What an intriguing enclosure device. Never imagined that these manufacturers would create a unit like this with h/w raid on a subset of disks but not all of the disks. Thank you for your useful and informative review video.
Just found this review. It was just what I was looking for .. had a 7 year old server die and it looks like I can move the 2 1TB 3.5s to this and Linux should just work with it. Brilliant. Thank you much.
My Icy Box 8 bay JBOD tower died the other day and I finally found this inexpensive replacement. I bought an extra couple of 8tb drives and, after a looooong time got my remaining 7 2tb drives over to the new 8tb's. It's not quiet for sure, but it's not on all the time. So far, it's perfectly decent for the money.
Thank you for this excellent review. Subbed. For over a year I've moved over to all SSD's for my PC, and like yourself, REALLY appreciate the silence. I have a Zidoo Z1000 Pro media player, which works very well for everything including 4k UHD/HDR video playback. I had been using a portable 4TB for films, attached by USB, and this was a very quiet system also. I then thought about putting an HDD into the Z1000's internal bay, and so I recently purchased a 16TB Seagate X16 Exos. After loading a few films onto it and pushing it into the player front slot, I pressed play on the first film. Holy Batman I'd forgotten how loud HDD's can get!! All that grinding/clicking was a total immersion breaker, lol. I then though about NAS and external HDD enclosures...and after a lot of google headache I arrived at your video. I've just purchased this enclosure (Amazon prime day deal for £151), should arrive in a couple of days. NAS would have been another viable solution and lots of folks use them, but even 4 bay units are, I think, waay overpriced...a little hard to stomach. As for this enclosure, I realise the HDD noise will be transferred here and will increase as more drives are added, however, I also purchased a long USB C cable with the idea that I place the unit in another room. Hopefully this set up will last a good number of years.
A really good review that. I have a number of HDD laying around that still work so need a solution for them rather than them sitting in a drawer (I don't like selling disks). This might be that solution.
I have been using one of these for over a year with ZFS, one pair as a mirrored drive and 3 drives as Z1 striped. Initially everything looked fine, but under intensive use you can quite frequently just have ZFS hang on you, and you cannot even dismount the drives, and have to shutdown and restart the system. Usually when the system reboot, ZFS does a scrub, but in the end the druives do recover themselves (although a couple of times I did have to reformat the zpools, but that might have been because of my own impatience thinking that ZFS was not going to recover itself). When contacting Terramaster they point blank said the unit is not supported for any software RAID, only for its internal hardware RAID. I am now looking to see if there is anything I can replace this with that might support ZFS RAID reliably.
Your timing is good… I’ve just started today on a budget build to create a TrueNAS server to do exactly this. Will be coming to the channel in the coming weeks. I think I have a neat and cheap solution, but I need to test it. The Terramaster is great for what it does, but it doesn’t surprise me that trying to RAID the USB drives would be problematic. It’s a shame as it would be awesome if you could use it reliably like that!
I found USB (3.1) connectton to be less stable and slower than equivalent e-sata with multiport back plane. Returned the TerraMaster D5-300c. Kept my old e-satat 5 bay. I use the Startech 2 Port Sata 6 Gbps PCIe controller card.
I too have spent quite some time trying to find an enclosure. I really wanted an internal power supply and USB Gen2. On its way from newegg for $190: ORICO 4 Bay Full Aluminum 64TB USB3.1 Gen2 HDD Docking Station 2.5/3.5 inch HDD SSD Enclosure With 150W Built-in Power supply.
A nice, articulate, clear and thoughtful discussion - thank you very much. The only aspect I regretted not being included was DAS vs NAS choice. I appreciate you got 350Mb/s from your striped disks in this way and wanted to ask (since I have no NEED for such speed) whether it was purely this speed that attracted you to DAS rather than NAS? I anticipated that the disk noise would be irritating and an attraction of NAS for me is that I can keep the clattery disks out of the way. Would that not work for you too, as I can't see that you need access to the physical disks on any occasion other than initial setup and if failure? So why put the noise source on the desktop?
I have my unit in a cupboard to help with noise, but I only switch it on when I need it. I have since built a 10Gbit NAS for primary work and I still use this Terra Master for backup purposes. At the time of purchase, having the fast USB-C connection was a better fit for me than network connectivity, but that won’t be the case for everyone.
@@ConstantGeekery Thank you for a swift and considered reply. It seems to validate my thinking that - with lower data transfer requirements (and ones that CAN be met by Cat5e 100Mb Ethernet that's not subject to heavy or uncontrolled contention for use by others) and for the price of my mastering the NAS OS and paying its slightly greater cost, I can with a NAS, gain the advantage of the option for shared storage space for others in the house, provided I guard against NAS system failure. Have I understood that right?
