Terramaster D2310 Usb Type C External Hard Drive Review

Depending upon the number of images or videos you lot have, y'all might need to rely upon external hard drives for much of your daily photography work. The biggest issue, though, is that this tin result in a significant slowdown compared to editing photos via an internal drive, especially SSD or flash storage. What are your options? One possibility is to use an external hard drive enclosure capable of RAID configurations, letting you speed upwardly your storage or mirror the data on your drives automatically for peace of listen. The TerraMaster D2-310 Hard Drive Enclosure is one such entry-level RAID enclosure, retailing for $160 (non including the two hard drives it tin accept). In the review below, we will swoop into the D2-310 and explain whether or non information technology is a skillful piece of equipment for people seeking a more than advanced external hard drive solution.

Specifications

Below are some of the important specifications of the D2-310:

• Total hard drives accepted: Up to 2
• Supported drive types: SATA and SSD, 2.five and 3.5 inch
• Connection: USB Type C
• Transport protocol: USB 3.1, Gen two, 10 GB/southward
• Maximum supported capacity: 24 TB (12 TB per drive)
• Maximum read speed: 410 MB/s (depends upon drives you use)
• Maximum write speed: 400 MB/south (depends upon drives you utilize)
• Included in box: D2-310 enclosure, power string, USB-C string, user manual, screwdrivers (2), needle tool (for reset), screws (for assembly)

The TerraMaster D2-310 – a Directly-Fastened Storage (DAS) Solution

You may accept heard the acronym "DAS" thrown out earlier to describe storage, along with its counterpart, "NAS." The uncomplicated difference is that DAS (Directly-Attached Storage) drives are storage options that adhere to your computer directly, including everything from an SD card to a thumb bulldoze, besides as external hard drive enclosures like the D2-310. NAS (Network-Fastened Storage), on the other hand, is connected to a network and hence must be accessed from it. While DAS storage tin only be continued to a unmarried machine, NAS can be shared between multiple computers, as explained in our Storage Considerations for Photography article. Despite all the advantages of NAS, DAS arrays are typically cheaper and they are easier to set up, since they act just like external hard drives.

In the instance of the D2-310, it is a DAS array that must be directly connected to a estimator, which can be a downside for photographers sharing workspace with other team members or working remotely. However, it does have one singled-out reward over typical, basic NAS arrays that work over regular 1 Gbit networks: its potential performance. With the USB three.1 interface, the D2-310 is capable of very fast transfer rates over 400 MB/s, which is not possible to achieve with NAS devices over a 1 Gbit network.

RAID 1 and RAID 0

The D2-310 itself does non come with any hard drives, which is normal for this type of product. Instead, information technology is set in a fashion which allows you to add up to two SATA or SSD hard drives of your own – the same type that normally goes into a computer. The do good of this setup is that information technology allows you lot to use whatever low-cost, fast storage y'all tin find, including existing difficult drives for a PC build that you might take laying around in your house. On top of that, the D2-310 too allows you to configure the two drives in a number of different configurations, including RAID 0 and RAID 1.

• RAID 0: Made for speed. If you lot configure the D2-310 in RAID 0, you're giving a pregnant speed boost to your external storage. Essentially, the storage assortment is capable of reading from and writing to two drives at the same fourth dimension, significantly increasing performance. The downside is that if ane hard drive fails, yous lose all of your data in the whole array.
• RAID i: Drives are mirrored for safety. In this configuration, every file copied onto the storage gets copied to both drives simultaneously. In fact, it functionally acts similar a single hard drive, except that all your data is stored on it twice (information technology fifty-fifty appears equally a single drive within the operating system). If one of your two drives fails, the information remains intact – put in a replacement, and the information will replicate automatically. The downsides? Less speed, and half the storage infinite (because each drive mirrors the other).

Because the D2-310 just allows for two hard drives, these are the only 2 RAID configurations you can set up. However, larger storage enclosures with four and more than drive enclosures allow for other types of RAID, such as RAID five, RAID 6 and RAID x.

Construction

The D2-310 is built very solidly, with an all-aluminum outside. The included toolkit has everything you lot need in order to set up the hard drives yourself, including 2 screwdrivers and a needle tool to admission the D2-310'southward "reset" push button.

Heat dissipation on the D2-310 is impressive, and I accept yet to experience any issues with the aluminum feeling hot to the impact, or even particularly warm.

