TerraMaster Intros D2-320 2-bay RAID Enclosure with 10 Gbps USB 3.2

[btarunr]

TerraMaster today introduced the D2-320 2-bay RAID enclosure. Just to be sure, this isn't a NAS server, but a USB-based RAID enclosure that you can directly connect to your PC, or a NAS server that will recognize it as a USB mass-storage device. The D2-320 is a generational upgrade over the D2-310. While the original D2-310 features a 5 Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 1 host interface, the new D2-320 ups the host interface bandwidth to 10 Gbps, using USB 3.2 Gen 2. This increases the maximum transfer speed to 1,075 MB/s, up from 410 MB/s on the D2-310. The actual transfer speeds will depend on the storage devices installed. The maximum volume size has also been increased to 44 TB from the previous 22 TB.

You get two 3.5-inch drive bays with SATA 6 Gbps interfaces, which you can use for HDDs, or SSDs, and access them as JBODs, where the mass-storage device mounts each disk and its separate volumes; or arrays, with the enclosure supporting RAID 0 and RAID 1. File systems supported include NTFS, APFS (MacOS), EXT4, exFAT, and FAT32. You toggle the RAID modes manually on the device, using a flat-head screwdriver. The device draws power from a power brick, and features a USB-C cable (type-A adapter included). A single 80 mm fan keeps the drives cool. Available now, the TerraMaster D2-320 is priced around $150.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[bug]

I find it interesting nobody pressures NAS makers to abandon 2-bay in favor of 3-bay designs at a minimum.

2 bays means basically RAID1, I don't think there's is much use for RAID0. 3 bay gives you at least an option for RAID5, which is both secure and more efficient (in that you only "lose" 33% storage capacity).

 

[kapone32]

I find it interesting nobody pressures NAS makers to abandon 2-bay in favor of 3-bay designs at a minimum.

2 bays means basically RAID1, I don't think there's is much use for RAID0. 3 bay gives you at least an option for RAID5, which is both secure and more efficient (in that you only "lose" 33% storage capacity).

2 SSDs in RAID 0 could be a nice use for a few applications.

 

[bug]

2 SSDs in RAID 0 could be a nice use for a few applications.

Except... you probably don't have the bandwidth over Ethernet to use the peak sequential transfer speeds. And it's also still impractical to build a NAS around SSDs, everything above 4TB is really expensive. For "a few applications" like you put it, it can make sense though.

 

[kapone32]

Except... you probably don't have the bandwidth over Ethernet to use the peak sequential transfer speeds. And it's also still impractical to build a NAS around SSDs, everything above 4TB is really expensive. For "a few applications" like you put it, it can make sense though.

The USB in this should be able to provide the full 1 GB/s that RAID 0 provides on SSD.