Working with multi bays/enclosures for 3.5"drives, NOT in a RAID setup?

[ThatsMrsGeek2U]

First off, let me be clear, I'm not looking for a RAID, I have that for other things, this is something different. I'm needing a enclosure/drive dock that lets me swap, mount, and use multiple 3.5" hard drives side by side, hopefully thru a fast connection. I have a lot of bare drives from a previous set up and would rather use them and not buy a ton of costly enclosures. While any 2 of them are plugged in mounted most all the time, they rotate which two that is, as they also serve as off location backups.
One holds Time Machine, the other holds Media Libraries, redundant CCCloner drives also rotate thru the system.

In a perfect world I would like something that:

1. 2 bays required, 3 preferred
2. Must be able to write from one bay to another
3. Be able to read/write to multiple drives in the enclosure simultaneously
4. Must be able to unmount and swap individual drives out
5. Fast connection, preferably TB3
6. Connect to Apple Silicon Maci Mini Big Sur

Is this something that folks do? Silly question, ridiculous expectation?

 

[coolajami]

I think you're looking something like the Terra-Master D2 Thunderbolt 3, 2-bay enclosure. A bit pricey, but any TB3 enclosure will be expensive. You need to check thoroughly that the enclosure support independent reading of the two disks and also the type of the file system they're using. Most companies would do enclosures for 2 or 4 HDDs but not 3.

Otherwise you can check some of the HDD Docking stations that are available in Amazon. There are many different options, much cheaper than the professional enclosures, however they usually support only USB-A.