So glad I read this. It's useless to those of us who would like to use RAID 1 as a backup as in the instance of a drive failure many of us do not have 2tb of free space to do a manual rebuild! Ridiculous firmware. Thanks for highlighting it.
Just bought this and tried it with some crucial ssd's and it does not. I believe my unit is defective, it makes a high pitch hissing sound and blue led drive indicators light up but nothing happens on the computer.
Thank you for this very detailed review. Do you know if the firmware RAID1 rebuild bug was fixed? I cannot find any firwmare info or download option for that drive on Orico's website. The only point of this product is the RAID1 mode, as many single nvme drive enclosures do exist with better perfs than the RAID0 mode here. I cannot find any comparable enclosure with hardware RAID1 (which is the only type of redundant RAID I would do in hardware, as there are no risks of proprietary implementations) on the market, so it would be interesting to see if this was fixed.
Hi, I have no idea if the RAID1 rebuild function was fixed, I had an early version of this enclosure and haven´t been using if for at least year. I agree with you on your conclusion.
@@MartinsLab l had a look at this but went for the M2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 X4 Adapter Card -+ the m.2 are coming down =£236.29 for a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2 TB PCIe
@@MrBook123456 True, that´s a nice price for an NVMe SSD. I assume you mean an internal PCIE adapter which is connected directly to the motherboard. I used the same thing in my test PC for this review with Samsung 970 Pro (512GB) to make sure I have a dedicated SSD just for the test. ORICO enclosure is mainly for cases if you don´t have enough drive space or possibilities of upgrading your PC/laptop or if you want to have your data backed up elsewhere.
@@MrBook123456 If you need a lot of storage than it isn´t necessarily an “overkill", could be just enough 😉 Maybe it is time for you to start thinking about consolidating - it is quite a lot of external high capacity storage (4x 8TB). You could build a network storage server or get a multi-drive enclosure (6/8/12 drive bays). It all depends on how much storage you´re planning on having in the future and how mobile/flexible you need it to be.
Yes, RAID1 is explained here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BBM5OPEI0oE.html Only one „logical“ drive (SW representation of two physical drives) will be visible in your OS. The controller in the enclosure will have access to both physical drives, but will appear in SW as if there was only one drive was installed - which is the purpose.
Hi, you probably have a different M.2 enclosure (not M2N210-RC3) - so I can´t verify it. I don´t think you can update the firmware on the Samsung SSD while it is placed inside a USB enclosure. You´ll probably have to put into an M.2 slot on your motherboard (if it supports M.2 SATA drives) or you could place the drive into an M.2 SATA PCIE expansion card to do it. It often happens that drive firmware update isn´t possible while the drive is placed inside an external enclosure.
@@richieh2571 No problem, if you have an M.2 NVMe drive “Samsung 980 Pro”, you can place it into an M.2 slot on your motherboard and update the firmware using Samsung Magician. That should work. You´ll just have to remove it from your "RTL9210NVME" enclosure to do it.
Hi JosephOng! Both Linux and Windows based systems should see this enclosure as a single USB drive when it is set to RAID1/RAID0 mode, no special stand-alone driver was installed (RAID capability is done internally, not by any OS driver). However, I have tested it only in Windows, so I can´t be 100% sure.
@rono4592 no, but looking into it there's different ways of doing it so I think it depends how you did it at the very least, as there's hardware, software and bios raid, mine is a bios raid so I think it has to be done on the motherboard it was created with, hardware raid will be similar I think, I think your only chance would be a software raid, since its created by the software, the same software can be used on any computer but I'm only guessing here too.
nnince video ....would like to see if transferring large files (400gb at raid zero) are just as fast or if they get speed/heat throttled. Would also be interesting to see a comparison with the Trebleet dual bay raid nvme enclosure.
Thanks! Unfortunately, I can´t perform a 400GB RAID0 test, because I already have my data on those two drives in Single (PM) mode. But if you look at the data (4C and 5C increase for 100 GB transfer in RAID0 at 24,5C ambient), even if the increase of the temperature was linear that means 36C + 4x 4C (400GB=16C) + 4x 5C (400GB=20C) you´d end up at 52C (drive A) and 56C (drive B) which is absolutely fine (SSDs don´t throttle at these temps). And it will be very likely less - this enclosure has a good thermal design. A dual bay NVMe RAID enclosure should be considerably faster, but also hotter (NVMe drives generally run at higher temps than SATA drives), but I don´t have it to test it..
Neni zac 😉 As I mentioned in the video, it is a „special“ implementation of RAID1. It allows WRITING data to both drives simultaneously, but it doesn´t allow READING from them simultaneously (in RAID1 mode). In case of a failure of one of the drives, your data is safe (because it is stored on both - so one would remain). But, it doesn´t allow automatic RAID array rebuild - you have to do it manually + it also doesn´t have any data integrity checking and no reporting in the OS. So, it is kind of „hybrid“ and I personally would´t call it "real RAID", I´d call it just a "duplication" (it doesn´t have "standard" RAID1 features). The advantage of this approach is that the surviving drive can be accessed (READ) from another computer and it doesn´t require a compatible HW RAID adapter to do that. So, in case that the ORICO enclosure got damaged, but at least one of the drives was still functional, you´d still be able to access your data from any computer in a minute simply by removing the M.2 drive from the enclosure and plugging it there. RAID 0, JBOD or SINGLE mode have no redundancy, so there is no real problem there. If you used SW RAID1 it would work only while the enclosure would be connected to that one computer in that specific OS. If you connected the enclosure to another computer it wouldn´t probably be recognized as RAID1 array. I haven´t tried it to be 100% sure.
