Akitio NT2 U31C review: An easy and fast 10Gbps USB RAID enclosure (for hard drives) - romanthiche

At a Glint

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Selfsame easy installation and setup
• Good performance with calculative drives

Cons

• Atomic number 102 2.5-inch adapters enclosed

Our Verdict

With two tool-less/adapter-less 3.5-inch drive bays, this is one of the easiest international RAID boxes we've tried. RAID 1, Foray 0, spanning and non-RAID (multiple drive letters) modes are supported, and performance is quite reputable. There are no adapters for smaller drives, however, so consider this package for standard bad drives only.

Akitio's NT2 U31C offers mega-storage for multitude without mega-bucks. Sure, the privileged fewer may beat out for the uber-speed of Bombshell 3, but for most of us, USB 3.1 still reigns. You could opt for one of the many portable USB 3.1 velar drives (5Gbps Gen 1 types—10Gbps Gen 2 is overkill for platter-founded media) if your needs are acerose, or if you wishing quicker throughput, a Gen 2 portable SSD. But if you wishing more storage that those options provide, then a screen background Foray boxwood functioning a few today's big 3.5-inch demanding drives is what you want.

Specs and conception

The NT2 U31C is a three-fold-alcove enclosing of borderline size—for a package that butt hold 2 3.5-inch hard drives, that is: approximately 7.2 inches overnight by 4.8 inches high, by 3.2 inches wide. The two drive bays are hidden bottom a lockable, slide-off faceplate, and don't require adapters or tools for 3.5-inch drives—just slide them in.

Faceplate remotion and fond regard could be a little smoother, but I'm being picky. The all-metal design is sturdy and well-designed disdain the faceplate's slenderly awkward fond regard.

Akitio

The NT2 U31C is a nice-looking at box, and small considering that it will house two 3.5-edge stonelike drives.

The fact that Akitio doesn't provide 2.5-inch adapters seemed a little foreign-born. At to the lowest degree until I tested the unit with SSDs. More on that later. You can fit 2.5-inch hard drive or SSDs in the enclosure, but you're on your own for securing them. Akitio recommends its Neutrino bridge adapter, simply at $45 a pop music (it also serves as an extraneous USB 3.1 adapter), two are almost as expensive as the NT2 U31C itself.

You can scrounge up few adapters on Amazon for $6, or honorable insert the SSDs and let the pressure fit of the SATA power and data ports hold them in place, as I did. While this was sufficient for testing, I certainly wouldn't recommend information technology for travel, nor for 2.5-inch hard drives under any circumstance, As they could nourish damage if they drop away out while spinning.

Akitio

It's easy to circle the RAID mode for the NT2 U31C, but for data safety, it only works if you use drives that aren't partitioned.

On the back of the NT2 U31C unit are a power switch, the Actinium adapter interface, the Type-C USB 3.1 port (Type-C to Type-C, and Type-C to Typewrite-A cables are included), and the Set RAID button. Press and hold the Hardened RAID button while the drive is powered up but disconnected from the computer, and the quatern mode indicators (not-RAID/dual drive,  Twosome, RAID 0, Oregon RAID 1) will all bright up. To hard the Foray modality, press repeatedly until the prissy index lights up.  Long-press once again until every last foursome indicators light up, and the drives will be formatted.

Note that you postulate drives that aren't already partitioned. Arsenic a data safety care, the NT2 U31C won't overwrite existing partitions.

Performance

While you could easily just run the NT2 U31C as a mirrored RAID 1 array to protect your data (the Saami data is written to both drives), you'll draw the best carrying into action in RAID 0, where data is striped (snag) crosswise two drives. Foray into 0 usually delivers a shade under 2X the sustained throughput of a single drive; RAID 1, a shade under 1X.

For my main battery of tests, I victimised the Seagate 14TB  IronWolf Pro and BarraCuda In favor I had along hand combined in RAID 0. These are easily the quickest hard drives on the market—don't expect the same execution with less capacious or slower drives. Remember that RAID 0, while much faster, offers atomic number 102 data redundancy, and doubles the failure points (if either push on goes bad, the array is unuseable).

IDG

For sustained throughput, the NT2 U31C (with very fast hard drives inside) was nearly adequate to the Sandisk Extreme Pro and faster than the WD My Passport SSD.

When it came to reading and writing our single large 48GB charge (shown above), and even reading the 48GB coif of smaller files and folders, the NT2 U31C compared selfsame well with the external SSDs I tested it against. However, when writing smaller files and folders, the slower random accession of spinning platters shows, though non to the point that it would on a busy file server. In point of fact, you're not forsaking a whole lot.

CrystalDiskMark, shown below, perfectly illustrates that. Given the super-slow random write carrying out, you might've expected a slower public presentation with our file and folder mental testing. That said, a comparatively small part of the files in the folder test are Eastern Samoa small as the 4K blocks used aside CrystalDiskMark. The majority are several to dozens of megabytes in length.

IDG

Fast free burning throughput, non-and then-fast random access—the classic difference between hard effort and SSD technologies. That same, the NT2 U31C (gold bars) with its fast Seagate hard drives was pretty darn quick reading our 48GB coif of files and folders. Longer bars are better.

I've seen videographers, particularly those victimization Final Cut Pro's more intensive raw video, complain that their external drives can't render the video fast enough. The NT2 U31C with fast hard drives in Bust 0 should, given a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port. Note that Thunderbolt 3 is expensive overkill with hard drives until you start combining them four or more at a time in something so much every bit LaCie's 5big OR 12big.

While, every bit mentioned, there are no 2.5-inch adapters included, the advertizement on Akitio's site does portray the NT2-U31C as surefooted of utilizing SSDs. I tried it with several combinations. When using unrivaled capacities or brands, the results were non good—pathetic, in fact. With a matched twain of 1TB Seagate Barracuda SSDs, the counterfeit benchmarks showed good, if inconsistent results, simply real macrocosm copies hovered around the 300MBps mark. After about a half-twelve tries and various hours, I called information technology quits. It should fair-and-square work; it didn't. At least not as easily nor as well as information technology should have.

A nice package for fractious drives

Akitio or s nails IT with the design of this box in terms of leveraging a pair of 3.5-edge in hard drives. Information technology's solidly constructed, installation and Bust contour are comprehensive-easy, and it performs well. Outstanding stuff. But for 2.5-inch devices, look elsewhere.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/402587/akitio-nt2-u31c-review-an-easy-and-fast-10gbps-usb-raid-enclosure-for-hard-drives.html

Posted by: romanthiche.blogspot.com

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