CENMATE Aluminum Dual Bay 10Gbps Hard Drive Enclosure with Cooling Fan for 2.5“/3.5" SATA HDD/SSD with USB A/C 3.2 Gen 2, Support Hot Swappable, Daisy Chain Expansion, Tool-Free, DAS(NO RAID/NAS)

I admittedly haven't had this DAS for long (at the time of writing this review), but I will keep this review in mind and edit it should any of the below change. I was running Ubuntu Server 24.04 with Frigate (Linux-based NVR software) at home, but as I added cameras over time, the old server was a little too weak. I moved the Ubuntu/Frigate install to a higher powered micro tower which solved the first set of problems, but of course I had no room for a 3.5" HDD for the video storage in the replacement system, which is where the Cenmate 2 bay unit comes into the picture. I have a single 6TB drive in it. It's USB'd right into my micro tower. Ubuntu mounts it via UUID on startup, and Frigate takes over recording footage to it without issue. So far, it's a very boring unit - which is exactly why I like it. I was concerned about throughput speeds, so for kicks I generated a bogus 10 GB file and transferred it from the onboard NVME SSD in the micro tower to the WD Purple within the Cenmate DAS. It sustained 170 MB/s transfer. According to random searches online, that WD Purple is expected to handle about 180-200 MB/s write speed, so seeing 170 MB/s sustained write made me pretty happy. I should note, I am not using the included USB cable. I read a few reviews that suggested the included USB cable is problematic for some folks, so I opted to use my own existing USB A/USB C cable from the get-go. Another concern I had was the behavior of the unit in the event that the power switch is left "on" but power is lost and then restored, as it's critical for my particular setup that the DAS simply always be on if power is available. I decided to test this right out of the gate, so once I unboxed the DAS, I put my HDD in it, flipped the power switch on, and then after that I plugged it into the wall outlet for the very first time. It lit up and I could feel the drive motor spinning up. I tested this in total 3-4 times, and each time it simply fired up the drive since the switch was set to "on" already. While this may seem like a "duh" thing, some different units I compared contained some reviews that suggested even if they had an explicit on/off toggle (like this Cenmate does), if power is lost, and then restored, some of these other units reportedly still required turning the switch off and then back on. This didn't seem to be the case with the Cenmate, which is great as this would have been an instant deal breaker where I would have returned it. In my setup, it's a requirement that if power is lost and then restored, that the DAS kick on automatically since the NVR micro tower is also simultaneously booting up which would be expecting the storage drive to be present to begin recording feeds. It was a relief to see that the Cenmate behaved as I hoped it would with auto-power-on after power is restored. I can't comment on using two drives in the unit as I haven't had a need to yet, but with a single drive it does the job well so far. It's simple, but I needed simple as well as predictability. Given I have an available bay open, it is tempting to pick up another matching HDD and doing some sort of Linux LVM group to span the two drives for more CCTV storage, but that's a project for another day. No issues with this relating to Linux. My Ubuntu Server install simply saw the drive when I ran "blkid", I added it as an automatic mount point, rebooted, and there it was - ready to be used. The jury is still out on long term reliability. For now, I rigged up a script on the Linux system using the Cenmate DAS along with my uptime monitor server which will check for the presence of the Cenmate/CCTV HDD every 5 minutes and email me if there's an issue. I'm hopeful this will reveal no surprises over time, but if it does, I'll update my review here. For now, it's serving my Linux/Frigate NVR micro tower just fine and ticks what few (but important) boxes I needed.

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!