@@MartinsLab I’ll find out next month. I’ll be studying until I die, I have to. Thanks again for your efforts with the video, it was very helpful especially when you described performance with different configurations. Many thanks.
No, I never needed to connect a separate power input to the ecnlosure during my testing. Original USB-C cable was able to provide enough power to run the enclosure with both M.2 SATA SSDs connected at the same time.
No SW was provided with the enclosure. You can check your SSD´s health with "CrystalDiskInfo" or with SW provided by it´s manufacturer (like "Samsung Magician" - in case of Samsung drives).
Hi, in „RAID 0” mode the drive space of both drives is combined and the speed is “double”. If any one of the drives fails, you loose all the data. (If you take two 1TB drives where each has a max READ speed of 500 MB/s, you´ll get 2TB capacity available and roughly 1000 MB/s READ speed. Both numbers are slightly lower in reality, because 1GB = 1024 MB (not 1000 MB) and there is a few percent overhead penalty when it comes to speed.)
will this be able to clone the single 512GB m2 in my Asus G13 Advantage to RAiD-0 2 2TB PNY CS3030? There are 2 m2 slots, and Im planning to replace the 512gb m2 with 2 2TB m2 in RAiD-0
No, itself this enclosure can´t clone any drive with data on it, you´d need to use a specialized clonig SW to do that. Also „2TB PNY CS3030“ is an M.2 „NVMe“ drive and this enclosure is only for M.2 „SATA“ drives, so it isn´t compatible. For a RAID to work you need create the array first in BIOS on your laptop with those two NVMe 2TB drives, and then move data on it from the source drive (512GB M.2) which is probably also „NVMe“?. The created „RAID0“ volume has to compatible with an onboard RAID controller. If this new „RAID0“ volume is supposed to be also a boot drive with OS on it, you´ll also increase the probability of its failure compared to using a single drive, because if one drive fails in RAID0, you loose data from both drives. So, it depends how valuable those are for you or if you make regular backups - which would solve this problem.
They have an NVMe dual bay unit ORICO-M2P2J-C3, but without a RAID function. I have never seen it in person, all I know is what is in that link below. Link: www.orico.cc/us/product/detail/7205.html
@@MartinsLab Thank you very much for your quick reply! Really appreciate your video - not much info I could find online about this particular enclosure. Cheers!
If your system is setup as "RAID1", it means that both drives hold exactly the same data - one is an exact mirror (a copy) of another. When you copy any data on "RAID1" from your PC/MAC/Phone, the same data is written to both drives simultaneously. If any one of those two drives (SSDs) fails (has a malfunction/dies), you can still read the data from the other one. It is also the reason why your effective storage capacity (the amount GB you can use for your storing your data on it) is only that of a single drive (only a half - you can store only 1TB of your data on two 1TB drives in RAID1). So, what I did in my review is to test what happens when one of those two drives in my RAID1 (2x 1TB) fails. That´s why I simulated a drive failure (I removed one of the functioning drives from a functioning RAID1 and formatted it manually). I wanted to know two things: a) if the other drive still holds the data = if my data is still safe and I can use it b) if I´m able to do a „RAID1 array rebuild“ = when I insert a replacement drive for the drive that failed (the one I manually formatted) into its M.2 slot, the data will automatically be copied from the drive that „survived“ on it (this usually takes several minutes or hours in case of M.2 SSDs depending on their capacity and speed) What I found out is that in case of “a)” it worked and I could READ the data and in case of “b)” it didn´t work (it had to be done manually - the data did not start being copied to the new drive automatically) So, in general, no drive is “out of order” in a RAID1 system in default (both work) - it is supposed to prevent a data loss in case that one of those two drives fails (goes out of order/dies by it self).
@@MartinsLab Thanks for the detailed answer. There are two questions left. How does the device inform about a breakdown of one of the disks? And the second question is the most important, if the device breaks down, for example, the controller breaks down, can I install one of the disks in the pc computer and read its data?
@@KiraMaster-KM When a “breakdown” of one of the drives occurs the LED of the failed drive on the ORICO enclosure lights up red (changes the color from blue to red) and you can´t WRITE any data to any of the drives - they both become “READ only”. So, in other words, if the enclosure is out of your sight for any reason while this happens (while you´re focused on your work or using a longer USB-C cable), you´ll find out when you can´t WRITE data to it and then when you check the LEDs on the enclosure (there is no software generated message or pop up in OS). To your second question: Yes, you can still use it (read the data on your computer) or on other device. I also tried it with that black single drive AKASA enclosure you see in my the video and copied the data to my PC from it (but I could have copied it directly from the ORICO while “red was on” - it wasn´t a necessity). To rebuild a RAID1 array you have to copy the data from the remaining “surviving” drive to your PC temporarily (doesn´t matter if you do if from the ORICO enclosure directly or if you insert it to your PC into a compatible M.2 slot or if you insert in into another M.2 SATA enclosure), then you can delete its partition in your PC (to erase it completely) and put it back to ORICO enclosure with a replacement drive (new one), initialize both drives like you did in the beginning, copy back the data from the PC to a newly created RAID1 array and keep using it as before. A little complicated, but it works.
Yes, but you have to format it first in your phone before you can start using it. When it is formatted for NTFS (Windows) your android phone can´t read from it.
@@scottross5495 Interesting info, I have never used this driver. Does it also allow writing the data to the NTFS partition when copying data (photos/videos) from the phone or just reading it? (I´m aware copying can be done in Windows)
