Mediasonic USB 3.2 4 Bay 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure DAS – USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps Type C | USB-C (HF7-SU31C) Support 30TB HDD

I read through a lot of reviews about this enclosure, and there were a solid number of them that had negative experiences with the cooling aspects of this device. Reading deeper, I discovered a couple of things that stood out in some of the negative reviews; 1) not all of the drives that were being used were of solid quality, not saying that’s the entire issue they were having, but SMART failures on cheaper less reliable HDDs are not uncommon and may not have had anything to do with the drive itself and 2) the temperatures people were reporting as high were….well within normal operating temps for drives. In fact, HDDs prefer to be on the warm size, 40-42c is totally fine. Cold drives can actually end up with critical failures with the bearings and other parts. During heavy operations, drive temps climb, and it’s not uncommon to see 52 or so C (about 125f). The key is watching for sudden inconsistent spikes in the temps. If the temperatures are a steady flat line, and the fans are spinning, you’re doing fine. I gave the enclosure a thorough inspection before actually plugging it in for use; the ventilation is more than adequate. The vents along the bottom of the door and the rear fan are plenty. I’m using this enclosure as expanded storage for my server. Currently it’s just housing a single WD Blue 12tb. I moved several TBs of files onto the drive and during all of that writing, the auto fan never went above the first fan speed setting, the drive temps were stable and well within operating norms, and in fact, the enclosure itself never even got warm. It’s certainly possible that people got faulty units, or maybe there wasn’t the added vents on the front door early on, not sure. What I can say is that the INITIAL operation and inspection of this enclosure is fine. Time will tell if it holds up, though for me the drive and the enclosure are merely serving media and not doing constant heavy read/writes. But as of now, I think it will suit my needs just fine.

Been using this guy for about a year now. It's solid and supports all the stuff they say it does. I'm using a dell desktop for server with Debian, getting 10Gb transfer speeds. ZFS is rock solid, zero errors ever. Only thing I wish for is it auto powered on after power loss. Cooling is not very good. I bought a $10 external fan and keep the door open all the time. The noise of the fan at high speed is awful so I put it on level 2 (of 3) in this configuration. Just fine for my closet home server on a budget. It's also a bit rickety without making me nervous, just strong enough I guess. It's not all metal like some. But it has it where it counts as Han Solo has said.

Good: * This unit does work on USB 3.1 and has really fantastic transfer rates. * The case is beautiful and looks very modern * The drive trays fit snugly enough where there is not any noticeable rattle or noise from the hard disks Bad: * The makers clearly told the engineers to get lost and opted to make this pretty over functional. There is a fan and an air outlet in the back, but there is NO venting at all in the front to let air in to flow over the drives. I mean, come on Mediasonic!. Radiant cooling only works when air can get in, pass over the drives, and the exit the case. That process cannot occur when there is no air inlet. * Two drives quickly overheated in this case with the fan set to "Auto". The case was in an air-conditioned room at about 75 F. The drives both reached over 110F and trigged SMART monitoring failures. * The only solution to the airflow issue is to open the front door or break it off. In fact, I have popped my door open with a CD jewel case. * With the front door open and the fan turned up manually, it does a great job of cooling the drives. Unfortunately, the front door open also makes the drives and fan noise pretty loud. In summary, it works great and does everything it promises, but only when the front door is kept open. I plan to take the door off and cut space for a screw-on fan grill and screen. Though, if I need any more of these, I will spend more and get a better designed product, such as the ORICO Aluminum 4 Bay that is not that much more. Alternatively, the older Mediasonic design is much better because it actually has air flow inlets in the front. Update: After use for a while of use, I can say it does a good job of keeping the drives cool with the door open. Most critically, the USB 3.1 controller seems stable and works well in Linux. I tested both kernels 4.9.x (Debian Stretch) and 4.16.x (Debian Buster) on an AMD X470 chipset. So, I am raising my rating to 4 stars, since it is functional, even if they screwed up by not putting a vent in the door.

