SilverStone MS08 Mobile Rack 3.5-inch RAID Enclosure Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

At the time of writing, the SilverStone MS08 Mobile RAID enclosure can be had for $38.99 at NewEgg and £25.10 at Amazon UK. German readers can find it starting from €32.73 through Geizhals.

Conclusion

SilverStone’s MS08 fills a need that you might not even know you had, an easy way to set up a hardware based RAID in a single 3.5-inch enclosure. The aluminium casing helps with both the heat dissipation and it makes the enclosure look pretty cool too. It’s also a sturdier construction than a full plastic enclosure would be. Whether you want to use the enclosure as a static resident in your system or take your dual RAID setup on the go, the MS08 should fill your needs.

The installation is a breeze thanks to everything that you need being in the box. Power adapter and SATA cable as well as screws to mount it inside a chassis are all included. The drive installation itself in the MS08 works tool-less where you just slide in the drives and close the door.

The MS08 is universally usable thanks to the external dimensions of a 3.5-inch drive. You can use it in external enclosures as well as mount it inside your chassis. Inside, you can mount two 2.5-inch drives up to 9.5mm and then set them for either JBOD, RAID 0, or RAID 1 mode. Speed, storage space, or redundancy: the choice is yours.

The small 2.5-inch drives aren’t as fast as their bigger 3.5-inch brothers, but they still take up an SATA3 port in your system. With two drives teaming up, you’ll be able to get a lot closer to those speeds. It does, however, come with a downside when using SSDs: They will easily reach the 6Gbps when teamed up.

Pros

• External dimensions like a 3.5-inch drive
• Aluminium enclosure
• Hardware RAID
• Holds 2.5-inch drives up to 9.5mm
• Tool-less design
• Hot-swappable

Cons

• You can’t eject just one drive at a time

“A Mobile RAID enclosure is one of those things that can come in very handy and the SilverStone MS08 would be a good choice for this any day.”

Thank You SilverStone for providing us with this sample