StarTech.com M.2 to SATA Adapter - Dual Slot - for 2.5in Drive Bay - RAID - M.2 SSD - M.2 Adapter - M.2 SSD Adapter , TAA (S322M225R)

After upgrading my computer, the only thing worth salvaging from the old machine was some m2 SSD storage. It was incredibly difficult to find an m2 to SATA adapter that doesn't require dual SATA data cables. I only had a single SATA data and power cable left on the chassis harness.The pins on my unit were set exactly the way I wanted (extend two m2s into a single logical unit), I still had to go through the power cycle with the unit on SET, shut down, move the shorting bridge back to its default position and power up. As soon as that was done, the computer immediately recognized the drive and wanted to format it.The only criticism I have (and its minor) is a little diagram showing where the pins are on the card. It took me way longer to understand what the instruction card was referring to, and the pins the instruction card refers to are on opposite sides of the card.But this is exactly what I wanted, exactly what I needed, it was super easy to install and get running, I would recommend.

junk. This thing is useless. It does nothing. Don't waste your money like I did.

I loaded 2 SSDs onto the card after configuring for RIAD 1 (mirror). I left the SATA settings as they were if I was adding a single 2.5" drive. This worked flawlessly. The server had seen the RAID array without any issues. I was able to load the OS and software just fine.I would recommend this product.

I have this drive carriage connected to a SuperMicro X10SDV-8C-TLN4F via SATA. On the carriage itself are two Sandisk X600 2TB M.2 SATA drives configured in RAID 0. The instructions were all followed for installation and RAID configuration. The drive is recognized by it's controller signature as "ASMT109x2D_Fast" in VMWare ESXi and I can format/partition the drive as a VMFS volume without issue. I use this drive adapter to host a large (3.3TB) VMDK flat file, which is then mounted in a VM. This same VM runs an samba service which shares out the mount point.Write operations over SMB, or even locally to the sata adapter (again, via a VMDK hosted on the RAID volume), are terrific. I have at or slightly greater write speeds than if the X600 drives were natively connected. Read operations have problems though with sustained high transfer rates. Reads over a network, say to play a movie or load a large TIFF image are generally fine. But if I wish to rsync data off the drive, or a recursive copy operation where transfer rates of 100MB/sec will be sustained for over 2-3 minutes, the drive will crash every time. I'll get goofy dmesg errors about sector read problems, and eventually the drive will lock up not only the VM which has the VMDK mounted, but the entire ESXi host itself. There seems to be some kind of buffering error in the drive carriage itself that causes these problems. Slow reads are fine, no issues.The adapter could/would work fine in say a workstation, but at the enterprise, it's just not built for high performance read operations and crashes consistently. Best to use a H/W RAID controller and a straight-through SATA drive carriage.

To save people the trouble and frustration I thought I'd share my experience regarding this adapter and JBOD (Just A Bunch Of Disks) mode:I was looking for a 2.5" dual M.2 drive single SATA adapter for my two identical 1 TB drives that offered JBOD to have a single enclosure in my external bay/dock setup to pop in for backups instead of having two separate 2.5" SATA enclosures. From the description I read and the research I did I thought this was possible. This one part is key though from their description: "The SSD adapter also supports non-RAID operation (JBOD) when paired with a port-multiplying SATA controller, so both drives can be used independently of one another". Remember that for later. Since I was using current (2019 and newer) external bays/docks/cases and a 2018 Mac Mini, I assumed that this port multiplying SATA controller technology would be part of it. Incorrect.When I received the adapter, I installed the M.2 drives, did the jumper settings, and popped it into my external dual USB bay. Up came one drive on the screen. Confused, I looked at Disk Utility, which also only showed one. Thinking I made a mistake with the jumper process, I tried again, same result. Thinking maybe my dual bay was incompatible somehow, I tried my external USB enclosure. Same thing. I thought I had to format the drives and do a special setup in Disk Utility. That wasn't it either.At this point I thought I had a defective unit, and started checking more carefully the reviews. A number of people mentioned the same issue; other RAID modes worked fine, but JBOD didn't for them. As a test, I configured the jumpers to RAID 1. Lo and behold, that came up fine and a short test using Carbon Copy Cloner worked. To eliminate the last possible issue being a macOS incompatibility, I connected the adapter externally to a W10 laptop with the JBOD setup. Same thing, only seeing one drive.I went to StarTech's site and did a Live Chat with a tech support rep. He was extremely knowledgeable and helpful. Explaining my situation, he clarified to me that these multiple SATA controllers exist on the unit housing the adapter itself: whether it be the internal connection of a computer, or an external docking bay or enclosure/case. As long as you have a semi recent computer, doing a direct internal install will be fine, with the computer having the proper multiple controllers. This is however not the case with the external ones, they are built with a single controller, either per case/enclosure or per slot in a docking bay. They can and only will be able to interpret one drive. While the StarTech adapter and ones like it does allow RAID setups because it essentially translates the drives into a single one the computer sees, it can't do the same to be compatible to show two separate drives.So for my situation, I will have to be returning this adapter as it doesn't serve my needs. 5 stars because technically the adapter did everything it was supposed to do, but -1 off because this explanation and clarification of JBOD and how it only works in internal setups and can't in normal external ones would and should have been added to the description. I hope this helps someone out.NOTE: If you DO want a true dual M.2 drive adapter that is JBOD compatible, StarTech does sell one in a case/enclosure form for $76 where the internals contain two SATA controllers: the StarTech Dual-Slot Hard Drive Enclosure for M.2 SATA SSDs (SM22BU31C3R): https://www.amazon.com/USB-3-1-SSD-Enclosure-Aluminum/dp/B06W9L34YC/

Works flawlessly as a RAID 0 solution in a new laptop; system recognized it as a single drive. My laptop (HP Envy 15") already had a m.2 slot for its main drive and was setup to use an internal 2.5" HDD for extra capacity...but I replaced the HDD with the dual m.2 solution (WD 500GB x2 - fyi) just for the heck of it. Laptop is ever-so-slightly lighter and the reserve data capacity is nice 'n peppy.