SimpleTech Duo Pro Drive 3.5" USB 2.0/eSATA External Dual SATA RAID Hard Drive Enclosure - Fits Two 3.5" SATA Hard Drives (Silver)

I've purchased 2 of these bare bones. Installed dual 1tb server certified drives in both. I have 1 usb to a server and 1 usb to a Netgear gigabit router at 2 different sites. They have been in service for 6 plus months for backups without a hitch. From reading other reviews, I observe that most have drive problems or don't understand how to configure properly.

B.good

PRO: Nice looking box.CON: Doesn't workThis Simpletech device is not really a distinct product, just a stripped down chassis from their "Duo-Pro" dual-disk external drive. There is no documentation on how to install drives into it, nor how to format them for the primitive 'RAID' functionality built into this box. After installing a disk into it in the most obvious way, the box just sits their blinking some kind of error. My computer does not recognize the device over e-SATA or over USB. Complete waste of time.

We purchased one of these bare bones enclosures, and find that it works quite well. We have yet to see the USB connection "drop out" after any length of time, even using it everyday with Backup Exec. So here are a few hints that we learned in setting up this particular device:1. The documentation that comes with the enclosure assumes the drives are already installed. This is because the manufacturer normally ships the product with two drives pre-installed. The full Duo Pro User Guide gives much more information on how to set up a new array, what the blinking LED lights mean, etc. The guide can be downloaded as a PDF from the SimpleTech/Hitachi website or via this link:[...]2. We used two 3.5" hard drives that were identical. Anytime you employ RAID, it is best to use drives that are exactly the same make, model, and size. We purchased two 250GB Western Digital HDDs for this enclosure.3. Before going further, we set the toggle switch in the back of the enclosure to RAID-1 (mirroring) which is what we intended to use for this drive. Speed is nice, but we need the protection that mirroring provides to ensure that our backup files aren't suddenly lost due to a hard drive going bad.4. When we powered up the enclosure for the first time, the white and red LEDs began blinking intermittently. As there was nothing written in the User Guide about this mean, we stuck a paper clip in the reset hole (located on the back of the enclosure) and it immediately began working as designed - the white LED began blinking with drive activity and the USB connection was detected by Windows.5. Other users have complained about the USB connection "dropping out after 5 minutes", and sometimes this is due to Windows power management shutting down the port. So, just in case, we went into Device Manager -> right-clicked on each USB Root Hub -> clicked "Power Management" tab -> and unchecked the box for "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".6. As the RAID array did not show up in My Computer, we went into Control Panel -> Computer Management -> Drive Manager and found it to be one big unallocated free space. So we initialized the "drive", formatted it as NTFS, and assigned it a drive letter. It's nice to see that this array appears to Windows as one big hard drive!7. With the array now showing up in My Computer, we configured [our own copy of] Backup Exec to use the entire "drive" for backing up files on the server. The enclosure stays connected for long periods of time, and each backup job typically backs up 30 Gigabytes of data. :)Chris

I have 5 of these that I bought as enclosures only (no drives). The first one was the hard one because the documentation wasn't great. Also it took a while to figure out how to properly mount the 2 drives, how to route the cables for one of the drives, and how to use the insulating rubber grommets (vibration damper).Once I got it all hooked up, I set it to use RAID 1 using the switch on the back. I bought these strictly for backup/redundancy, not performance and I think this is the best use of them.Few things with this enclosure:you should expect the drives to be erased when first setting up, so use fresh identical drives, or wiped used identical drives.pick your raid mode using the switch on the back.power on the unit.hit the reset button on the back. This is important and must be done every time you change raid mode or setup the drives. you have to hold the reset for several seconds. if you are just seeing red/white flashing it is probably because you need to do the reset. I think solid red means hard drive failure.anyway, once you hit the reset button, your system should recognize the unit as a single drive and you can initialize/format the stuff and start to use.nice stackable design though if you have a bunch like i do.Cons: plastic case isn't that nice, but I have seen a lot worse.one of my fans is starting to make noise these have been on for nearly a year full time now...so i may have to order a replacement fan (cheap) of higher quality.the cooling probably isn't as good as other cases.the model I have is eSATA and USB only. The newer model has firewire and stuff as well which would be nice.this model only supports 1TB drives (2tb total in RAID0, 1TB total in RAID1). the newer version has support for 2TB drives (4tb raid0, 2tb raid1). would be nice to get a firmware upgrade or something for the older version that would support bigger disk sizes.Overall: been running a bunch of these units in RAID 1 for about a year and don't have any complaints or annoyances other than the recent fan noise on one unit...but that is a cheap fix. If you can get past the initial setup and are running RAID1...these will probably work well for you. For the price I paid for the enclosures, I am certainly very happy with them.