Prior to this purchase,I had four drives installed in individual drive enclosures and wanted to reduce all of that hardware and cables by putting them all in one drive bay. After removing them from their original enclosures and installing them in this product, I had problems almost immediately; drives would self-eject repeatedly and then would not remount, even using the Apple Disk Utility and Micromat Techtool Pro. I first assumed that my mix of drives, and the age of two of them, were at fault. I reinstalled each drive into its original case to test and all ran properly, as before. After reinstalling them in this product, the problem started again. I purchased a new drive, again as a test and, after installation, it had the same behaviour as the first four drives I installed. By the time I had done all of this, the return/replacement time period had ended. I contacted Mediasonic directly to get help. I was pleased that they responded quickly and after back 'n forth emailing, they offered to send me replacement boards, which I would need to replace in the unit myself. They came within a week, I removed the original boards and reinstalled everything: the same problems reoccurred. As a final test, I purchased a different brand of enclosure (an ORICO 5 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure model 5 Bay-USB-C) and removed and reinstalled the drives into it. It's been nearly three months since this latest step and no problems of any kind have come up ... the problem was clearly the Mediasonic enclosure, not the drives. I had kept the drive that I had replaced and installed it as well (into the fifth slot): no problems and it's still running. I explained all of this to Mediasonic in another email and got no response. I bugged them until they responded, but all I got was recommendations we had already discussed and tried. Two weeks later, I tried again: silence. NO additional response of any kind. So, I have spent I-have-no-idea how many hours installing, reinstalling and testing devices, when all I wanted was to make my system simpler. I purchased a replacement drive that I had no need for and a replacement enclosure to replace this POS. Whether you choose an Orico or other product, don't buy a Mediasonic!

My search for a RAID enclosure for my M1 iMac started a few weeks ago and ended here. Technically this is not a HW RAID but actually works better for Mac in my view. I like it so much I bought another Mediasonic Probox with USB 3.0 (HF2-SU3S3) for my backup/Time Machine drives. Pros: 1. Fast - truly USB 3.1 gen 2 speed. With my 4 Ultrastar 7200rpm drives configured as RAID 0 by MacOS, I'm getting 500~600MB/s for writing and 700~800MB/s for reading measured by Blackmagic. This is what I had hoped since individually each would get about 230MB/s. And it's way better than 250MB/s I got from the other true HW RAID box that costed me more. Granted that box was USB 3.0 but still I had expected 500MB/s. 2. Stable. With the right MacOS RAID configuration (I use Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format and increased chunk size from default 32 to 256), it's been very stable with accumulatively >100TB transferred in the last 2 weeks. 3. Flexible. Technically this is a Mac feature and I expect all similar HDD enclosures have this benefit over HW RAID. Because each drive shows up on Mac individually, all pre-configured RAIDs work without change. No reformatting required. In future when more storage and speed are needed, you can simply add another box. 4. Good looks and instructions. The package actually looks a real product unlike some other RAID boxes I saw. Could be improved: 1. Heat dissipation like many have mentioned especially with door closed. However I don't consider it a con and am keeping my 5-star review because 1) it’s still way better than what I had before or the other HW RAID box, 2) the box offers various settings that would work in most, if not all, situations, and 3) I made a small modification that alleviated this issue somewhat (more below). First about my setup. I keep hard drives in a closed cabinet for both maintaining a clean iMac look and keeping the noise down. Needless to say, heat dissipation is especially important to me. The cabinet has air circulation fans and I used to place the external hard drives on a 3-fan laptop cooling pad but honestly didn’t think that was adequate. Those hard drives had no fans and were reliant on passive cooling. The g-drives were often hot to the touch. This time I decided to actually figure out how hot they get. For lack of a temperature monitoring utility on Mac I used a Braun ThermoScan that seems to give accurate readings except it caps at 108F. Here is what I found: 1. With door closed, the temperature does rise quickly. With door open it works significantly better albeit the noise level goes up. Since I have it in a cabinet and noise is not issue, I'm keeping the door open. 2. The Auto Fan setting seems to work as expected. According to the spec, level 1 is <45C, level 2 is 45~55C and level 3 is >55C. In my testing it goes to level 2 when it's slightly above 108F (43C). I’ve never seen it go to level 3 even with door closed though. If I can trust the spec that tells me it’s been able to maintain below 55C. According to Ultrastar data sheet, the operation temperature for the drive is 5~60C so that seems okay. 3. If you want to be more conservative and don't mind the noise, I find setting fan to manual level 3, I can keep the temperature below 108F even after hours of copying TBs of data. Or you can set to level 2 and it'd go beyond 108F only in extreme conditions. 4. The bottom drive was about 3F higher than the top, and I think it's because the fan is mounted high and the air tends to flow up. This is where I think it could be improved - I drilled holes on the bottom of the box and that improved the circulation quite a bit. The shell is made of metal but the bottom is conveniently of plastic. I'm sure this voided my warranty but is worth it. With this modification you can have the door closed to keep the noise down. 5. It has a power sync feature that would shut down if Mac puts the drives to sleep. That's currently my default setting and it works very well. All in all I'm very happy with this (and the USB 3.0 model as well). I'll buy another one if I run out of space again, or upgrade to 8-bay USB 3.1 gen 2 model if they have one.

