Rosewill R2-RAID Dual 3.5" SATA 3G HDD 2-Bay RAID 0/1/BIG/JBOD/SAFE33/SAFE55 System/ USB2.0 & eSATA Output Design

Pros: Low cost (got mine for $59.99 with rebate). No problems, easy setup.

Cons: Not many I can think of.

Other Thoughts: Bring this product back!

Pros: Work great with Samsung and Hitachi 1 TB drives. They are very quiet and I have had no problems with them with 1 TB drives.

Cons: I have many of these and really like them. But, I just tried to put 1.5 TB Samsung drives into one. They are recognized as 1.5 TB, but they cannot be formatted. Not in XP, Vista or 7. I contacted Rosewill Support and they confirmed that the maximum is 1 TB. They also stated that there will be no firmware update. Total bummer.

I'll have to put the drives into the Drobo, since it supports 2 TB drives.

Other Thoughts: I hope that they make a new one just like this one but with support for the current 1.5 and 2 TB drives. I would like to see better airflow in a future case too. There is so little space for airflow across the drives through the center. I wouldn't mind if they were another .5" wider and slightly longer for improved airflow.

Pros: Works well as a hardware raid setup. Using the manual, I set the switches to have mine run as a redundant array (same data goes on both drives). Windows saw the singular drive and used it perfectly. Please note if you do this, you must power it up, and then press reset or the switch to hardware raid will not work.

Being a pessimist, I pulled each drive out and tested them to make sure that all the same data was copied to both. To my delight, it was.

Cons: The only time this unit got hot was when I formatted the hard drives. I had two seperate 1-Gigabyte drives and since formatting a drive of that size over USB takes about 10-12 hours.

During normal use the casing did not get super hot.

Other Thoughts: When you initially format your hard drive(s), use an Esata cable to speed things up when using 500GB+

I did not use the software due to poor reviews so I am unable to comment on that. I simply used it as a hardware raid and it worked flawlessly in that capacity.

Pros: SMALL footprint, sturdy, half-decent cooling. I've had this for one day and I succesfully set up a 1tb RAID1 array using two Seagate LP drives, and it is connected to my motherboard's hot swappable eSATA (JMicron JMB362 on Biostar TA770 mobo, AMD X2 5000).

I was pretty confused at first because this is my first RAID enclosure and only second time working/creating a RAID array. The LEDs on this box only inform you of power and HDD activity of each HDD. There are NO LED's for build activity or verification, etc, which would have been useful for a RAID noob like me.

I set the jumpers for RAID1, hit the reset button, and left it on overnight. Both HDD LEDs were lit. After leaving the unit on overnight, the LED for one of the drives was still on. Huh? Confusion. So I downloaded and installed Steelvine and it showed the status: verification 95% complete on drive 1. Woohoo!!! So apparently the creation/verification process takes about 8 hours for 1TB.

Cons: Lack of build LED on front bezel. HOWEVER, you can install the Steelvine to monitor the status! You do not have to set up and configure the unit through Steelvine to monitor the array. Some others have said Steelvine sucks, I really don't know about that, it looks good to me so far. This is really a lifesaver for RAID NEWBIES. The Steelvine utility runs all the time but I'm sure you can uninstall it after you finish setting up whatever RAID array you want.

Front bezel could have better ventilation, but it's better than some other units which seem to have NO vents on the front!!

Visual design is a bit lame; the "Rosewill" logo is just plain unattractive! (what kind of name is "Rosewill" anyway?!)... Maybe I will fabricate a Silicone Image sticker and cover that up hehehe...

Other Thoughts: I ran HDTach and got 120MB/s read speed! Great, exactly what I was hoping for. The BURST speed is not as fast as the same single drive inside my PC but it's still a very fast at 143MB/s! I then copied a 12gb AVI file to it, and 3 minutes later I was happy =)

Before I did all that I did an experiment... Setting up RAID1 using a drive with existing data, and seeing if it would take that and copy to the second (empty) drive or if it would destroy it. So I set the jumpers and hit the reset button, waited a little while, then switched to JBOD and reset again, and sure enough it saw two drives with identical data! I was REALLY impressed by that.

I also like the fact that the power connector is a standard connector that I could replace if it broke or something, not one of those multi-wire things.