On rest, its construction is skilful. However, in that location are a couple modest issues worth noting. Showtime, the aluminum does not do a not bad job dampening the audio of spinning drives, resulting in a organisation that isn't especially quiet. It isn't loud, either, but you'll notice a clear difference between this and something similar a silent SSD (if you use the D2-310 with SSD drives, of course, the dissonance decreases, although you lot however hear the fan).

The other issue is that the dial for alternate between the various configuration options (RAID 0 and 1, too every bit a couple other options) feels like it was added as an afterthought, despite its importance. Although it is perfectly functional, mine looks like it was marked with hand-drawn red pen to indicate which direction it's actually pointing. Again, it still works fine, just it's a bit of an oddity.

Configuration Options

In add-on to RAID 0 and RAID 1, the D2-310 too allows two other drive configurations: JBOD and Single.

• JBOD substantially combines the drives into a larger one; in this configuration, if yous have two drives of different sizes, say 1 TB and two TB, JBOD will combine the two into a unmarried 3 TB volume (with RAID 0, the drives would need to be the same capacity). This configuration does non take the speed benefit of RAID 0, although it might make it easier to recover information from one drive if the other fails.
• Single keeps the drives completely carve up. It is the only storage configuration which results in both drives appearing independently on your computer, equally if they aren't role of the same enclosure at all. In my stance, this negates one of the main benefits of the D2-310 in the first identify, which is to allow RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. However, some people may find "Single" useful for swapping drives individually, or keeping totally independent information on both drives at the same fourth dimension.

Speed Comparisons

One major reason to purchase the D2-310 is for the potential speed benefit it has to offer. But how much of a heave volition y'all get compared to normal external (and internal) drives for things similar reading, writing, and transferring files?

I ran a few tests with the drives I accept bachelor to compare. Go on in listen that the speed of the D2-310 tin can change depending upon the quality of the difficult drives you use in information technology; I had 2 2 TB NAS drives from HGST, which are relatively fast 7200 RPM drives, only there are larger and faster options on the market. This chart compares the speeds of the four configurations on the D2-310, as well equally the internal SSD of my MacBook Pro (early 2013, 16 GB RAM, ii.8 GHz Intel Cadre i7, with a 1 GB NVIDIA 650M graphics card), tested with Blackmagic Deejay Speed Test for Mac:

Storage Blazon	Read Speed (MB/s)	Write Speed (MB/southward)
iA slight departure betwixt the ii drives in Single manner is to be expected. Even though they are the same model, speed will never be completely consistent.
RAID 0	276.9	269.5
RAID 1	149.viii	137.4
JBOD	153.5	149.one
Single (1st Drive)	138.ii	137.i
Single (2nd Drive)1	149.3	132.vii
MacBook Pro Internal Storage	281.8	178.five

Non bad! In RAID 0, the D2-310 has a significantly faster write speed than even my MacBook Pro's internal storage does, according to Blackmagic (though, granted, my calculator is starting to irksome downwards with age). TerraMaster claims that the D2-310'southward maximum speed can attain up to 410 MB/s (read) or 400 MB/southward (write) with certain hard drives, although it could be quite expensive to buy drives that can reach that limit. RAID 1, JBOD, and Unmarried modes but prove minor differences in functioning.

So, how does the D2-310 with the HGST drives compare to cheaper options? I tested a sample external hard drive to compare (the 5 TB WD Elements Desktop hard drive, retailing for $154) against the D2-310 in RAID 1 configuration by transferring a 1 GB file to each. The resulting times: 15 seconds for the D2-310, and 41 seconds for the WD Elements difficult bulldoze. This is the benefit of using fast storage, likewise as a speedy USB-C connection!

Summary

The D2-310, equally a whole, is quite a good slice of equipment. In fact, the main upshot is that it only allows for ii external hard drives, which is something yous would know from the start. Every bit it is, there is no way to proceeds the benefits of both RAID one and RAID 0 simultaneously, meaning that you will need to make a conclusion between the two, taking things similar data loss and speed into consideration.

The slight problems with the build quality of the D2-310 are merely modest concerns, and the bonny toll makes this a skillful value if you want to examination the waters of advanced DAS storage. It certainly is faster and more characteristic-rich than a normal external hard drive, making it a feasible solution for avant-garde tasks similar video editing or intensive Photoshop work.

You tin purchase the D2-310 from the Amazon link below:

• TerraMaster D2-310 Hard Drive Enclosure – $160

TerraMaster D2-310 Difficult Drive Enclosure

• Features
• Build Quality
• Value
• Ease of Use
• Speed and Operation

Photography Life Overall Rating

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Source: https://photographylife.com/reviews/terramaster-d2-310

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