Mediasonic Dual Bay RAID Hard Drive Enclosures Review

USB 2.0 Enclosure (HUR1-SU2)

Manufacturer Product Page: Mediasonic Web Store
Product Number: HUR1-SU2
Availability: Now
Price: $80CAD
Warranty Length: 1 year


Firewire Enclosure (HUR1-SU2FWB)

Manufacturer Product Page: Mediasonic Web Store
Product Number: HUR1-SU2FWBB
Availability: Now
Price: $150CAD
Warranty Length: 1 year



The idea of external drive enclosures is not a new one. In fact the original IBM "Personal Computer" (AKA IBM 5150) did not even come with an internal hard drive, and neither did early Apple computers. Up until Seagate (then known as Shugart Technology) released the ST-506 5.25 inch, 5 megabyte hard drive, the very idea of having an internal hard drive was ludicrous. Pre-1980 hard drives were huge devices with platters either 8 inches or 14 inches wide and were colloquially referred to as "washing machines” which you could make “dance” by properly timing seek and reads.

The idea of storage enclosures being in a RAID format is also not a new idea, it is simply taking another page from the server market where most if not all external enclosures come with different RAID levels. What is new is the idea of having a small light weight drive enclosure that can use normal 3.5” SATA hard drives and be able to set them up in a RAID.

Just recently Canadian-based Mediasonic, a relative newcomer to the market, released two small external enclosures named the HUR1-SU2 (USB2.0) and the HUR1-SU2FWB (Firewire & USB 2.0). These devices are marketed as low-priced, "instant" storage solutions that are designed for archival backups, large-capacity portable storage, classified/sensitive data storage, or just extra disk storage. Both of these units are small 2 bay enclosures that not only allow you to use any 3.5” SATA hard drive but also allow you to set them up in RAID 1 or 0. Even better still this requires no special hardware or software to be installed on the host computer. The enclosures take care of all the work, which makes these units complete, self sustained hardware appliances that will work equally well on Apple or PC computers.

In this review we will be taking a closer look a both the USB 2.0 and the Firewire versions of these enclosures. They each come with a one-year warranty and are widely available at various etailers throughout the country or can be purchased directly through the Mediasonic webstore.