TerraMaster has announced the TerraMaster D8 Hybrid 2, an 8-bay hybrid external storage enclosure. It supports up to four SATA SSDs or HDDs alongside four M.2 NVMe SSDs in a single unit, topping out at 152TB.
Design
At 8.7 inches (222 mm) by 7 inches (179 mm) by 6 inches (154 mm), the D8 Hybrid 2 won’t eat much of your desk. It’s a Direct Access Storage Device (DAS), so it connects to your computer over USB-C. macOS, Windows and Linux are all supported with no drivers to install. Cooling comes from a fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) low-noise fan rated for more than 50,000 hours. Run it around the clock and that’s better than five and a half years.
Storage
Installation is tool-less. The unit takes up to four 30 TB SATA HDDs plus four 8 TB M.2 SSDs, which is where the 152 TB ceiling comes from.
The bigger change is what’s missing. Unlike the previous generation, the D8 Hybrid 2 drops RAID entirely. TerraMaster frames the single-drive architecture as simpler management, greater stability and flexible expansion. Fair enough, but it also means no redundancy. Lose a drive and you lose what was on it.
The USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection carries up to 10 Gbps of bandwidth. SATA SSDs top out at 560 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write. M.2 SSDs push that to 1020 MB/s and 980 MB/s.
Other features
Power comes from an external AC adapter. A physical switch lets you pick between Power Save Mode for efficiency or Active Mode for faster wake-up. File system support is broad, covering NTFS, APFS, EXT4, FAT32 and exFAT. You can also hang the unit off a NAS to expand its capacity through the NAS device’s USB port.
What we think
Mixing NVMe with SATA suits the way most editors actually work. Park your active project on the fast M.2 drives while you cut. When you wrap, move it to the spinning disks or SATA SSDs for archive. All of it runs through one USB-C cable on a box small enough to sit beside your monitor.
The catch is that missing RAID. Archive storage without redundancy is a single point of failure, so treat this as one copy in a backup plan rather than the plan itself. Drive prices aren’t helping either. If you already have drives on hand, the D8 Hybrid 2 earns a spot on the desk.
Pricing and availability
The D8 Hybrid 2 is available now. It normally sells for $300 and is currently discounted to $240. That price is for a bare unit with no drives.
