What exactly is the point of this? If the M.2 drive were designed to act as a cache (and was otherwise inaccessible) then this would be a brilliant idea, since not only would it greatly improve the user experience, but it could allow the HDD to remain powered down for longer periods of time if you're using cached data. It would allow you to use cheap and slow HDDs, and if you were to be too rash with unplugging the drive before the data was done syncing, no problem - it could repair and resume where it left off next time it powers on. But, it seems like it's just simply an enclosure for 2 drives. If I really wanted both an external HDD and external M.2 drive, I'd just get separate enclosures.

well it be a nice portable tool for deploying an image

schmidtbag:

What exactly is the point of this?

It may not suit your needs, but it does mine. I could consolidate the multiple M.2 to USB adapters and 3.5" HDD external readers I have, to just this. Just frees some clutter around the office desk.

ImmortalicBrad:

It may not suit your needs, but it does mine. I could consolidate the multiple M.2 to USB adapters and 3.5" HDD external readers I have, to just this. Just frees some clutter around the office desk.

But that begs the question: why do you have multiple external drives on your desk, and why would you want to combine them into a single enclosure, as opposed to alternative solutions? Typically, you use external drives for local mass file transfer (including archiving). In other cases, maybe you've got a bootable OS (though really a flash drive is better for that since they're more portable). This implies you don't need to be accessing a variety of them often. I imagine you have multiple external drives, perhaps as they got filled up and you needed more, or because they were scavenged from other PCs (no judgment - I've done the same). So, if you're to spend money on something new, why not just use one of your existing enclosures and buy a single large drive to combine them all? Or, just get some crappy office PC on ebay, shove all your drives in that, and make a JBOD NAS? Most PCs made since 2011 have SATA3, and you can use risers on any PCIe slots to maximize the bandwidth of M.2 drives.