Verbatim 2-Disk RAID External Hard Drive 2TB review

Verbatim’s external hard disk consists of two 1TB disks.

When configured as a RAID 0 array, this provides 2TB of storage but if one disk fails, you’ll lose all your data. Alternatively, this external hard drive can be configured as a RAID 1 array.

In this setup, your files will be safe if a disk fails, but the available storage is halved. We were disappointed to find that the hard disks aren’t easy to access, as there are numerous screws to undo. A two-year warranty is provided, however.

There are both USB and eSATA ports. Its USB performance was in line with what we’d expect, and we saw minimal speed differences here between RAID 0 and 1. It was fast over eSATA when configured as RAID 0, as our figures in the graph show. It was less impressive when configured as RAID 1, however, being around 10MB/s slower.

Verbatim’s RAID disk is good value at just 10p per gigabyte. If you can live without eSATA, though, then Western Digital’s similarly priced My Book Mirror 2TB is a better choice thanks to its three-year warranty and easily accessible disks.