Final Thoughts
For those looking for secure data protection for their files the Taurus Mini Super-S LCM is a great choice. Offering both RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring) modes you are able to keep data safe even if one of the hard drives you are using decides to die. I have lost a few hard drives over the past few years and while you don’t think about it when the drive is working when it dies you really can lose important documents, photos, media and much more. And unless you want to pay an excessive amount of money for data recovery those files are gone…forever.
Being that this enclosure is made for 2.5-inch hard drives it is small, out of the way and will fit on almost any desk. Solid state drives are all the craze, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend them for this enclosure, unless you are getting a SATA 3GB/s drive. This enclosure only has USB 2.0 eSATA (SATA 3GB/s) and Firewire connections so you are not going to really get the speed out of solid state drives. You can pick up normal 2.5-inch hard drives pretty cheap these days.
Since you do have 3 different connections it allows you to take the enclosure with you to different places and have access to your files (work/home). Although you don’t often see a 9pin Firewire connection on PC’s, this is mainly for Mac users. The LCD on the front of the device not only looks good it is pretty useful. It allows you to easily go through the menu’s and setup the RAID mode that you want to use, gives you information on the enclosure and the S.M.A.R.T. information from your installed hard drives. The enclosure is made of aluminum and has a heatsink on the bottom so not only will it look good on your desk it will help keep your drives inside nice and cool.
The only real issue I had with the enclosure was that there was not real power button. When you plug it in, it is instantly on and there is no real way to turn it off except by unplugging it. Also the connections on the device are a bit dated, I would have liked to have seen a SATA 6GB/s eSATA port and a USB 3.0 port.
All in all it is a great little enclosure that gives you the secure data protection that you need for your important files. It is very easy to install drives and get the enclosure up and running. Right now you can pick up the Taurus Mini Super-S LCM for just over $100 online. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Akitio Taurus Mini Super-S LCM RAID Enclosure a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Sleek design
– Many different connections (eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire)
– Easy to setup
– Supports RAID 0/1
– LCD Display
Cons:
– No real power button
