CineRAID CR-H252 Hardware RAID, Supports RAID 0, 1, JBOD 2 3.5" Drive Bays USB 3.0 (Backwards Compatible to USB 2.0) 2-Bay RAID/JBOD Enclosure

Pros: The unit is a very low cost RAID enclosure. I found the speed with USB 3.0 to be excellent considering the price. Initial setup was easy.

Cons: After initial setup and use in RAID 1 configuration with two identical Seagate 2TB drives, I attempted to test the unit by pulling one of the drives. I confirmed that the same data was on both individual drives. However, there seems to be no way to add the drive back to the enclosure and allow the RAID 1 set to rebuilb without completely wiping both drives. All you get is the incessant blue flashing lights indicating "Cannot re-build RAID set". This was the case even though no additional data was written to either drive during the test. As others have pointed out, documentation is very poor and provides no procedure for rebuilding the RAID set while preserving data on one of the drives like you would expect with any leading smart-RAID controller/enclosure. Multiple attempts to get a response from the companies e-mail support were completely ignored.

Other Thoughts: Considering the money that I paid for the unit ~$50, it may prove to be effective to guard against a single drive failure. However, once a failure occurs you will need to have another drive available copy all of your data or use some other backup option to preserve the data as you will be forced to wipe the drives to re-establish a RAID 1 set.

Pros: None

Cons: You get what you pay for. I've had nothing but problems with this enclosure. First problem I had what that it caused one of my computers to constantly blue screen. I then decided plugged it into my router and used it as a shared drive. That worked great for a couple months. I checked my files one day and everything was gone. I'm assuming it went into raid mode like someone else mentioned. I'm not exactly sure what it did but I just lost close to 1TB worth of pictures, music, archived emails and so much more. I tried to contact their support (not really sure why, they can't recover my lost data) and no replay.

Other Thoughts: If you want your data to be safe, spend a little extra money and get something reliable.

Pros: It was cheap ($30 ish after rebate/code).

Cons: Very flaky RAID rebuild. Controller randomly disconnects.

Other Thoughts: Update to my previous review: (from N/A at 2/14/2013 10:20:14 AM).

Well, the RAID rebuild finished (red lights stopped blinking finally), and it appeared to be working. I yanked the *other* drive to simulate *other* drive failure, however, RAID didn't automatically start to rebuild... only after I "rebooted" the enclosure did is start to rebuild (note: this could be due to the OS not letting the drive idle I suppose).

DO NOT consider your RAID rebuilt until the red lights blink in unison for a period of time, without OS access (for me, 80GB partition took about half an hour). Reboot the enclosure if necessary (unplugged from puter removes possibility of OS access "interruptions").

In any event, I bumped my rating down to a single egg because, regardless of how flaky it is with RAID rebuilds, the controller disconnects randomly, like so random that if I touch it the wrong way, it disconnects :/ To the point I thought it was the cable or something "pyhsical". I used a different USB cable, port on my puter, even power outlet, and it still seems to disconnect randomly. Fortunately, since I'm keeping the drive policy at "Quick Disconnect," (write cache off) these unexpected disconnects don't seem to cause data loss (though my computer does get rather angry if it's accessing the drive when it disconnects).

Bottom line: I would not trust this in a production environment.

Pros: hardware raid in a USB enclosure == awesome!

Cons: terrible manual, no explanation of raid rebuild process, etc...

Other Thoughts: So I received this today, and after reading other "horror-story" type reviews, I decided to heavily test this unit before going into production with it.

In RAID1, the system creates a mirror set automatically. I copied abut 8 gigs to the single logical drive. I then yanked one of the drives out (to simulate drive failure). It kept chugging along, logical drive stayed online, blue light was blinking for the missing drive. Then I copied another 8gb to the "degraded" logical volume, knowing it would be absent on the missing drive. After the copy operation was complete, I shoved the "missing" drive back in, the drive went offline, then back online (like being unplugged, and replugged) and both lights were a steady blue.

***The array only seems to rebuild when the logical volume is idle*** And you can tell it's rebuilding because the red HDD access indicator lights are blinking in unison for both drives. As soon as I try to access the logical volume during the rebuild process, the lights stop blinking (as if raid rebuild is paused). I can still access the (degraded) logical volume without incident. Only after I stop accessing the logical volume, do the red HDD indicators start blinking again, which I'll assume means "raid rebuild is resuming."

It's currently blinking now (with no computer access). When it stops blinking, I'll assume the raid rebuild is complete, and I'll yank the OTHER drive and repeat the steps, to make sure it can rebuild from either volume.

