Question 1

AMS site list's this unit as having an 80mm fan included.  Newegg makes no mention of this.  Does your "in-stock" units have this feature?

Accepted Answer

There are two screws on the back of the unit which release the tray that the hard drive sits on. The hard drive will be mounted onto this plastic tray with 4 screws and then slid back into the outer casing. On the bottom of this hard drive tray there is slim 80mm fan which directs air from around the hard drive and out the back of the case. There is also a small switch on the back of the unit which adjusts the fans speed (low or high).  Incidently, I bought 3 of these particular enclosures and I still have 4 previous versions of the AMS Venus that I bought in the past. I have not had a single issue with any of them. They are simple and cheap, but they work fine! I hope this helps! Best of luck!

Question 2

Will a SATA lll HD work in this enclosure ?

Accepted Answer

No problem.  The drive in question will operate in SATA II (3 GB/s) mode.  However, that is not a detractor at all since there is no mechanical HDD that can saturate SATA II, much less SATA III.  Even the hybrid SSHD drives don't saturate the SATA III interface with their 8GB faux SSDs inside, so this enclosure is suitable for SSHDs as well. Now, if for some odd reason you decide to put a SATA III pure SSD in this unit, then YES, you will bottle neck it some, but it would still work too.

Question 3

Hello,
Will this enclosure work with a new Mini Mac (2013)?
Thanks
Leon

Accepted Answer

Yes - via USB cable.

Question 4

Will this work with a WD Blue 1TB hard drive and Mac OS X Mavericks? Will I reach full read and write speeds of the HDD with this enclosure?

Accepted Answer

Yes, yes, and yes.  I am using a WD Blue 1TB in my enclosure by coincidence.  The SATA to USB 3.0 interface does not bottleneck this drive in any way.  Just be sure you are using a USB 3.0 port on your MAC...a USB 2.0 port is limited to 40 MB/s and WILL bottleneck performance severely.

The MAC OS X working is software related and obviously you will need to Journal the drive in order for it to work with MAC OS.

Questions & Answers