@@falfield yes, basically. More people can share but transfer speed will be slower. There are 2.5Gbit options available, though this will also require an upgraded Switch and network adapters if you don’t have them already.
Could you completely disable the built-in hardware RAID and use the array in a RAID-Z1? Edit: I see you answered that later in the video. Good to know. A very handsome device, indeed.
Really useful overview, thanks. Is it possible to get the Terra Master to expose the drives in the first two bays as separate disks? I've got the impression from the marketing material that it'll always show them to the OS as one big disk, with the remaining three bays showing up as disks 2, 3 and 4. Cheers!
HI there, yes my Drobo 5D3 stopped working last week and I was stuffed. yes I had got a smaller terra master 2disk before my Drobo went down and had started to back up my drobo to some spare disks , but too late I didnt do it all and so I have to end up getting a Drobo 8D just to get my data off ( as no Drobo 5d3) availed as stock is really bad at the moment, I needed wither another 5D3 or 8D to put the Drobo pack of disks in. . lucky I found one on eBay and it did work and found my data again but I.m thinking of getting the D500C as a separate back up to the 8D. Eventually i may sell this 8D! Lucky bought it second hadn't off eBay. so not the full price. So are you still using the terramaster ?? I could use Carbon Copy to copy my work from the drobo to single disks on this terramaster and have it do it over night . the fact its only 179£ I think its worth it. and I have spare disks I can use.
Have you perhaps also considered the Yottamaster FS5U3? Would like to know your findings. I'm looking for a device like the terramaster but you stating that it's loud holds me off. At first glance the Yottamaster seems more silent. I will contact their support because I can't find if it does what the terramaster does, and that's exposing all disks on my mac. Will software raid do the job or do I need a switch like on he terramaster? Thanks for your help
I haven’t looked at that one. I’m very happy with the Terramaster. I use it daily and have it in a (ventilated) cupboard under my desk. I don’t notice the fan noise with the current set up.
i'm trying to do the same with bay 1 & 2 at raid 0 (striped) (default from hardware at back of box), and bay 3 for mirror (using disk management on windows) but getting problems with disk management where it cannot create dynamic drive can this be done with other software? do you recommend any?
Are you saying you’re trying to create a software RAID 1 from the hardware RAID 0 pair and a single drive in the 3rd bay? Interesting idea if so. It might be better to go down the RAID 10 route (though that will need four disks) and do it all in software. I use software RAID 0 on my Windows workstation and have no problems with it, but some would advise not trusting critical data to Windows software RAID. There are third party software solutions, but I have no personal experience with them, so I can’t really offer a recommendation. Perhaps one of them will do what you want with the three drives? I’d be interested to know if you do get it working.
It only has onboard RAID for the first two bays. You could software RAID the others (or all of them if you switch onboard off), if you're feeling brave. I am still using this and it has been completely reliable.
So I have the d2 thunderbolt 3 by Terramaster in raid 1. I decided to get this d5 300c for my media server which is a slightly older computer w usb 3.0 as the fastest connection. Wish it were thunderbolt 3 but....Do you think I can just put those 2 disks from the d2 thunderbolt 3 which are raid 1 and move them to bays 1 and 2 of the d5 300c without data loss or the need to format again?
I think that would depend on whether the two units use the same RAID controller, but I don’t know for sure. If you’re able to back up the data on the drives, you could try it, but I wouldn’t do it if you can’t backup first.
Constant Geekery I went ahead and did it. It worked. I did already have a backup so I went ahead. It is currently rebuilding. I take from that the raid 1 didn’t necessarily translate over but the disks had the data intact.
It should work fine... that said, my RAID pair won't mount in macOS any more, though it used to work fine 🤔 That could actually be an Intel vs Apple Silicon issue. This review pre-dates the launch of M1 Macs.
What an intriguing enclosure device. Never imagined that these manufacturers would create a unit like this with h/w raid on a subset of disks but not all of the disks. Thank you for your useful and informative review video.
Just found this review. It was just what I was looking for .. had a 7 year old server die and it looks like I can move the 2 1TB 3.5s to this and Linux should just work with it. Brilliant. Thank you much.
Glad it was of use - hope the job goes well.
My Icy Box 8 bay JBOD tower died the other day and I finally found this inexpensive replacement. I bought an extra couple of 8tb drives and, after a looooong time got my remaining 7 2tb drives over to the new 8tb's. It's not quiet for sure, but it's not on all the time. So far, it's perfectly decent for the money.
