INTRODUCTION

   From professionals and enthusiasts to gamers and even every day casual users high-performance in pretty much everything in the computer industry is something everyone's looking for, to a certain extend that is. External hard drive enclosures in particular have always been under the spotlight, primarily for professionals, which is why just over a decade ago Intel "combined" forces with Apple in order to develop the fastest standard around, Thunderbolt (code named Light Peak back then). The rest as they say is history and so today most people are using the 3rd version of the Thunderbolt standard with the 4th already finalized and already released with the Maple and Goshen Ridge families (according to Intel Thunderbolt 4 is the same as USB 4.0). Today I’ll be testing one such Thunderbolt device and more specifically the upgraded version of Terra Master's award winning TD2 Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, the TD2 Thunderbolt 3 Plus.

   Founded in 2010, TerraMaster is a professional brand which focuses on storage products, including network attached storage and direct attached storage, which is sold in more than 40 countries and regions. Products of TerraMaster are mainly designed for customers such as small and medium businesses and home users. With its core competitiveness in excellent hardware design and strong software developing ability, TerraMaster aims to provide customers with excellent products that offer reliability and value. TerraMaster has focused on the development of storage technology for many years. TerraMaster continues to explore storage technology and applications, such as how to create more functionality and value to storage products and make storage application easier, more convenient, safer and faster to provide customers with a complete, reliable and trusted data storage solution.

   Since the TD2 TB3 Plus is an upgraded version of the original TD2 TB3 it's nearly identical with it so once again we find the same external enclosure made out of aluminum that features two bays/trays capable of holding both 2.5" and 3.5" drives which can be hardware configured in single, JBOD (Large), RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes (hot-swap/plug are also supported), top handle and a smart active cooling (80mm fan). Now even though the original TD2 TB3 could reach read and write speeds of 760MB/s and 390MB/s respectively the brand new TD2 TB3 Plus can go all the way up to 810MB/s and 806MB/s respectively. Still this bump in performance is clearly not enough to warrant the release of a new model so Terra Master also equipped the TD2 TB3 Plus with 2 USB 3.0 ports, RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port and a Mini DP 1.4 port on top of the two Thunderbolt 3 ports used in the original. Now as some of you may recall the original TD2 TB3 also had a full sized DisplayPort v1.2 output which could support up to two 4k displays (Daisy Chain) or a single 5k display. Well thanks to its mini DP 1.4 port the TD2 TB3 supports either two 4K displays or a single 8K display which could come in handy for certain professionals. Time to take a closer look and see just how much different the TD2 TB3 Plus really is compared to the TD2 TB3.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The enclosure gets shipped inside the typical blue box on which Terra Master just puts their logo at both the front and rear.

A large sticker located on the left side has the serial number, barcodes and product name on it.

Typically, the enclosure is wrapped inside a plastic bag and placed between two foam spacers (the rest of the bundle is located inside another cardboard box).

Along with the TD2 TB3 Plus and its power adapter with two power cords (EU/UK) you will also find an 1/2 meter long TB3 cable, large Philips screwdriver, aluminum pin (for the reset button), small screwdriver (drive mode set), two small bags with mounting screws, drive content stickers and the quick start guide.

THE TD2 THUNDERBOLT 3 PLUS

Once again, the 1.4Kg heavy aluminum enclosure of the TD2 TB3 Plus has a convenient handle at the top and measures 173mm in height, 119mm in width and 227mm in length.

At the front we find the two drive trays, HDD and power LEDs (in case you mount drives and they start blinking red just change the mode and press the reset button while the enclosure is turned on – after that they should turn to green) and the on/off power button.

Both trays are made out of durable plastic and have bottom screws for both 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

Turning the enclosure around we see the 80mm exhaust fan, two USB 3.0 ports, drive mode selector, reset button, RJ45 Gigabit ethernet port, Mini DisplayPort v1.4 output, two Thunderbolt 3 ports and the DC in.

The base of the enclosure is perforated and features 4 rubber feet.

As always for this test i used two Seagate IronWolf 12TB drives.

Using the TD2 TB3 Plus with a PC is very easy, just plug it into your TB3 card and approve it for use (as seen above).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Complicating things is not really our way so once again our testing procedure will be almost identical to the one, we use with external docking stations. However, since we are talking about a multi-bay 3.5" external enclosures this time over, we will be using one or more (depends on the mode) Seagate IronWolf 12TB SATA III hard disk drives since mechanical drives are obviously what people will use more with such devices (besides in quad+ enclosures these should pretty much max out the performance of the onboard controller). Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well for single, RAID 0 and RAID 1 testing including the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write -also when possible- speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB/1000MB read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet highly reliable ATTO 2.47 (Max Read/Max Write speeds).

   Temps as usual were recorded using the latest version of Hard Disk Sentinel along with the sensors provided by AIDA64 while noise levels were recorded using our HD600 dBA meter placed just 10-15cm above each unit. Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our graphs. As always, every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 10 Pro with every update installed up to the moment of this review.

* Since March 2017 we also started recording noise levels.
* Since May 2020 we started using IronWolf 12TB drives.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS – NOISE LEVELS / TEMPERATURES

CONCLUSION

   By using pretty much the same name it was clear from the beginning that the TD2 TB3 Plus wouldn’t be a major update to the TD2 TB3 model and it’s not. Still, it’s clear from the charts that the new TD2 TB3 Plus is quite faster compared to its predecessor in roughly 7 out of 10 tests something which I didn’t quite expect to this extend, certainly not when using hard disk drives and not SSDs (still I do think most people will be using HDDs and not SSDs solely because of increased capacity). Everything else however from noise levels to temperatures has remained almost identical (unfortunately I don’t have an 8K display to test).

   Currently retailing at USD329.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 329.99Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) the TD2 Thunderbolt 3 Plus by Terra Master is priced relatively well but considerably higher than its predecessor. Overall however the TD TB3 Plus delivers on everything Terra Master promises (minus the 8K display which I can’t test it with) and that’s why it gets the Golden Award.

PROS

- Very Good Build Quality (Aluminum Enclosure)
- Top Of The Charts Performance
- Hardware Drive Mode Selection (Single/JBOD/RAID 0/RAID 1)
- Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports (Daisy Chain Feature)
- Mini DP v1.4 (Up To 8K Display)
- Two USB 3.0 Ports
- Low Noise Levels
- Top Handle

CONS

- Plastic Trays
- Price (For Some)