Aluminum 4 Bay 10Gbps Hard Drive Enclosure with Cooling Fan for 2 5 3 5 SATA HDD SSD

This is a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) device which means you can plug it directly into a desktop or laptop and the computer will see each hard drive in this just like it would if you had installed it into the computer. Because this uses the fastest USB version (at the time I purchased anyway) the transfer rates are even faster than what my old computer was via internal SATA connections. Either way I'm using mine on a laptop with 4 drives for a Plex server and its working excellent and can load and play 4K files from the 7200 RPM drives I have it in which my other computer wasn't capable of doing and only worked correctly on SSD drives. The huge storage capability of this made it a no brainer for my plex server and because there are no screws required for the drives to be installed that was super easy. I was a bit concerned about the noise level that people had mentioned in other reviews. In my case I put this in my office where it stays on 24/7 and its no different than having my other computer running fan noise wise. So you can hear it running but its nothing I would call loud. If you prefer silence though it might be best to put it in a room you aren't in constantly or maybe in a further back area of the room not as close to you. But it is absolutely not loud, just a low fan noise and doesn't bother me at all and I sit about 5 feet away. Setting this up was about as easy as it could possibly be. I just connected it to power and to the laptop with USB-C, popped my drives (WITH DATA on them still) out of my old computer and put them into this enclosure with no tools required, slid the sleds back in one at a time and they started showing up on the computer within seconds. IF you buy a brand new drive do the same thing but then go to Disk Management and initialize the drive and assign drive letter/etc. and you'll be good to go in no time! Read more

Well priced for what it is, I’ve had no issues with the noise level and had no problem installing the HDDs. Works perfectly with Unraid out of the box. HDD speeds are as expected, functions as a JBOD via USB. Fits 3.5in HDDs nicely. Read more

Well built. trays release and insert smoothly. Noise is not unusually loud. Monster power supply. All cables you need. Existing drives immediately recognized with letter. Unchanged. With two drives installed temperature is fine. With policy set to quick removal, data transfer speed is limited only by the hdds, not the interface. The only complaint issue is that unlike many usb peripherals, it does not turn off and on with the computer. Power on-off is controller only by the rocker switch on the back. An extra step and it limits placement to where I can conveniently reach that switch. Or I leave it running all the time. I don't see this in the specifications one way or the other. Read more

I don’t usually leave reviews but I wanted to give a bit of warning on this. It is entirely possible I got a bad unit and all others are fine but here is the scenario: Purchased as DAS for Plex Server. Very nice build quality for the price. The lights are fun and it feels solid. Not a huge fan of the plastic clips to hold the drives (especially in my case when I had to swap 3 drives, which I’ll get to). The more you take off and remove the plastic clips the more likely they are going to bend and break. Had the unit for about a month with 2 14TB seagate exos. During the first couple weeks I’d have intermittent drop outs where the drives would eject from windows 11. Drivepool would notify me a missing drive occurred. Restart. G2G. After a couple weeks one drive ejected and completely self wiped. All data loss. I chocked this up to bad drives (purchased refurb although had only been using for 1 month as purchased same time as DAS unit). Ran some tests on drive to verify however drive kept ejecting. Decided it was a dud and replaced via warranty (thanks GoHardDrive, you da best). Waited for replacement and also ordered a 3rd drive with duplication in mind in case this happened again. Placed all 3 drives in (all same 14 TB seagate). Began replacing data and duplicating. Within one week the original drive (not the new 3rd or the replacement drive) ejected and self wiped. Ok. That’s crazy. I’ve heard folks get duds in refurb but usually it’s one or two for every ten. Not 2 for 2. At that point I decided to replace this unit with what I originally wanted to get which was a Terramaster D4-320. Booted up. Began the duplication and data gathering process again. Immediately noticed not only a better speed but also not one drop out (and I was riding these drives hard with quite a bit of data movement and duping all at once). The D4 is louder than the CENMATE, however it seems to be a much better product. Also as a side note all of these results were with the same computer and same USB c to a cable. Again, could have just been a bad unit, and hopefully it doesn’t happen to anyone else. Read more