Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Mediasonic makes these in several different models. They have the NON-Raid version, and the Raid version of the 4 bay enclosure. The only difference is, the hardware Raid version allows you to create an array using the box itself. The NON-Raid version won't have the hardware to do it, however, if connected to a Windows or MAC, you can use software to create your raid array in the enclosure. I only mention this to be thorough, as I have no interest in Raid. When my Western Digital Black 2TB 7200 RPM SATA III drive was in a Windows machine, I partitioned it into two, with each partition being 1TB each, actual size around 950GB. Installing the drive into the enclosure was pretty simple, just screw the handle onto the front of the drive, pop the bay doors open, luckily we didn't need HAL to do that for us. Remove the pressure plate, stick the drive in, replace pressure plate, close the bay doors. Plug in your USB cable or ESATA cable, plug in the power and go. I feel the need to mention though however, if your planning to use ESATA, please understand that most onboard ESATA ports do not support port multiplier. If you fully populate the enclosure with 4 drives, in order to see 4 separate drives load in your OS, you will need to have port multiplier ability, which usually isn't found in motherboards, so you will have to purchase an ESATA card to put in your machine that does support it. However, if your going to be using the USB connection, you don't have to worry about that. I have my drive enclosure plugged into my router via USB. This enclosure has a SYNC button and an INTERFACE button. The enclosure selects USB by default, but if you need ESATA, you will have to press and hold the SYNC button to make your choice. Also, the enclosure has a built in sleep features. By holding down the Interface button, you can select which mode you want. When the interface indicator is blue, it means that when computer is powered off, the enclosure will power off in 15-seconds. And if you turn you computer back on, the enclosure won't come back on. If you want the enclosure to be in perfect sync with your computer, press and hold the INTERFACE button until the indicator is orange. Since I am using this with my router, I need my files to be able to be accessed at all times by any computer on the network. So to make sure the enclosure stays on no matter what, I had to hold the INTERFACE button each time until I turned the indicator completely off, hence clear. This way it will stay on until I hit the power button to turn it off, or the power goes out. Another thing this enclosure has is a smart fan feature. You are offered three levels of fan modes that you can either set manually, or set to smart auto. Fan speed 1 is very loud, like a freight train, but provides the most airflow. Fan speed 2 is a lot less noisy but is noticeable. And Fan speed 3 is silent. I keep my fan setting on Auto, and it never razes the fan speed beyond fan speed 3. So lets talk about file transfer speeds... I have a Netgear N600 WND4500-V3 router. I did some research into Readyshare and learned that the software in the router has a speed limiting bug in them that limits the speed you will get in file transfers. In other words, don't expect 5GBPS on USB 3.0 cause thats not going to happen. Also, your going to loose some in the transfer link between the drive itself and the enclosure, before its sent to the router, then finally to your computer on your gigabit network. For a speed reference, when I plug my Cannon A2300 camera into my notebook computer using USB 3.0, my file transfer speed is 10 megabytes per second. When reading from my new drive enclosure, copying a 4.1GB file to my notebook, I am getting 13.8 megabytes per second. However, when transferring that same 4.1GB file to my drive in the enclosure, I get around 14.5 megabytes per second. Usually in most cases, read speeds will exceed writing speeds, at least it does with SSD drives and other based flash drive media. But with this 7200 RPM mechanical drive that has 64MB cash, it seems to like writing more then it does reading. I have got to believe that this is somehow related to the 64MB cash buffer, but I could be wrong. I also love the pretty blue lights on the drive, although they might be too bright if you have this placed in a bedroom or movie room. So far I haven't had any trouble with it, and setting up Readyshare was super simple in my router configuration. Also the build quality of the box is pretty solid, it weighs a lot more then I thought it would. No doubt most of the weight is in the PSU and the metal casing of the enclosure. Very little plastic is on this thing and thats good. As long as you know how to set this up, it should work for you. 5 out of 5 UPDATE: Dec 2nd 2017 Since I have owned and have been running this box for a year now, I wanted to give an update on how its doing. I have still been using the same hard drive, in my enclosure, and have not added any new drives to it. This unit has been running strong the whole year, and I haven't had any problems with it. I am able to access my files whenever I want to without issue. We have had a few power outages since, and all one has to do is hit the power button to turn it back on and wait for the drive/drives to spin up. I never did cover up the blue LED's that seem to bother most people. Again the box is located in my computer room, not my bedroom, so it doesn't matter to me. I do notice a slight build up of dust, around the exterior fan casing, I have not cleaned the box out with compressed air yet, but I probably should do that soon. I run an air filter machine in my computer room, which I hope, reduces the amount of dust that builds up, in my electronics. Some have also talked about replacing their internal fan to something much quieter. You can do this, but please note that the box uses a 2-pin fan connection which is not standard. So, you would more then likely need a 2 to 3 pin fan adapter, in order to use a 3rd party fan. I still to this day highly recommend this enclosure, and I still keep it at a solid 5 out of 5 stars! UPDATE: Dec 1st 2018 Here we are yet another year of use on this box. I have to say, putting aside speed limitations with my setup, I've been really happy with this unit. The most important aspect of something like this, is that its reliable, because you want your files to not only be safe, but you also want to be able to access them whenever you want. I am happy to report that after 2-years of use, this box has been very reliable, and I haven't had any issues with it. I really like those Western Digital Black drives, they seem to be reliable as well for this use. I did end up blowing out the rear fan last year, only had to do that once. And its probably about time for me to clean out the fan again since its been another year, I'll get to it eventually lol. Oh and thats another thing, I've just proven with just some miner air filtration in the room, and some once per year maintenance, that fan has been lasting 2-years without fail. Additionally, none of the lights on the box have failed yet that I can see. Sometimes when you get those cheap LED's they will fail quickly. I haven't had any problems with this box so honestly, 99 dollars still to this day, and 2-years of service with more on the way, I think that is a great deal. Someone asked me about RAID recently. Again, as I've stated in this review, you can't setup hardware RAID with this box. If you really need RAID, its best to get the RAID version of this box. https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProRaid-HFR7-SU3S2-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B0757YTWS7/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543555136&sr=8-2&keywords=mediasonic+probox+raid