This review is for the 2-Bay CENMATE Enclosure. So far works well enough. I just put it together an hour or so ago before writing this review. I will update the review eventually when I get proper mechanical HDDs in of higher capacities. I've placed a SAMSUNG 850 EVO 250GB 2.4 inch SATA SSD into the bottom caddy. There are two sets of screw bags, each have differently sized ridges in the screw portion under each screw head. The screws with smaller ridges are meant for screwing into the smaller 2.5 inch SATA SSD Drives. In order to mount the 2.5 inch drives, you must take off one of the blue "tool-less" holding mechanisms by prying it off at two points with a flat-head screw driver. In order to mount a 3.5 inch drive, you must bend back the blue "tool-less" holding mechanisms at the ends of the caddies. This clearly is meant for a person with three hands according to the picture in the manual, as it shows someone bending them back on both sides of the caddy while also putting in the hard drive at the same time (which is the intended way to do it.) I'd recommend bending back them a section at a time (EG: front first) then pushing in the drive forward. Or tilting it into the caddy sideways, bending back one side first, then the other. For people complaining that it disconnects. Please confirm the presence of the Red Light on each of the drive bays. This red light should be on at all times, indicating the drive is being connected to a device/system. If the red light goes out, the enclosure will eventually turn off the SATA controllers entirely to "save power." Once this happens, you must cycle the enclosure off then on again to make the drives appear again. This was my experience on Linux at least, since I don't use Windows. The drive bays and fan are powered regardless of which position the on/off switch is in, but it seems like the controller will only work properly while the power switch is in the on position. (The dash.) The enclosure's fan is pretty quiet as well, I've only noticed having sound when I tilt it to be on its ends to check the back connectors. Speaking of the back connectors. The USB-A port is the port you use to daisy chain to other enclosures, or to put a keyboard/mouse/etc. into. The USB-C port is what connects to the host system/computer.

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.

I think this is a great product. It seems very well constructed and includes everything you can think of. I am replacing my tower desktop that has multiple SATA hard drives, and purchased this device to attached similar drives (2TB and 8TB) via USB 3.2 instead of SATA. I was concerned about the speed of the device, but I did some benchmarking and the USB connected drives on the Canmate and MiniPC actually operated maybe 5 to 10% better than the similar SATA-mounted drives on the old desktop. The new MiniPC has a faster CPU, not sure how that affects disk benchmarking performance. So, being concerned about performance bottleneck on USB to the drives, is a non-issue. I also tested an SSD drive in the device, and all the scores were noticeably better than the HDD, except for the sequential writes actually dropped about 5%. I am using one drive for backups, so I think sequential right speeds are important, but the other is for scratch data where I think random read/writes are more likely. In otherwords, changing one drive to an SSD will most likely, but not always, offer me better performance. If I had to make one complaint, the fan can get a little loud. While initially setting it up, I had the fan facing me, and it was noticeably loud. Turning the device around to it's normal position helps, and being in an office environment helps drown it out. I suppose if I really wanted to I could upgrade the fan myself to a silent drive, but I don't want to void the warranty. Over all, I am pleased with the cost, construction, performance and operation of the device. It seems like a simple device, so I'm hoping that it will be lasting several years.

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.

I got this to hook up to a raspberry pi 4 that I have been using to store backups. Being able to daisy-chain enclosures is cool and what initially draw me to this enclosure. Unfortunately, it is going back. Anytime I try to setup a drive, I get errors. I thought maybe it was due to insufficient power because I was running the pi off of a poe+ hat, but after swapping out for a 20W power adapter, and various other troubleshooting steps, I've decided to return it. I suspect it is a lack of proper UASP support, but I'm not going to spend any more time trying to enable quirks mode because I would still be returning it if that was required. Besides the daisy-chaining featuer, I got this because it was cheap (relatively speaking). The build quality reflects that. It seems to work great for some people. It may be a raspberry pi thing. I have had a four bay Mediasonic USB 3.2 enclosure for several years that was been working flawlessly, though, so I'm going to get their larger eight bay model and return this one.

Great backup storage, for those with extra drives setting around. I love the easily removable bays, and how easy it is to add the drives. For full size drives, there is side rails that pressure fit into the side screw holes of the drives, taking just seconds to attach. For 2.5 drives, the rail closest to the drive needs to be removed, which is easy to do, as it just snaps off the drive bay, and then you use the included screws to attach drive to bay.. which is quick and easy to do. The drive bays inset and engage smoothly. The power adapter and usb cable are included. And love that there is on/off switch on back of chassis. I added drives, went into the Manage Function in "This Computer" in Windows - initialized drives and added drive letters - and voila - drives present and available. Unit works great, and file transfer speeds are adequate. AS for FAN NOISE - I saw reviews that complained about this - HOWEVER - on my unit fan noise was negligible, with the fans in my desktop computer being louder. Maybe mine features an upgraded fan, so for me I am very satisfied. Would buy again (and I have ordered the Raid ready model), and would recommend this unit.