TERRAMASTER D5-300 USB3.1 (Gen1) Type C 5-Bay External Hard Drive Enclosure Support RAID 5, 0, 1, 10, Clone, JBOD, Single Disk Hard Disk RAID Storage (Diskless)

We had bought 2 YottaMaster 4 bay enclosures and 2 Mediasonic 4 bay enclosures, which did not meet our needs.The YottaMaster has a freakin 5 minutes sleep mode that cannot be disabled, the Mediasonic is an old design (1990s w/ light show) and has poor performance comparing to the TerraMaster D5-300.TerraMaster D5-300 does not have a sleep mode and only puts your drives to sleep when you shut down the attached machine or program a sleep mode. We want our servers to run 24/7 all year around. (Sleep mode will kill your drives)The enclosure seems to be well made and the transfer rates (read/write) speed in RAID 1 and 10 are outstanding. We clocked 200Mb/sec write speed and 220+ read speed.The only thing TerraMaster could improve, there were no instructions in the box, just a link to their website where they provide the instructions and software. The setup requires that you use their RAID master software, which only runs on windows or Mac. Means, we had to use a windows machine for setting the RAID levels. After that simple setup, our units work flawless on Unix/Linux with Ext4 filesystem.Unlike some other enclosures, this unit has 2 cooling fans build in, which provides more security when one of them dies. They also run fairly quiet, almost silent. Unless you have it in your bedroom, you won't hear it.We would have bought TerraMasters 4 bay unit because we only use 4 drives, but it seems to be backorder. However, this unit has 5 bays, which allows us to add one more drive and convert it to a RAID 5 should we have the need for more space. We have not tested the speed in RAID 5, but the unit actually had a label on it that said: " This enclosure is optimized for RAID 5". (I will update this review in the future, when or if we test the RAID 5)

I had bought two of these to replace Drobos that my partner and I had been using for our photo storage. I chose these because I wanted to be able to easily set them up as Raid 5 DAS units. When they arrived I was pleased that they seemed to be solidly made, and it was easy to insert the 4 TB Iron Wolf drives I'd bought for them. I was hooking the units up to Macs, and that's where the trouble began. I discovered the Mac version of the software had only fairly recently been updated to work with Mac OS Monterey. There weren't clear instructions on how to download the software and after I found it the installation wasn't like the typical Mac DMG file and wouldn't install on my Mac Studio. I also discovered in the forum that contained the software that there were a number of posts unhappy about the software. I contacted Terramaster support for help and after a few exchanges found their assistance to be of little value. I returned both units for a refund and bought two OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad 4-Bay USB 3.2 Gen 2 RAID Enclosures. They were more expensive, but setting them up with OWC's Raid software was simple, and they've been working with no issues.

UPDATE 10APR2018After working with TerraMaster we tried a number of solutions and were still not able to get this device working in a plug and play fashion, however TerraMaster support really stood behind their product and were very helpful in working to make things right and return the product. A very solid company.I rarely am so incensed with a product as to write a one star review, but this thing running in RAID-5 is the worst piece of equipment I've had to try and use in recent memory. I've been trying to get it to work on and off for about 3 months. Every time it is plugged into a new device....without fail....the file structure becomes corrupted. It works 100% great as long as it stays plugged into the first thing you formatted it on, but it is not plug and play at all. Despite properly ejecting the media and ensuring the new device had Terramaster software and drivers pre-installed the file structure gets corrupted and shows as a RAW partition every time. Terramaster application still shows the array as normal, but because the software is so basic there's absolutely no way to troubleshoot it. Would return it if I still could. There's no reason this device shouldn't be plug and play, but instead it's a massive headache.

This was amazingly easy to setup and configure. I have it running RAID 5. It easily mapped a drive letter and now I have a MASSIVE disk that is RAID protected. I have it running my media server and it seems to be performing great.Might be obvious to others but I missed this fact - this has more to do with RAID than this device but if you start with 3 disks and then want to add 1 or 2 more later; you have to delete the array and create a new one - you can't just add a new drive and the data automatically expands to the new drives.