D4-320 as enclosure. Putting HDD with data and important files

[lesliehu]

Hi, I own D4-320 and I have a hard drive that came back from data recovery lab (no backup yet).

I just want to make sure before i do a backup, does my important files are going to be safe if insert the hard drive?

I'm planning to insert the drive with with files and another blank hard drive to make a backup. Not Raid1

I will copy the files as is using total commander or mirror using freesync or syncthing.

[TMzethar]

What is the file system format of your disc?
If your disc is in a file system format that is recognised by PC/MAC, then you can see the data on the disc directly through the D4-320.
If you can't see the data and it even prompts you to format it, please try to use a tool that supports that file system or connect to a computer system that supports it.

[lesliehu]

File system is NTFS and will be connecting to Windows PC.

Just to clarify, my main worry is does D4-320 works like a regular 3.5 hdd enclosure, like portable hard drive that connects to PC through USB but with 4 disk inside?

I can see in the specification in your website that Raid is supported though single disk only. I'm afraid that when I insert my disk that does not have any backup yet, D4-320 might re-initialize the disk due to RAID before treating my hdd as single disk

I just want to make sure this works like regular USB enclosure with no RAID controller, software or any other functionality that could potentially wipe my data when I insert my disk and plug into my PC

[TMzethar]

The D4-320 only supports Single, it will recognize your disks like a normal hard disk enclosure. It can only use RAID if you specifically use some third-party RAID utility.

[lesliehu]

Thank you for the clarification.

My other concern would be copying all the files from one disk to another having both hdd in one D4-320 unit. Is this ideal? Is it going to be slow and will likely to encounter an error during backup since the transfer is happening to one USB 3 cable only?

[TMcola]

If you just put it together, but don't component the RAID array, and in addition, whether the speed of USB replication is slow is affected by many factors, please follow the guide to troubleshoot.viewtopic.php?f=86&t=448

[TMzethar]

You may be concerned that transferring HDD A to HDD B from the same D4-320 will be slowed down because both reading and writing go through the same interface and cable.
The D4-320 provides approximately 10Gbps of transfer bandwidth, so reads and writes to HDDs will not be slowed down as long as the computer's USB port also provides sufficient bandwidth.

[lesliehu]

@TMcola
Thank you, this is useful information. A good reference if I need to troubleshoot in the future.

@TMzethar
Yes, you are correct, having one usb cable for reading and writing is what I am concern. Thank you for the clarification on this one. Since I have an old laptop with only USB 3.0 interface, I will just buy a single enclosure to ensure max speed is achieve.