any compact enclosures for those that you might recommend as well?

 

[USAFRet]

I have a 4 bay MediaSonic box. $100.
https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4

But as 4 individual drives, not any RAID situation.

They also do a RAID capable box:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KY73BNQ

But please don't do that without really good reasons, and other backup routines.

And at $180, that is only marginally less than 2x 1TB SSD drives.