external 2 bay raid enclosure recommendations

What are you going to use the box for?

to provide for a highly portable (and cheap) way to
(mostly) read
pairs of 2.5 inch hard drives (including SSDs) configured in
(mostly) raid0

Well, then you may not actually *need* an enclosure, but rather a hd dock (still with Raid 0/1 capabilities), which, while being less "rugged" would bear no issues with heating.
Something more along the line of (again no reccomendation)
http//www.dx.com/p/2-5-3-5-dual-dock-usb-3-0-docking-station-black-106956
or even 😯 (actualy very "zen" or "minimalistic")
http//www.dx.com/p/usb-2-0-to-dual-sata-hdd-adapter-converter-with-raid-0-raid-1-54257

Still not as a recommendation, I like this one
http//www.dx.com/p/maiwo-k307-4-slot-1-to-2-usb2-0-sata-hard-disk-base-black-3tb-max-228472
if you remove the bracket for 3.5" hard disk drives it will be IMHO "small enough".

Or this one (still as "generic" recommendation, in my experience the Zalman Iodd proved to be a working a reliable piece of hardware)
http//zalman.com/eng/product/Product_Read.php?Idx=408

jaclaz

@jaclaz, thanks very much for all your feedback! It's really useful.

@jaclaz, thanks very much for all your feedback! It's really useful.

You are welcome, I am sure )
Keep us posted with what you will end up with and about how it will (hopefully well) behave in your use.

jaclaz

I have been using some Icy dock enclosures. Lots of options and combinations.Icy Dock
Chris

A brief comment to close out this thread and hopefully be of help to anyone who happens to be searching for something similar.

I have finally decided to go with a dual-bay "drop-in" external caddy which presents the two drives as individual drives to my analysis machine and to do a software-based raid reassembly (take your pick of countless software options).

The reason for the decision is that of all of the external raid housings that I looked at (various examples in the thread) - not a single one had configurable raid settings (beyond the raid level itself) and many of them did not document what the specifics of their different in-built raid settings were, making it next to impossible to do a compatibility check with the (potential) target install base.

Well, if you are going down this "software RAID" route, IF the laptop has two USB 3.0 ports (and possibly UASP compatible ones), then it would make even more sense to use two separate adapters, something *like*
http//www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/USB-3-SATA-adapter-cable-with-UASP~USB3S2SAT3CB

jaclaz