MAIWOUSB-C 4 Bay HDD RAID Enclosure for 2.5" 3.5" SATA Drive with Cooling Fan, USB A-C 3.1 & C-C Cable Included, Supports Raid Normal,0,3,5,1/10,Clone/Large(jbod) & 96TB Capacity, DAS(NOT NAS)

I'm using all 4 slots with 2tb HDD's. The box configured for RAID 1 configured slots 1 & 2 as a 2tb drive, with drives 3 & 4 combined as a 2tb drive, then 1 & 2, 3 & 4 combined as a 4tb RAID 1 drive. So 1/2 = 2tb and 3/4 = 2tb, 1/2 + 3/4 = 4tb.

I got this for 4x drive RAID-5 and thought the price was amazing for a hardware raid controller and it still is.If you want a hardware RAID-5 and are perfectly fine with being limited to around 200MB/s transfer speed then you'll have no issue with this enclosure. Extra plus if you plan to take advantage of the HDMI interface on the enclosure. I guess some folks use a JBOD as a dock. This being a fancy JBOD with built-in hardware RAID, but with an unfortunate choice of an ancient controller chip.The problem is they built a new product using JMicron JMB393 controller, this chip was released in 2008 and the entire bus speed for all 4x drives will be limited to 3GB/s transfer speed. To be clear, this unit still supports SATA-III (3) drives because all SATA drives are backwards compatible with older SATA revisions.I was fooled by the USB-C interface, I believe the inventors of this device went with a Type-C interface for anyone who wants to connect their monitor through the enclosure... What I can't understand is why build a new product in 2022/2023 (design was likely done last year) and use a chip from 2008. When I first realized I was only getting 200MB/s (and before I saw/realized the specs/limitations on the JMicron controller) I set the jumpers into "Normal" mode and did a transfer test to each drive simultaneously thinking that the RAID-5 calculation was the speed issue... Then I started getting 50MB/s to each drive... I launched the trusty "USB Device Tree Viewer" to confirm I was getting the right speed values and sure enough I was getting "Device Connection Speed : SuperSpeed" which was the maximum speed available for the device. The manufacturer certainly wasn't cheap with cabling, the USB cables provided are of high quality and give a SuperSpeed connection effortlessly. I would also like to state that I purchased several "compatily LX23 40TB (Dual 20TB)" from the same vendor and am happy with that purchase. I'll be reviewing the LX23 40TB separately and will be giving 5 stars.

I had a power outage, when the power came back on thd unit was giving 4 quick beeps (very shrill & annoying), pausing, then again, over & over with no way to stop it aside from turning it off. I discovered one of the drive lights not blinking when read/writing (I have it in RAID5) so I replaced that drive. The beeping stopped & after a couple days the drive activity stopped which seems to, there's no actual information to say for sure, indicate the RAID5 has been rebuilt. Putting the failed drive in a PC directly I can see a handful of SMART warning, but no failures aside from the Helium levels. The drive formatted & functions properly even if not something that'd be "smart" to use.A couple weeks pass & now it's giving a DIFFERENT beep error code. This time a single long beep, a pause & a long beep again, with nothing I can find to tell me what those beep codes mean.I'm also suspicious that maybe the power failing while the unit was on may have caused the drive to fail as it had been working without issue for 8 months, then a power outage & there's a bunch of issues...

Very old design, avoid.

For a RAID array, this enclosure is nothing but screws and more screws, yet if a drive ever fails, it would be a chore to replace the drive. The enclosure has two fans, but I seriously doubt they make a difference because the drives are jam packed into as tight a space as possible with solid plastic mounts that likely don't promote air flow.The setup is easy, as it does what it says with jumpers and a reset button. HOWEVER, the claims for speed and SATAIII are misleading. The enclosure uses a 16 year old chipset that conforms to USB3.0, not 3.2 and transfer speeds are only 3.0 gbps and your drives are only in SATA II mode.Then there's the absolutely ambiguous HDMI port. WHY? What is the purpose of an HDMI port on a RAID array???Due to the poor air flow design, I'd bet drive failures would happen sooner than necessary.

Careful, this item is not as described and can NOT host 3.5" HDD, because internal connectors are for 2.5" drives only!!!I was too late to discover this, so now I cannot even get the refund and there goes my $150 down the drain. I hope at least to help another buyer to avoid making the same mistake.Also, I purchased a new item, but the box i got was opened before, the item itself was not even in plastic - instead it was very dusty.The item itself at first looks like a cute little thing. But when you look closer, you see it comes with a huge separate power adapter, so carrying around with that adapter hanging is not possible. It would be way more convenient if adapter was included inside chasis or a small outlet plug adapter.The handle itself is supposed to make it portable, but because nonportability (see above) is really of no use to me. Unfortunately it is not detachable so wherever you put the rack you will have to look at this handle sticking out.Design itself ... It's hard to tell which side is front and which is back. Portable devices should have certain switches and plugs in front and the rest on the back. This one has everything on one side.The 2 racks (each holds 2 drives) are screwed in with 6 tiny screws below. There is no easy way to replace or even just remove a single hard drive. They are packed in two, but you have to unscrew all those tiny screws first.After that here is nothing to grab and pull the racks with drives out, so you need to use gravity to get those racks out. If there's no drives inside even gravity doesn't help.