Using a USB 3.0 External RAID Drive Enclosure

General Discussion
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Anyone using a 3.5" Raid enclosure they really like/had no issues with… (bonus points for amazon links)… :grinning:

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Not RAID, so if that’s critical stop.
I’ve used Sabrent without any issues 3.5" and just added a 2.5" to my second tablo. I’ve, personally, found various WD (Green 3.5", Blue 2.5") to last for years without any need to intervene - but that’s my experience.

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Again not RAID, but I bought this Vantec 3.5” enclosure with a fan in it to active cool the HDD.

5 years later, it works and so does the WD Blue drive in it.

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Yea I currently have something similar but looking to upgrade to a RAID … thanks though.

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I am using this raid external enclose for several month without any issue.

Mediasonic ProRaid USB 3.0 2 Bay 3.5 inch SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0 Support UASP and SATA 3 6.0Gbps Speed (Version 2) (HUR5-SU3) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LFSPQLS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_p4g3Db726XTRH

2 Likes
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Nice, good find. Cheap enough as well.

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I know this is an older thread but I thought I’d post some information that might be useful for people interested in a RAID configuration.

I pulled the information from several different posts and was able to pretty easily replace a Seagate 2TB USB drive with a 4TB TERRAMASTER D2-310 USB Type C External Hard Drive RAID.

I was able to copy all my existing recordings from the old Seagate USB drive to the new USB RAID Enclosure just fine.

The process was pretty straight forward and is documented in different pieces of different posts but I wanted to put it all in one place here. Thanks to everyone for all the information out there on this.

I performed the process using a Windows 11 PC. For those of you on Mac machines you might find the information useful but may need to adapt the process to fit your platform.

Also, I see they (Tablo Support) still don’t have internal hard drives in external enclosures on the official supported list so I guess this is kind of a “use at your own risk” configuration.

Hardware: (My Tablo device: Tablo DUAL 64GB)

  1. TERRAMASTER D2-310 External RAID - This seems to be working fine. It was immediately recognized by the Tablo device and seems to be faster that my original Seagate external USB drive. It’s only been running a few days on the Tablo but no issues to date. Cost was $159 for the RAID. The unit itself is pretty nice. The housing is metal and seems very solid. The unit operates fairly quietly and the drives ran at decent temperatures. Mine were running 37c-39c during the copy process.

  2. RAID Drives: Seagate Barracuda ST4000DM000 4TB Drives (2 of them for RAID 1 configuration.)
    Cost was about $55 each.

Process:

  1. Configure the RAID as RAID 1 for mirroring.

  2. Attach the RAID to the Tablo device and format the drive from the Tablo.

  3. Install Linux File Systems for Windows by Paragon Software on your PC. You can get this online from Paragon or places like Staples, etc. From Paragon they have a free version that works fully functional for a period of time and then gets slowed down or you can buy it for about $20. This is what you see referenced in other posts as Paragon EXTFS. I installed this on a Windows 11 machine. After installed this on the PC I rebooted it.

  4. Connect your old external Tablo drive and the new USB RAID enclosure to the PC with the Paragon software on it. As soon as I did this both drives were immediately available to the Windows 11 PC. I was able to access them using File Explorer with no issues. They were already in Read / Write mode so additional nothing to do beyond plugging them in.

Both devices were plugged into USB 3.0 ports on the PC.

  1. Use Windows File Explorer to copy the folders & files from the old Tablo External Drive to the new USB RAID Enclosure.

This went fine but it took a long time to do. I started it about 1:30pm and at midnight it was about 60% complete. It was done by 9am the next morning so it finished overnight on it’s own.

I copied 2TB worth of files in that time.

Compare the contents of the old and new drives to make sure you got everything copied over.

I copied everything that was on the old drive to the new one to be sure nothing was overlooked.

  1. I shut down the Windows PC to make sure the external drives closed off cleanly before disconnecting them.

  2. Connect the new USB External RAID enclosure to the Tablo and restart things.

  3. I spot checked and all the recordings seemed to be fine. Everything looked the same as it did on the old drive.

Playback does seem a bit faster using the new External Raid.

I set up some new recordings and tested them. Everything seems to be working fine.

The new device shows properly on the Tablo with about 50% of it’s storage free which is as it should be.

That’s it. All in all it was pretty straight forward but it did take some time to complete and cost about $260 or so in hardware (drives + enclosure).

Now I have a 4TB RAID on my Tablo so in theory the recordings are protected from a drive failure. That part remains to be tested although it should work just as a RAID would work on a Windows or MAC PC.

Anyway, hopefully this helps for any of you considering setting up a RAID on your Tablo system.

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