CENMATE 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure with Cooling Fan for 2.5/3.5" SATA HDD/SSD With USB A/C 3.0＋eSATA Cable, 3.5 Hard Drive Reader Supports 80TB Capacity(NO RAID/NAS)

Purchased 2 of these 4-Bay no-RAID CENMATE units to replace 7 separate external hard drives I use for various projects. Main reason was to cut down the amount of connecting cables and more importantly mains adapters. Now down from 7 to 2 mains adapters plus I have one spare drive capacity/ My drives fitted straight in there with none of the supplied screws needed. They were already formatted and loaded with data and booted up and worked first time - no initialisation, no re-copying or whatever. My drives fitted the trays perfectly, and everything snapped into place with very little effort. Start to finish , swap over 7 hard drives to the 2 units , 15 mins and most of that time was undoing all the screws in my old casings. Looks great , tidies up my workstation no end . Unit does make an audible sound with the fan but within minuets forgot all about it . Great unit , highly recommended.

Original review is below - now that the initial issue is sorted, time for a proper review. This 4-Bay no-RAID CENMATE unit _does_ work well. My drives fitted straight in there (Seagate IronWolf) with none of the supplied just-in-case screws needed. They were already formatted and loaded with data - and this just worked - no initialisation, no re-copying or whatever. Maybe my system is different to other disappointed reviewers: the disks are XFS formatted and worked previously in an UnRaid server, and then in an ancient ICYBOX enclosure hooked up to a Raspberry Pi running Open Media Vault - as they are in this CENMATE box. Anyway, it's shovelling data round like a boss, so I'm happy and would buy another. ------- earlier review from the day of purchase------ This works, and seems to work well... but I had to use my own power supply. I thought maybe the supplied unit would work with a UK 'shaver adapter', but it doesn't. Amazon doesn't seem to let me get in touch with the vendor; I could send the whole lot back, but now it's here and in use... Update: Aha! The vendor saw this and made contact. All sorted amicably. Thanks :)

At first when I've tried to fit HDDs, I've almost broke the plastic container, so looked closely what's wrong. There is one plastic pin which I had to cut on all plastic drawers (manual doesn't mention about it), otherwise drive wouldn't fit straight (it seems they expect some hole in the drive at the bottom which is not there). After that 20TB Seagate IronWolf could fit and they worked fine on Ubuntu. Then I've tried to fit 12TB Seagate Barracuda, removing pin was not enough, these HDDs doesn't have middle screw holes, so blue part couldn't fit in, but somehow I was able to take off the blue part from both sides, which is challenging without breaking it, then it worked as well (it still fit without blue parts). Another con is that it will force re-connects all the other drives once you connect the new one, and mess up the mounting point. So I guess you should only connect the new one, when you unmount all the existing one. In overall, what would you expect for this price. It basically suits its purpose and it works, nothing more.

Terrible item dont wast you money.I could list all the faults but there is not enough space available.

I purchased this 4-bay HDD enclosure hoping for a reliable solution to house my hard drives, but while it gets the job done, there are notable drawbacks that prevent me from giving it a higher rating. One major issue is the airflow. The enclosure relies on a small 40mm fan, which struggles to keep the drives cool, especially when all four bays are in use. During heavier workloads, the temperature inside climbs to around 50°C, which is concerning for the longevity of the drives. A larger or more efficient fan would have made a significant difference. The fan itself is another problem. It’s quite loud and produces an annoying whistling sound, which is particularly disruptive at night or in a quiet environment. This makes the enclosure less suitable for home offices or bedrooms. Additionally, the build quality leaves much to be desired. The plastics used feel cheap and flimsy, giving the impression that the enclosure might not withstand long-term use. For a product priced over £100, I expected sturdier materials and better craftsmanship. While the enclosure functions as intended and holds four drives, the combination of poor airflow, noisy operation, and subpar build quality makes it hard to justify the high price. It’s a decent option if you’re in a pinch, but there are better alternatives out there for the cost.

I used this for two external Hard drives I had that I could never get to work properly WD 1 Tb & 2Tb. I removed them from their original casing and placed then easily into two of the drawers on this 4 bay HD enclosure. I also had an old tower computer from 2002. I used it quite often for photos etc - it was never connected to the internet. The computer stopped working and I was worried I lose all my doc and photos. I removed the hard drives and placed them into the other two drawers. I connected this to my laptop. It easily opens up and I now can access everything that was on my old computer and I have masses of storage - it is simple to use. It makes a slight noise when on - I assume a fan or something which I'd expect. I have got rid of my tower computer which gives me a lot more space! It is neat and portable and great for me to archive all old scanned photos etc . Hopefully it continues to impress me - so far so good.

Really good external hard drive units. Works perfectly as a direct attached storage. Purchased an alternative first which wiped my drives but this is so good in fact I bought two of them. Would definitely recommend.

Very easy to set up and easy to use. Noise level good and manageable, especially if you mount the unit on foam or polystyrene. Speed of transfer very good but obviously depends on your computer input port - USB 2, 3, 3.1, 3.2. Worth purchasing a 3.2 port if your PC does not have one. Works well with laptops.