Thank you for this excellent review. Subbed.
For over a year I've moved over to all SSD's for my PC, and like yourself, REALLY appreciate the silence. I have a Zidoo Z1000 Pro media player, which works very well for everything including 4k UHD/HDR video playback. I had been using a portable 4TB for films, attached by USB, and this was a very quiet system also. I then thought about putting an HDD into the Z1000's internal bay, and so I recently purchased a 16TB Seagate X16 Exos. After loading a few films onto it and pushing it into the player front slot, I pressed play on the first film. Holy Batman I'd forgotten how loud HDD's can get!! All that grinding/clicking was a total immersion breaker, lol. I then though about NAS and external HDD enclosures...and after a lot of google headache I arrived at your video.
I've just purchased this enclosure (Amazon prime day deal for £151), should arrive in a couple of days. NAS would have been another viable solution and lots of folks use them, but even 4 bay units are, I think, waay overpriced...a little hard to stomach. As for this enclosure, I realise the HDD noise will be transferred here and will increase as more drives are added, however, I also purchased a long USB C cable with the idea that I place the unit in another room. Hopefully this set up will last a good number of years.
A really good review that.
I have a number of HDD laying around that still work so need a solution for them rather than them sitting in a drawer (I don't like selling disks). This might be that solution.
this review is SO useful, Thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
i have a Terramaster F4-210 Nas unit, for the price it is very good, i am looking at getting one of the DAS units,.
I have been using one of these for over a year with ZFS, one pair as a mirrored drive and 3 drives as Z1 striped.
Initially everything looked fine, but under intensive use you can quite frequently just have ZFS hang on you, and you cannot even dismount the drives, and have to shutdown and restart the system. Usually when the system reboot, ZFS does a scrub, but in the end the druives do recover themselves (although a couple of times I did have to reformat the zpools, but that might have been because of my own impatience thinking that ZFS was not going to recover itself).
When contacting Terramaster they point blank said the unit is not supported for any software RAID, only for its internal hardware RAID.
I am now looking to see if there is anything I can replace this with that might support ZFS RAID reliably.
Your timing is good… I’ve just started today on a budget build to create a TrueNAS server to do exactly this. Will be coming to the channel in the coming weeks. I think I have a neat and cheap solution, but I need to test it.
The Terramaster is great for what it does, but it doesn’t surprise me that trying to RAID the USB drives would be problematic. It’s a shame as it would be awesome if you could use it reliably like that!
I found USB (3.1) connectton to be less stable and slower than equivalent e-sata with multiport back plane. Returned the TerraMaster D5-300c. Kept my old e-satat 5 bay. I use the Startech 2 Port Sata 6 Gbps PCIe controller card.
Thank you for the video. I use a three bay Orico docking station.
Useful review thanks, I think I am going to order one of these.
I too have spent quite some time trying to find an enclosure. I really wanted an internal power supply and USB Gen2. On its way from newegg for $190: ORICO 4 Bay Full Aluminum 64TB USB3.1 Gen2 HDD Docking Station 2.5/3.5 inch HDD SSD Enclosure With 150W Built-in Power supply.
Amazing but classic video, loving it!
Excellent review!
A nice, articulate, clear and thoughtful discussion - thank you very much. The only aspect I regretted not being included was DAS vs NAS choice. I appreciate you got 350Mb/s from your striped disks in this way and wanted to ask (since I have no NEED for such speed) whether it was purely this speed that attracted you to DAS rather than NAS? I anticipated that the disk noise would be irritating and an attraction of NAS for me is that I can keep the clattery disks out of the way. Would that not work for you too, as I can't see that you need access to the physical disks on any occasion other than initial setup and if failure? So why put the noise source on the desktop?
I have my unit in a cupboard to help with noise, but I only switch it on when I need it. I have since built a 10Gbit NAS for primary work and I still use this Terra Master for backup purposes. At the time of purchase, having the fast USB-C connection was a better fit for me than network connectivity, but that won’t be the case for everyone.
@@ConstantGeekery Thank you for a swift and considered reply. It seems to validate my thinking that - with lower data transfer requirements (and ones that CAN be met by Cat5e 100Mb Ethernet that's not subject to heavy or uncontrolled contention for use by others) and for the price of my mastering the NAS OS and paying its slightly greater cost, I can with a NAS, gain the advantage of the option for shared storage space for others in the house, provided I guard against NAS system failure. Have I understood that right?