Pros: I wrote a review earlier stating the usefulness of the RAID feature was less than stellar, and that it wasn't able to rebuild after hot swaps, etc. For this reason I used it as an external drive bay in JBOD mode. I was happily running for about a week.

Cons: I just lost all my data. The drive somehow entered raid mode, seemingly timed with a static discharge into the outer case, and fried both my primary drive and my backups.I am now hosed.

It shouldn't be this sensitive, and even though the dip switches were clearly set to JBOD, it rebuilt the raid (against my wishes) and created a bunch of partitions. The reason I know the unit did this and not my PC is due to the fact that it worked just fine last night. This morning I noticed the second drive light was flashing even with my PC off. Upon boot, I noticed that I couldn't mount. Putting the drives into my PC showed the unit created 3 partitions and now none of my data is unavailable.

Since this was my backup system, my backup and source were erased. Gee. Thanks.

Pros: Makes a great hard drive enclosure, albeit a bit of an expensive one. Also is very well constructed

Does seem to handle a single drive failure in RAID1 mirror, but you have to rebuild the array yourself through a reformat. I couldn't get auto-rebuild to work, and the documentation doesn't tell you the nitty gritty.

Cons: - Will not mirror drives without a reformat.

- Drives removed from the device are not readable standalone, which means if the unit fails in 5 years and the company isn't around you are hosed.

- Manual is entirely unclear on the details of operation when running RAID1(mirror). Which drive is primary? What happens if you take a drive out and put in another? Which one is rebuilt as the master?

- NO obvious way to trigger a rebuild of the array, or way to tell which drive is primary

- No explanation on exactly how the unit functions to keep the drives sync'd. (in my experience, it doesn't take much to confuse it)

Other Thoughts: I bought this as a way to keep a drive up on a server, while swapping out the second drive periodically for backup. I tried to run in RAID1 (mirror) and read in the docs that it supports hot swapping and rebuilding, so I concluded this should work for this purpose.

The first thing that I noticed is that my ext3 disk was not readable upon insertion. It appears you MUST format the disks inside the unit, and that there is some kind of special RAID mojo that goes on behind the scenes. After I did this, I was only able to get 2TB up and recognized on TOMATOUSB which runs linux. This is entirely unacceptable. The manual claims 3TB support, but 4K sector size seems to be problematic.

I tested a few simulated failures and found the unit is useless to me. The most problematic was simply yanking a drive to simulate a failure, then inserting another. I got a flashing red light that never went away. The drives refused to sync even after running in this state overnight.

I also ran a "test" of the entire unit failing. Taking a drive to my laptop and plugging it in via SATA showed 3 partitions (I only had one) and none of my files were accessable.

In the end I am just running this in "just a bunch of drives" mode and running RSYNC between them at night.

FAIL.

Pros: Cheap, allows RAID 1

Cons: Will fail, you will loose your data if not in RAID 1

Other Thoughts: I bought this unit because I had heard great things about CineRAID. Set it up with two 2TB drives for backup and redundancy. About a week ago windows stopped booting past the Starting Windows screen. After a bit of investigation, it was the external drive that was causing the issue. I disconnected it and windows booted normally. Now when I connect the CineRAID, windows detects it, but sees the drive as needing formatting. I took the drives out of the unit an they work brilliantly, no errors. It appears that the unit is not mapping them properly. Tried calling CineRAID, but I cannot get to a human. $50 down the drain as it does the same thing with JBOD and RAID 0.

Pros: Easy set up.
Low price.

Cons: Causes computer to blue screen.

Other Thoughts: Great price and easy set up. I just hate that it keeps causing my computer to blue screen.

Pros: Cheap, can handle 3TB drives, USB 3.0 speeds are decent. Easy to setup, once drives have been formatted first.

Cons: Stopped working after about a week or two. I was using it in RAID 0 for video capture, and it worked well for about a week or two. Then Windows would give me I/O errors and I could not copy to or from the drive anymore. It seems to work for about 15 min, then stops and gives those error messages. I am glad that I didn't delete all my footage before I copied it from other drives.

Other Thoughts: Not worth it, until they fix their issues. Like others have stated, it will fail after a while and not be recognized and give out a bunch of I/O errors. Shame, since it worked OK for a little while. Guess this one is going to the trash as I find a replacement from another company to try.

Pros: Supports two disks

Cons: Bought two enclosures. One for now and for the future. Installed two western digital HDD (2TB each). Connected in RAID 1 formation (mirror). Start copy from other drives. Every 3-6 GB enclosure would loose connection and disappear from devices list. Very bad enclosure. Do not buy unless you are using it to collect dust.