I really wanted to like this product. Recently upgraded to an iMac Pro from a tower that had plenty of internal drive slots so I needed to find a quick solution to move my internal drives. I wasn't expecting the top of the line quality but the reviews seemed encouraging and I was initially very happy. I put 3 Samsung SSDs that used to be in my other computer into the enclosure along with a new 4TB WD Black, and at first, everything worked flawlessly. I barely heard the fan noise like some people said, and the sync function seemed to work as intended, and I noticed no heat buildup. All four of my drives that I run constantly for my work worked without an issue, which was important because I had just started a big project with deadlines coming up right away. But 3 days later, after I noticed that my iMac Pro wouldn't completely shut down (happened a few times), I powered the unit down and disconnected it just to see if that was culprit. That part was ultimately inconclusive but when I went to reconnect the drive after a little while, I noticed that the power was on and it was running even though the Thunderbolt 3 cable was disconnected. And ever since, whether I connect it to the mac or not, the drive would constantly start up, lighting up the individual drive lights as if it were starting up, but then suddenly lose power completely for a few seconds, then turn back on, and just repeat. And while that was happening, the Mac would tell my the drive wasn't ejected properly (1 warning per drive), mount the drives, and then get them ejected improperly over and over. I don't want to damage the drives more, especially the 4TB spinner, but I'm afraid the damage may already be done. I may have just had bad luck with it and gotten a lemon, and I actually thought about returning it for a replacement hoping to get the performance from the first 3 days back, but as it is, I may have lost a lot of data and I've lost more time, so I can't afford to give it another chance. I'm sure this isn't the case with all of them and things do fail sometimes, but 3 days before breaking down into such unreliable and destructive performance was too much. I hope they address this in future products because drive failure and loss of data is not a small matter.

This review is for: Mediasonic USB 3.1 4 Bay 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure – USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps Type C/USB-C (HF7-SU31C) Purchased: July 18, 2020 System: ASRock X570 STEEL LEGEND WIFI AX AM4 AMD X570 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard; AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 8-Core 3.7 GHz (4.3 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 105W Desktop Processor Platform: MS Windows 10 Pro 64 bit I have 10 SSDs inside my 2020 Build described above. I had (2) WD 1 TB HDDs, (1) Seagate 1 TB HDD and (1) Seagate 500 GB HDD which were replaced by (4) of the SSDs. I purchased the Mediasonic HF7-SU31C to put these HDDs into. The drives had a lot of pictures, videos and graphics on them. I installed them into the Mediasonic, connected the C/USB-C into my motherboards USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C Port and presto. All 4 drives were immediately recognized, and I did not have to do any formatting. I have been drawing from these (4) HDDs and adding to them as I do my video and graphics work, without a hiccup. The HDDs are way slower than the SSDs, so they work perfect for storage and backup. The drives run between 85° and 90° with the door closed - no overheating issues at all. To open the door I place my thumb on the left side of the door and my fingers on the right side of the door. I pull back with a lite squeeze of my fingers and the door opens right up with no problem. The C/USB-C port can only work as fast as the HDDs, so it does not make them lightening fast, but definitely faster than a USB 2.0 or 3.1 alone. The NVMe SSD on my motherboard is over 1900% faster than the HDDs. I downloaded a 3 GB video to the NVMe in just under 15 seconds. Downloading the same video to the HDDs took about 22 minutes. I do my operating system backups with a program called iSumsoft Cloner. This Mediasonic is one of the best purchases I have made in the past five years. The (4) HDDs would have just been boat anchors if it wasn't for this little wonder box. When these drives wear out, I will replace them with new HDDs because I really like the storage functionality and would rather use SSDs for processing.

I have searched for a good 3.5 HDD enclosure for a while now. OWC makes some very nice ones but they are out of my budget. Of the ones within my budget this Mediasonic enclosure seemed to be the nicest. Build quality is fair (not overly cheap like some Chinese enclosures, but not up to the standards of an Apple product either). The Mediasonic enclosure is made from thin metal and plastic. Since it will only sit on my desk it should be fine. The overall design is nice and the blue LED indicators on the top of the unit are not overly bright or distracting. The door on the front of the unit is not very user friendly at first, but once you figure out how it works its OK. I do not plan to open up this enclosure once the hard drives have been installed. The power plugs in on the side of the unit, and looks very awkward there. In-fact they make another enclosure which has a hub feature on the side, and I did not buy it specifically because all the plugs were on the side instead of in the back of the unit. This enclosure would have looked much better if they'd placed the power in the back as other enclosures have it. Not a big deal but it is distracting to the appearance of the unit. The buttons on the front of the unit are a nice size and have a good tactile feel to them. Unfortunately I cannot say how well this enclosure actually works because it keeps disconnecting. The hard drives mount, and then disconnect a few seconds later. I will keep looking into this issue and if it gets fixed I will update this review. If I cannot find a fix then I will be forced to return this enclosure. The power supply for this enclosure looked to be well made. It is a 12 volt, 5 amp style brick. The sync feature is nice (it allows you to choose whether the unit turns on/off with your computer or not). All in all I would give this enclosure a 7 or 8 out of 10 stars. I'll update this review if anything changes. UPDATE 6/14/20: Tried mounting with 6 known good drives and enclosure will not mount any of them. Tried to get tech support from the manufacture but it is nonexistent. Even their online forum is down and does not allow anyone to post anything on it. I hope I can find a fix but it isn't looking good, as this enclosure is just too expensive to just collect dust.

