Everyone knows that your data is the most important thing in the world when it comes to computers. There is almost never a day where I don’t hear about someone losing their precious family photos or their past 10 years of scanned documents. To the normal user, having a “backup” of their data sounds expensive and difficult to use. I know this just by dealing with my own family.
Sometimes it can be hard to find an easy, affordable and reliable solution for external PC backups in one product. I have used several HDD enclosures and NAS products from several different makers and never really fell in love with any of them. Most of them have extremely complicated menus that you have to sift through to try and figure out how to change the RAID setup of the device. Then you have to wait several hours just for it to format a few hundred Gigs of space.
In the past, when deciding on a RAID capable enclosure you really need to prioritize what is important to you and ask yourself a few questions. How much does it cost? How reliable it is? How easy is it to use? Keep all of those questions in mind as you read this review and I think you will be pleasantly surprised with this enclosure.
Special thanks to SilverStone for providing us with the DS322 enclosure to review.
Features and Specifications
– Supports 2x 3.5-Inch SATA II/III HDD
– Up to 5Gbps SuperSpeed via USB 3.0 connection
– Backwards compatible with USB 2.0 (480 Mbps)
– 40mm Cooling fan
– Supports up to 4TB volumes
– User Configurable RAID 0/1 and Non-RAID modes
– Screwless design
– 175mm(D) x 80mm (W) x 120mm (H)
Now lets dive in and see the SilverStone DS322 up close.
Packaging
The SilverStone DS322 comes in a very informative box. The front lits several of its features while the back picks three of the big ones and gives you a bit more information about those features and some pictures for visual support. The back also lists all of the technical specifications.
Once we get the box open you can see that they used two pieces of closed cell foam to hold the enclosure and put it in a thin bubble wrap bag for some additional padding. Out of the packaging you can see there are only four things that come in the box. The enclosure, power cable, USB 3.0 cable and manual.
I want to talk a little about the manual. Being a guy and especially a techy guy, I never read manuals and I’m sure that most of you reading this don’t either. So I’ll tell you right now, RTFM! It looks like a heavy read but its in ten different languages so it’s really only six pages long. It’s great for people that are new to RAID because it spells out what each RAID mode does and how it can be used.
For a full unboxing and overview of the DS322 check out our video below.