SilverStone DS221 External 2.5-inch HDD Dual Bay RAID Enclosure Review

Final Thoughts
The DS221 is another great product from SilverStone.  The brushed aluminum finish on it really reminds me of some of their cases.  Most external hard drive enclosures that we have looked at are for 3.5-inch drives so seeing a 2.5-inch enclosure is a bit different.  2.5-inch drives are not extremely popular, but many people have old laptops that have them and with solid state drives becoming popular we are seeing more of them.  Installation of your drives takes less than 30 seconds and requires no tools or hardware at all, you just slide them in.

The DS221 does have both USB and eSATA connections.  The eSATA connection really speeds things up especially if you are using solid state drives like we did.  This enclosure also features 3 different modes, JBOD, RAID 0 and RAID 1.  Many enclosures do not offer these modes so it is nice to see and as you could see from our results you will see a speed increase using RAID 0.

There really is nothing bad I can say about the DS221, it does its job and does it will.  You can find the DS221 online for around $80 which seems about right with the eSATA connection and the 3 different modes.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the Silverstone DS221 External 2.5-inch HDD Dual Bay RAID Enclosure a 10 out of 10 score.

rating10 10 small

Pros:
– eSATA and USB connection
– Brushed aluminum design
– Easy installation
– JBOD, RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes

Cons:
– None that I found

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