The CRU DataPort 25 USB/SATA RAID is a drive enclosure that fits two 2.5″ Laptop drives into the space of a 3.5″ hard drive or floppy. Rather than just being another enclosure that happens to carry two drives instead of one, the DataPort 25 can be set to use those two drives in any of four RAID modes.

The kit comes with everything that you need to get started. The frame is a sturdy piece of gear that contains all the connectors and electronics that will allow you to quickly dock your DataPort 25 enclosure. The backplane has the docking connector and interface electronics, while the front of the frame has an eject button underneath a key lock that serves as both a physical locking mechanism and an on/off switch. The back of the frame houses the power plug, an USB 2.0 connector, and a SATA connector.

The carrier is a solid enclosure that has just a single connector for power, and data. The size of a 3.5″ hard drive, the tray slides out of the shell to expose a lightweight frame with two 2.5″ hard drive connectors, one on top of the other. The carrier also has a set of dip switches that can be used to set the RAID mode.

Installing the DataPort 25 is simple. You install two drives into the carrier by snapping them into place and locking them down with the included screws. The drives don’t have to be of the same make, model, speed, or capacity, but generally it’s a good policy to make them as close to spec as possible since all but one RAID mode will limit your total storage according to the smallest drive. With the drives mounted, slide the tray into the enclosure and fasten the screws on the back. The enclosure is now ready to slide into the tray.

The DataPort 25 docking tray slides into your desktop or 3.5″ enclosure much like any floppy or hard drive. You use the include power adapter to connect a standard MOLEX power cable to the back of the CRU. You then have a variety of interface options. You can use the USB 2.0 port, or you can use a standard SATA cable to link it to your desktop. Both options give you hot swap capabilities for your drives assuming that you have a SATA controller that supports port multipliers.

With the tray installed, simply slide in the carrier and lock it into place using the key. To eject the carrier, unlock the device, and use the eject switch to remove the carrier. As everything is hot-swappable, there is no reboot needed.

The RAID level is set by a pair of DIP switches, one on the carrier and one on the frame, either of which can be used to tell the DataPort 25 which RAID you wish to use. In mode 1, the drives are concatenated, meaning that you will get one single visible drive that is twice as large as the smallest drive in the array. In mode 2 the drives are set for JBOD, or Just a Bunch of Disks. This treats each drive as an independent hard drive. Mode 3 is RAID 1, mirroring. This will give you two copies of your data for maximum protection. The last mode is RAID 0, Striping. This distributes your data across both drives, maximizing transfer speeds, but also giving you a single point of failure. If one drive dies, you lose everything.

Which RAID level you use is up to you, but you should closely consider what you want out of your enclosure. If you just want a large drive and you’re not worried about redundancy, choose Mode 1. If you want to maximize the space you get from the installed drives and you don’t care about having a single large drive, choose Mode 2. If you want maximum data protection to protect vital data, choose mode 3. If you want raw performance and you already have your data backed up elsewhere, choose Mode 4.

In our tests we used a variety of drives and drive configurations and each test showed that the DataPort 25 is almost transparent in the first three of its RAID modes. That means that performance is limited only by the quality of the drives that you put into the enclosure. When we switched to RAID 0, the stripping option, we averaged a 10-15% boost in transfer rates, good performance for those who need it, but again you need to understand that RAID 0 is the mode most susceptible to data loss.

The CRU DataPort 25 USB/SATA RAID is available online for ~$125.