I got this to declutter the shelf where my home media server lives. Instead of having 4 USB drives sitting on the shelf I now have this one box connected via USB-C to a mini-PC with no internal storage beyond an NVMe SSD. It's very quick and works perfectly well but does NOT support hardware RAID. One could make a software RAID using Windows 10/11 Professional, note that the specs state this enclosure does not work with Linux. I have not tested it with Linux. The sync button is interesting. With sync turned on the enclosure powers up and down with the computer to which it is attached but will not recover from a power failure, that requires a human intervention to push the power button on the front. I cannot really fault this enclosure, for the price it is a great deal.

Good for the price...I suppose

Very easy to install, works well and reliable as well as very quiet

Only had it 2 days but so far very good! I bought this to replace an Orico 5 bay box which had several faults and was returned for refund and that was actually bought to replace my QNAP 4 bay NAS which has failed after 4 years. Decided I did not really need a NAS as only used it for backups and local storage not as a server. This one seems to work as it should and has the added advantage of the "sync" function to turn on and off with your PC which seems to work OK and I like the provision of being able to control the fan speeds - either auto or manually - which I have tested and with reasonably heavy use I have found that speed 2 seems to keep the drives under 45C and is virtually silent - speed 3 will lower the temps quite a bit but is audible - not a nasty noise so quite usable unless the box is right next to you. Disk installation is not tool-less as you have to fit plastic handles to one end of each disk and then clip a metal retaining plate over all the bays which lightly clamps against the rubber buffers on the handles - seemed a bit of a fuss but it definitely keeps the drives securely in place and is easy once you have fitted it a couple of times. The only slight annoyance is you cannot "safely remove" all the drives in one go like I could on the Orico? Each is listed as a USB 3.1 SATA bridge and "safely removed" individually in my Win 10? It also does not seem to spin down any of the drives whilst it is connected to the PC? Main concern - it only came with a US style mains lead! For the moment I have used the one from my redundant QNAP NAS for now but come on Amazon - I know it came from Amazon US via an Amazon UK order so why is it not supplied with the correct mains lead for the destination market? Many well known suppliers in China and Singapore can get it right! Update: I have been through a very involved and time consuming process of trying to get Amazon to send me a complimentary UK mains lead so I can keep the product and make it actually conform to the market they have sold it in. After all it's basically only a fiver or so! "Chat" was useless so got them to telephone me - not able to replace parts only the whole item or a refund! When I explained I was already returning the Orico as faulty and this Mediasonic actually works but it was sold with the wrong mains lead - surely it would be far more cost effective for Amazon just to send me a suitable mains lead, FOC, rather than having the cost of the return carriage and them sorting and putting it in their "used but no cables" type warehouse deals? Obviously a replacement would have the same problem! I was told they would "escalate" to a higher level and if I would like to add a suitable lead to my basket they would sort it out. I added the cable to my basket - it is still sitting there. The result I got several confusing help emails from CS throughout the evening plus an SMS then a phone call just before midnight! The caller had a very heavy non English accent and talked so fast I could barely understand anything - he sent me a code which I read back and then he wanted another confirmation to another email - at this point I started to be suspicious so I ended the call. Very disappointing and just confirms that like many others, Amazon has joined the ranks of not really caring about their customers or any problems that their mistakes have caused. We have your money, don't bother us, return it if their is a problem seems to be their answer to everything! "Customer centric" - hardly!

Like others, I removed the front case for better air flow. A star is taken off for the super flimsy front cover. But the enclosure works flawlessly so far, no disconnecting with my pc at all. Great speeds. Update on 30/1/2021, after 4 months of use. Enclosure has failed. Bays 2/3 stopped working, leaving 1 and 4. 4 slowly went away as well. Gave me the impression that my drives were failing