@@falfield yes, basically. More people can share but transfer speed will be slower. There are 2.5Gbit options available, though this will also require an upgraded Switch and network adapters if you don’t have them already.
Could you completely disable the built-in hardware RAID and use the array in a RAID-Z1?
Edit: I see you answered that later in the video. Good to know. A very handsome device, indeed.
Really useful overview, thanks.
Is it possible to get the Terra Master to expose the drives in the first two bays as separate disks? I've got the impression from the marketing material that it'll always show them to the OS as one big disk, with the remaining three bays showing up as disks 2, 3 and 4. Cheers!
Yes, there is a switch on the back - you don’t have to use the RAID function.
@@ConstantGeekeryAwesome, thanks.
HI there, yes my Drobo 5D3 stopped working last week and I was stuffed. yes I had got a smaller terra master 2disk before my Drobo went down and had started to back up my drobo to some spare disks , but too late I didnt do it all and so I have to end up getting a Drobo 8D just to get my data off ( as no Drobo 5d3) availed as stock is really bad at the moment, I needed wither another 5D3 or 8D to put the Drobo pack of disks in. . lucky I found one on eBay and it did work and found my data again but I.m thinking of getting the D500C as a separate back up to the 8D. Eventually i may sell this 8D! Lucky bought it second hadn't off eBay. so not the full price. So are you still using the terramaster ?? I could use Carbon Copy to copy my work from the drobo to single disks on this terramaster and have it do it over night . the fact its only 179£ I think its worth it. and I have spare disks I can use.
Sorry to hear that 🙁 I still have the Terramaster and it has been working flawlessly so far.
Have you perhaps also considered the Yottamaster FS5U3? Would like to know your findings. I'm looking for a device like the terramaster but you stating that it's loud holds me off. At first glance the Yottamaster seems more silent. I will contact their support because I can't find if it does what the terramaster does, and that's exposing all disks on my mac. Will software raid do the job or do I need a switch like on he terramaster? Thanks for your help
I haven’t looked at that one. I’m very happy with the Terramaster. I use it daily and have it in a (ventilated) cupboard under my desk. I don’t notice the fan noise with the current set up.
@@ConstantGeekery that's a good idea, i'll give it a try. thanks for your reply!
What's makes this unit noisy are the hard drives, so it will be the same with the yottamaster
i'm trying to do the same with bay 1 & 2 at raid 0 (striped) (default from hardware at back of box), and bay 3 for mirror (using disk management on windows)
but getting problems with disk management where it cannot create dynamic drive
can this be done with other software? do you recommend any?
Are you saying you’re trying to create a software RAID 1 from the hardware RAID 0 pair and a single drive in the 3rd bay? Interesting idea if so. It might be better to go down the RAID 10 route (though that will need four disks) and do it all in software. I use software RAID 0 on my Windows workstation and have no problems with it, but some would advise not trusting critical data to Windows software RAID. There are third party software solutions, but I have no personal experience with them, so I can’t really offer a recommendation. Perhaps one of them will do what you want with the three drives? I’d be interested to know if you do get it working.
So you can only raid the first 2 drives? You can't do raid 5 with all bays?
It only has onboard RAID for the first two bays. You could software RAID the others (or all of them if you switch onboard off), if you're feeling brave. I am still using this and it has been completely reliable.
can i prevent the drives from going to sleep in this unit?
There isn’t a control on the unit itself to do that. You might be able to do it via OS or software.
So I have the d2 thunderbolt 3 by Terramaster in raid 1. I decided to get this d5 300c for my media server which is a slightly older computer w usb 3.0 as the fastest connection. Wish it were thunderbolt 3 but....Do you think I can just put those 2 disks from the d2 thunderbolt 3 which are raid 1 and move them to bays 1 and 2 of the d5 300c without data loss or the need to format again?
I think that would depend on whether the two units use the same RAID controller, but I don’t know for sure. If you’re able to back up the data on the drives, you could try it, but I wouldn’t do it if you can’t backup first.
Constant Geekery I went ahead and did it. It worked. I did already have a backup so I went ahead. It is currently rebuilding. I take from that the raid 1 didn’t necessarily translate over but the disks had the data intact.
how much for the price? and it can ship in the phillipp
ines
My Mac wont even see the device.
It should work fine... that said, my RAID pair won't mount in macOS any more, though it used to work fine 🤔 That could actually be an Intel vs Apple Silicon issue. This review pre-dates the launch of M1 Macs.
good video
Thanks 😊
Just found this. thinking of using it with my mini PC to make a NAS / media server.
I wont be using the raid, I'll just expose them to openmediavault.