SilverStone SST-TS231U-C - USB 3.1 Gen2 External Hard Drive Enclosure 2 Bay Raid Storage, for 3.5 Inch SATA HDD or SSD, black

I back up my PCs regularly and was looking for a quick and easy to use external dual dock.Although expensive in comparison to some, this was the only dual dock that I found that has the USB 3.1 (Gen 2) 10 Gb/s transfer rate.The dock is solidly built, tool-free (a must for me), looks smart and to date (I've had it about 6 months at the time of writing) performs flawlessly.The power adapter (mine is rated at 110-240v) came with a British plug. Connecting the dock to the PC was easy and upon plugging the USB C cable in Windows 10 recognized the dock and set it up automatically, with no driver disk needed.Note that the USB 3.1 type C cable supplied at 12" is quite short, and I purchased a longer 3' cable. At the time I bought the USB Type C Cable [USB-IF Certified] , CHOETECH [10Gbps] USB 3.1 Gen 2 USB C to USB C Cable (3.3ft) [with E-marker & PD] for 2017/2016 MacBook Pro, MacBook 2015/2016, Google Pixel/Pixel XL, etc, although there are probably cheaper options now.3.5" HDD insertion is very straightforward and easy, although you need to take care with the smaller 2.5" HDDs as they need to be lined up correctly and carefully.I haven't formally checked the speed, but with two disks inserted and copying large files to both HDDs simultaneously, it didn't stutter and felt very much faster than my old USB 2.0 dock.I've only tried the clone functionality twice, but it performed flawlessly both times. When cloning your drive ensure your dock is not connected to your PC. Be aware the target disk for cloning needs to be at least the same size else cloning will not work. Bear in mind that the cloning process will give you an identical copy of your HDD, meaning that if your target HDD is bigger, the full capacity will not be set up in Windows. This is easily rectified by going into the Windows Disk Management tool and either expanding your drive to the full capacity, or setting up the empty space as a new drive.Cloning felt fast, and my small 2 Tb took about 20 minutes to copy. The indicator lights on top of the dock also give you a good indicator of how the process is proceeding.I've used the dock with HDD's of varying capacities, all the way up to 10 Tb, and have never had a disk the dock couldn't work with.Plug and play hot swapping works seamlessly in Windows 10, and I can swap HDDs at will. Note that WIndows takes about 30 or 40 seconds to recognize the new disk, but this is so much easier than having to turn the PC on and of.The only improvements I would suggest to SilverStone are to supply a longer USB cable.Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase, and while the USB C cable was short, it's more than compensated for by the speed and sheer ease of faultless use.

Super fast device, works really well not used the clone version yet but please with it. One minor thing the usb C cable is only approx 500mm would have been better if 1m but then this happens with newer devices it seems. Having said that good value and work very well. Instructions are in small font?

I think it is an expensive product. But it is made with quality materials and its performance is really good.

I am using one of these to burn in spare NAS disks (4 * full disk write then read cycles) before shelving them.Note that this clips on to the end of the drive, and gives no protection at all to the drive electronics. I rest the drives on the anti-static bags they came in. It probably is not suitable for the long term attachment of a drive.A star deducted because the need for a power supply is not mentioned in the description. I am using a 12v/2A supply from a Starteck enclosure.

Love this product, the only downside is that it doesn't come with a UK 3 pin plug! Otherwise perfect!

If you are a system builder, this is a gem. Absolutely indispensable.

I first bought a NAS box which connected to my network, the rouble was that the software was rubbish. This is a hardware RAID solution and is far superior. You do need to have it coneected to a computer which is connected to your network, but if you are considering one of these you surely have an old pc lying around that will do as the raid server.I installed four 4TB DW red drives configured as RAID 10 giving just under 8TB secure storage.

Looks great, Not very noisy but there are a few problems.!! 1. It does not perform correctly in RAID 1. When you shut down the system and power up the disks sometimes show up as seperate drives other tmes they don't. This could mean that your data is not mirrored on both drives. Therefore I will not use them to ensure a reliable backup.2. It is still too noisy to put on the desk; They should have put a quieter fan in the unit.3. I believe there is a design flaw with this unit. Overheating. The disks lay horizontally without much ventilation and the fan is above the top disk. The power chord plugs into the unit below the disks. The heat sink for the power unit is a few millimeters below the first disk. The PSU gets hot and heats the lower disk. The disk may fail prematurely becasue of the heat. SilverStone should have put a small PSU outside of the box on the lead.4. USB 3.2? On average I could only get 45MBs out of the drive while I consistently saw 80MBs from my Synology drive. Not sure why.Sorry about the poor review, I really wanted to like this one.