FS4U3

Straight out of the box, this HDD enclosure/NAS drive is extremely easy to set up and configure. The default setting is what they call 'normal' which lets you access each disk individually (in any combination up to five 18Tb SSD/HDDs). You also have the option of using it as a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) or spanning them (effectively creating one huge storage device) or setting it up as a RAID drive (RAID 0, 1, 3, 5 or 10 are all available if you have enough drives), using the flip switches on the rear of the unit.This unit uses a USB 3.0 connection so you are 'limited' to 5Gbps. You can use Solid State Drives or more traditional Hard Disk Drives in either 3.5" or 2.5" configurations. The sleds come with all the attachment screws (both 2.5" and 3.5" threads) you could possibly need (and a free screwdriver if you need it) for installing your drives securely.The software available from the Yottamaster website is easy to find and install, though I would prefer that they actually make a clear link available for it! One great feature is the ability to see what resources are available to you if you change your RAID settings (what is used/what is unavailable on certain disks) To explain this, if, for example, I had three 2Tb HDDs and one 4Tb HDDs and I wanted to use them all in a RAID 10 configuration, the 4Tb HDD would only use 2Tb, with the rest being unavailable (far from ideal).The only drawback I have found in this item is that it isn't clearly identified in your System Resources. I think this would really help people trouble shoot. That said, if you keep to the basic setting, you can easily identify and use each of the disks you've installed.The set up takes less than 2 minutes (mainly the time it takes to screw in the disks!), and you're ready to go.This is ideal for anyone needing a fairly good, basic enclosure or NAS.

This is a great bit of kit, extremely well constructed, works very well once set up and is quite and power efficient. However it is not intuitive to set up, I have several NAS boxes so familiar with setting up raid volumes but this works differently. You will have to read the instructions FIRST, and you will have to read them several times as they are not well written or clear, and ensure you follow the steps for formatting. If you are installing new drives or drives that have been in a Linux based NAS you will have to format them for FAT or NTFS first using a drive toaster or similar, at least I think this is the case, at least it this is the solution that worked for me having failed to format the drives in the Yottamaster box. Having got it set up, I am very impressed, it is fast, quiet and just works as a raid5 external disk.

I'm using this for a software RAID array using MDADM on Linux. Set-up was no problem and everything is running smoothly. The fan is pretty quiet, which is nice because I sit right next to it.All good so far.

I recently moved from an old Mac Pro to a M1 Mac Mini. I needed a new home for my drives, but I was very nervous of what product to trust. This one appeared to fit the bill.I didn't plan on using RAID initially, but thought maybe I would buy that model if I need that feature later. My intention was to just give the HDDs a home to be used individually for now.A few days after using the device I noticed after shutting down the Mac Mini, the drives in the enclosure would start spinning up! Then immediately they would spin down again, then immediately spin up again! This was very off putting and worrying. At the time I just thought maybe it was odd but normal.After a week of using the enclosure a 5TB drive just died on me. I tried it in a separate dock; nope, it was toast. Worrying, but I just put it down to the fact it was a 6yr old drive.Today, 6 days later ANOTHER drive has failed! This time a 4TB one. I am a full time professional photographer and the first drive had over 125 weddings that just vanished, and the second drive had lots of family photography (clients) and my website files amongst other things. Also GONE!Thankfully I have backups, but now I don't trust this thing one bit!!So it was bad enough that it would spin the disks up and down every-time I shut down the computer, but it would also do it during operation! When the 5TB weddings HDD died, I bought a new 6TB drive and copied the lost data from my backup drives onto the new one. The backups were in a 2 slot dock and the new drive in the Yottamaster enclosure. Every now and again the drives in the enclosure would spin down, then up, then down again, then up and then the copying process which had paused would then continue. This is NOT normal behaviour. I didn't notice at first (because of where I have the enclosure positioned) that when the drives would spin down the blue lights on the front would go out!In case it was a loose connection, I tried gently touching the USB cable behind, but that didn't affect anything.There seems to be either some loose connection or a communication error inside.Needless to say I am livid that I have put my trust in this device with very precious data (the fact it is backed up is irrelevant) and it is has failed me terribly.A new 6TB drive was £205 and today I have just ordered a 4TB drive for £125. I haven't had a failed drive in a few years and now in a week I have lost two! Yottamaster should be paying for these!!I also own a cheap and cheerful two slot dock and that hasn't had any of the issues the Yottamaster has.I have sent this one back and have been looking for an alternative. There is one made by Orico, the same company as the two slot docking station I have, but I notice it is almost exactly the same design as the Yottamaster. I have also found a similar one by another company. It seems to me that this (BAD) design is being manufactured, and some minor changes and a change of logo are the only differences. I have now ordered an enclosure by OWC and I sincerely hope I don't have these problems again!!Funny how when I contacted Yottamaster they were all very helpful until I said I thought they should be paying for the destroyed hard drives, then they went completely silent!My advice is to avoid this like the plague. Buy one from a more well known brand rather than a generic Chinese brand with lower quality standards. I would have done the same, but I didn’t know there were good alternatives until I found a four bay OWC one.