Le boîtier en lui-même est de bonne manufacture, les tiroirs coulissent parfaitement. Il est très facile de le mettre en œuvre avec les outils et la visserie fourni. C'est en utilisation que ça se gâte car même si les vitesses de transfert sont plus que correctes, le ventilateur vous fera vite mal à la tête. J'ai réussi à limiter le bruit en installant le boîtier sur un meuble qui ne fait pas caisse de résonance, mais même comme ça il faut l'allumer le temps de transférer les données et ensuite il faut l'éteindre rapidement. Je pense regarder chez noctua si je peux trouver un ventilateur équivalent. Pour le bruit je retire une étoile.

Super easy setup. I had older 4TB drives from a western digital raid device that was not longer supported. Not wanting to loose the use of the drives, I bought this drive dock. Works great. No bothersome software. Each drive has its own drive letter.

1/ Niveau hardware, c'est propre : le montage des disques est facile, et tout est fourni pour des disques 3.5" ou des SSD/disques 2.5". 2/ Le ventilateur est TRÈS BRUYANT, mais l’appareil fonctionne si on le débranche. 3/ IMPORTANT : les disques ne sont pas hot-plug. Une configuration RAID logiciel avec plusieurs disques perdra l’ensemble des disques si l’on retire un seul disque de la baie. Le bus semble se réinitialiser lorsqu’on ajoute ou retire un disque à chaud. En dehors de cela, ça répond à mon besoin. Pour le hot-plug, je ne suis pas certain que je l’aurais acheté si j’avais su.

Great value for the money. Within minutes, I was able to install four 1TB drives into their carriers, connect and power-up the device and had a working system. My only possible concern would be the efficiency of its (very quiet BTW) cooling system long-term. But my initial impressions are very good.

Update July 1, 2025: After using these for a while, I am changing the rating from 5 starts to 1 star. Once I got these set up and in use, I noticed that one of the drives would drop out of the mdadm RAID array (software RAID running on Linux). Sometimes there would be two drives dropped, with mdadm reporting that the drive was faulty and was taken out of the RAID array. Each time it happens I have to remove the drive from the array and add it back in. Sometimes that doesn't work and I have to re-initialize the disk. Running diagnostics (smartctl) on the drives would never show an error, and it wasn't the same drive that had the issue each time. Everything works fine until it doesn't, the works again after I remove/add the drive. I don't think it's heat related as the drive temps are within parameters. After a couple of cycles of this, I submitted a support request via the manufacturer's web page. After almost two weeks, I have yet to get a reply, or even an acknowledgement that they received it. Of course now I am past Amazon's return window. So for now, this falls into the "nice idea, too bad it didn't work" category. Spend your money elsewhere. [Original review] I am in the process of replacing my old desktop PCs (one for Linux, another for windows) and file servers (Linux/NFS/Samba) and I needed someplace to put the SSDs and hard drives in the server so I can get rid of the old behemoths that take up too much space, use too much power, generate too much heat and are, frankly, getting old enough where they don't do what I need them too, expecially in terms of connectivity. The storage in the old server was all internal, and mostly 3.5-inch hard drives. I had bought a small enclosure that does hardware RAID, and connects to the server with USB 3. Unfortunately, it was really intended for use with Macs and although my newer Windows PC would work with it, the old Linux boxes just wouldn't see the drives in it as bare drives, and wouldn't see the RAID array at all. With the new server, it still won't see the RAID or eve JBOD, but would see the drives with it set up for individual disks. Unfortunately when I configured a Linux software RAID one of the drives would show an error and the RAID software would take it off line even though no SMART errors were being logged. The drives worked fine in another enclosure. I am still working with the vendor to provide a solution, but in the meantime I bought one of these. It does not do RAID (I am quite happy with Linux software RAID) but Linux reliably sees the four drives and I configured two RAID1 arrays without a hitch, no problems and no errors. These enclosures are drop dead simple to use. No tools are required to install the drives and once powered up and connected to the server I see all four drives. If you want RAID, you do it in software (also easy on Linux) and you see however many RAID arrays you create (in my case I had two 2T and two 8T drives, so each pair was a RAID 1 array. If you had 4 drives the same size, you could do RAID 5 and get more out of your storage. The USB interface is surprisingly fast. The drive trays are plastic, but they don't go anywhere so that should be fine. They stay cool enough (the metal external case doesn't even feel warm) and the fan is effective without being noisy. The power supply is more than adequate for 4 drives, and really overkill if you are using SSDs or 2.5-inch drives. After the fight I had with the previous enclosure, I was thrilled to have zero issues with this one. I was impressed enough that I bought another for some additional drives that I have. With the mini-PC and two of these enclosures, the total size is less than a third of my old server, it's quieter, generates less heat, uses less power and it at least as fast. I ended up with effectively a home-built NAS for a fraction of the price, with no proprietary component (read "expensive"0 to worry about. What is not to like?