Other enclosures use the same parts. I bought this unit on sale but in hindsight I'd prefer the SansDigital unit. I really like the 80cm fan.. However this unit seems to fits on my desk bett

Pros: Mirrored data for safety, easy to configure...once you know how. I am using two 1TB WD Black drives, which
according to some reviews elsewhere are not appropriate for RAID; I've had no problems whatsoever.

Cons: Instructions don't make it clear that to change raid modes you need to have the case open with the power
on. The reset isn't like a cmos jumper, power needs to
be on when the reset is pressed, otherwise the dip switch settings won't take.

Other Thoughts: I have this drive attached to my Buffalo linkstation to stream video to my mediaplayers. The data on the drive
cannot be manipulated via the linkstation; it can only be played (read). I have to connect directly to the Rosewill via USB to manage the drive. This is a limitation of the Buffalo, I only mention it in case others plan to use it this way. VLC player seems to stutter when accessing the Rosewill via the linkstation, mediaplayer works fine.

Pros: Simple design thick aluminum construction. Esata cable & usb included Esata is about 3 feet long leds for power and hard drive activity. Fan is slightly noisy but no really to bad. Works in both esata mode and usb mode, so you can have the speed of esata and the compatibility of USB if you need to bring it some where

Cons: Jumper switch setting can be confusing, don't forget to hit reset button. Esata cable is only about 3 feet long and it's a flat cable not very heavyduty but it's included so that's a plus. I'm using it in JBOD mode my mother board has built in esata by jbmicron so I had to download the driver for esata inorder for it to see the 2nd hard drive.

Other Thoughts: All in all I'm impressed with the product so far. could stand to use some minor improvements. i did not use the software that came with the unit so I can't comment on it quality. I try to stay away form proprietary programs.

Pros: I love that they shut down the drives after excess idle time. I used Samsung and Hitachi 1TB drives and have no problems with heating. I will not use super high speed drives in an enclosure, that's just asking for trouble.

They are both in Mirror mode.

Cons: Although the manual does seriously suck, none for me.

What exactly do the blue LEDs mean? It seems that they monitor each drive, but it is un-documented.

If you use other than the default, you must press the reset button when you first fire it up. Otherwise it will be in Steelvine/JBOD mode. That means that you need to power it on WITHOUT the cover the first time.

Other Thoughts: I would like to improve the airflow. The front grill openings are very small and I'd like to put in a faster fan.

I will get more when they go on super sale again. I have way too much data and need more RAID space.

I've heard nothing but horror stories about Steelvine for years. I also have another RAID that used it. I had problems with that and do not recommend the Steelvine software.

Pros: RAID options, cool

Cons: fan is the loudest part of my HTPC....I can't hear it with the tv going but when everything is off I do...

Other Thoughts: I've owned this for just over a year now and it's been running esata on xp home flawlessly...

Pros: Works Great! with 2 1TB drives. I have tried multiple configurations from mirroring to striping and all is well.

Stay away from the SteelVine Software. I hooked mine directly to ESATA Motherboard ports on my Asus Motherboard and the motherboard supplied software correctly sees the drives.

Cons: The fan is noisy however there is a switch on the back to turn it off.

Other Thoughts: I like the look and finish of the product, I'll buy more.

Pros: - Well built aluminum enclosure
- Rear fan with front ventilation holes
- Easy to set up with drives in individual access mode (Rosewill calls this JBOD)
- eSATA access

Cons: - Would never trust SteelVine software with my data
- Rear fan is very small, and noisier than expected

Other Thoughts: - I bought this enclosure only because it had eSATA+USB, and supported accessing the drives individually (Rosewill erroneously calls this JBOD mode). This job the enclosure does well. I would strongly recommend AGAINST using BIG mode or RAID 0/1 on this device or any similar enclosure, as you are using fake hardware RAID. All RAID processing is done by your CPU, portability of your array between computers is very weak, and reliability is decreased. What's the point of an external device then?
- Although the rear fan is small, and it is placed behind a printed circuit board that reduces circulation, the enclosure stays much cooler than a fanless enclosure. After hours of sustained heavy use, it only gets barely warm to the touch. I have used fanless enclosures before, so I know how hot they can get.