Syba SY-ENC35028 USB 3.0 Dual 3.5" SATA Drive RAID Enclosure, Black

This is a great value for a RAID system. The fan is a little noisy and always on, even if the hard drives are not in use. Other than that, it works great.

I bought two of these from two different sellers. One seemed to work better than the other, hit and miss with this Chinese stuff I guess. The RAID "BIG" mode (disk spanning) didn't work at all, shows no drives and PC doesn't recognize the enclosure is even plugged in while in that mode. The fans in these are LOUD! It sounds like it has no bearings in it at all, pushes no air and is essentially useless. Build quality seems ok for the price, thick aluminum housing. Your drives will run HOT HOT HOT in this enclosure: My 3TB Hitachi ran at 98-102'F and my Seagate 6TB ran at 114-119'F under load. Other enclosure with drives was similar, between 95'F and 111'F. Ambient temp is kept between 62-68'F where these were located. The supplied AC Adapter doesn't seem powerful enough for two 3.5" drives. BE CAREFUL WITH BITLOCKER ENCRYPTED DRIVES IN THESE ENCLOSURES!!! Power randomly cuts out and can cause a BitLocker drive to be in a bad lock state, showing up with an "unknown" file system when it's powered back on. You'll end up needing to recover using the Bitlocker Recovery Tool (a command-line tool which can be daunting to those not familiar with using a terminal or command-prompt), or reformat and start over losing ALL your data on the drive. This just happened to 2 of my drives while in these enclosures, one of which is recovering right now and will likely take days due to its size, the other (luckily) was mostly empty and didn't have anything important on it, so I just reformatted it. As a result, I am returning both of these enclosures, just too risky. UPDATE: It did the random "power flicker" with 2x 2TB drives, and corrupted the partitions. If you value your data, DO NOT BUY THESE! Your mileage may vary, but you get what you pay for.

This raid enclosure works well and is easy enough for someone with no real computer knowledge to set up. The only issue is that the fan is extremely noisy. I milled out the slots in the front and back to provide better airflow but the fan is still very loud. Still worth the price if you're a tinkerer and are willing to modify it to either replace the fan or add a larger fan for better cooling as I plan to do.

This is Awesome!!! I installed two SSD's in a RAID 0 to run my virtual machines on. I have been using this now for several months and wanted to wait to write a review. Awesome!!!(Update) - Still going strong 2 years later. Thought was really put into the design of this device. Easy to swap out drives. After configuring, the device manager will show the drive as Big or RAID0 pending on what you choose, in case you need to make sure you select the correct settings. For optimal performance, enable write caching on the drive.

I bought two units of this product.The second I had to return because it was reformatting the two WD 4TB drives I had in it on an occasional basis. I guess it could not quite handle the drive size.In the first one I had a WD 1TB drive + a SG 1TB drive. The unit was technically working as it should. However, the fan has a high sound (noise) level. Almost like a model airplane. I have had it for like 8 months but now I have bought a new different enclosure (Archgon/HornetTek). The fan noise became too much in the end.

The price was right, cheaper than the other similar enclosure that has had pretty poor reviews recently.I put two 250 gig drives in it and it fired right up, built the RAID 1 configuration and it was ready to go.ButAs others have noted, the cooling fan is a joke. It's way too small and terribly noisy. It screams like a banshee and moves almost no air. That fan is rubbish. And the cooling slots in the case are way too small to allow any useful air flow as well.SoI did what a few others have done. I took the box apart, opened up the cooling slots on the front, cut a hole for a larger fan and mounted it externally on the rear. I also mounted it so it blows air into the box from the back. That way the circuit board gets room temperature air which then moves over the drives and out the enlarged slots in the front.I can feel a significant amount of air coming out the front vents. The first test after this modification was to copy 150 gig of data to it using a USB 2.0 port on my computer. It took about an hour and 15 minutes and the air coming out the front was just barely warm and the case was not even warm to the touch. That tells me the fan is doing a good job. Before the modifications, you could not feel any air moving and the case got quiet warm to the touch.Picture #1 is my fan choices from a drawer in the shop. The left one is the junk 1" original. The middle one is a 1.5" and the right is a 2". I decided to go for broke and used the biggest one.Pic #2 shows the front slots before cutting. You can see a very thin line of light through them. They are VERY small.Pic #3 is the same slots after enlarging. Probably 4 or 5 times as large. They are not pretty. I did it free hand with a Dremel tool. Ugly but functional.Pic #4 is a rear view of the cabinet before modification. I cut out most of the plastic with a pair of diagonal cutters to avoid covering the circuit board with plastic dust.Pic #5 is the hole in the back for the big fan. Again, super ugly.Pic #6 shows the gap between the fan and the curved back plate. I closed the gap with RTV.Pic #7 is an inside view of the back plate with the new fan mounted.Pic #8 is the finished front.Pic #9 the finished back.ConclusionAfter the cooling modifications to the case I can give the electronic performance of the device 5 stars. It works very well and runs very quietly.I'm happy with it. If the manufacturer would make the same design changes that individual owners have made, it would rate 5 stars from everyone.For those of you who don't have the option of butchering the case to make it right, I can't give you a recommendation for an alternative device. The other RAID enclosure option available from Amazon at around $40 is getting bad reviews for actual electronic reliability.What you could do is remove the back, unplug the fan, remove the case sleeve and put the back plate back on leaving the fan unplugged. Set the unit on its side so both drives are exposed to room air circulating by convection and let it run like that. By not putting the assembly back into the sleeve, the exposed drives can at least radiate heat to the room air. It'll be quiet and the drives will run cool enough. Not an ideal solution, but it'll work.