TerraMaster D5-300 USB3.0 Type C 5-Bay Raid Enclosure USB3.0 (5Gbps) Support RAID 5 Hard Drive RAID Storage (Diskless)

Pros: Super easy setup Inexpensive Runs pretty quiet but with 4 7200 drives spinning it's not going to be silent. Been going strong for 4 months

Cons: None yet.

Overall Review: Installed 4 x 4TB drives. They included two sizes of screws so no problems like others have reported when trying to screw in the drives. Downloaded & installed the raid configuration tool from their website. Setup as RAID 5. Plugged into my computer using the USB 3.0 cord and did a complete format which took over a day for all 16 TB which I expected. I plugged it into my Netgear router and access it from all my devices in the house using DLNA. I even have KODI hooked into it. Other thoughts: If you have a modern router you don't really need an expensive NAS drive because the router will allow you to access the content from your phones, TVs, computers, tablets, etc while you are in your house. Good routers will also allow you access to the drive from outside the house as well but they will not have all the bells and whistles of an expensive NAS drive. ***** UPDATE May 15, 2017 ******** Me being extra cautious about losing data. I bought a spare 4TB drive and tested replacing one of the drives to see if it would rebuild correctly. I learned that you must first format the drive with the same file size & cluster size before you put it in otherwise it will not work so I recommend that you write that info on a note and tape it to your Terra Master. You also have to do the drive replacement while the unit is plugged in and attached to a computer that is on. I simply yanked out one of the drives and slipped in the formatted replacement. It took about 10 hours for the rebuild to complete. Tip: If you are not using all your slots in this unit like me (1 have one empty) , you can slip your replacement drive into the empty slot and perform the format that way as you computer should see it once you slip it in. Alternately, you can power down the TerraMaster, pull all the drives out and slip your replacement drive in, format it, power down again , take it back out and put the old drives back in and power it back up. Me being paranoid, I purchased another one of the units to have as a backup because if somewhere down the road this unit dies, I don't want to have to scramble to find a raid system that can read my drives. It's worth the piece of mind. I tested pulling the drives out the current unit and placing them into the new one and it worked just fine (I powered the units down when moving the drives). I purchased HGST drives based on reliability studies from Backblaze, you can look it up on the web. The Ultrastar series is the way to go if you can afford it, otherwise the Deskstar NAS series is the next best choice which is what I went with.

Pros: Simple configuration with the utility. Look good, run cool, and are pretty quiet. Drives can be addressed individually to make this just a drive housing for Windows to mirror or stripe if you prefer.

Cons: Only supports RAID 5, 1, and 0.

Overall Review: Do not enable write caching in Windows if you are writing a lot of files at once. The processor gets swamped, response times increase to 2-3 seconds, and write speeds drop to <25% of what they are without it. SSD's may fare better, I'll find out soon.

Pros: + 5 x 5 TB 3.5 SATA hard drives (HGST Deskstar NAS) running server 24/7 without any issues; + Great build quality (aluminum case); + RAID 5 software included; + Easy to add HDD's (screws included to hold HDDs); + Great customer service (pleasantly surprised for their quick and easy customer service)

Cons: - Only one port (USB 3.0 type-C); - USB 3.0 (3.1 would have been great but ~200 mb/s isn't bad); - Doesn't seem to go to sleep with the computer (perhaps a firmware upgrade would fix it); - 7200 rpm HDD's make noise (haven't tested it with 5400 rpm but there was no noise with SSD's)

Overall Review: I needed a 4 or 5 bay enclosure that supports RAID 5 with an ultra quiet fan and relatively fast read/write. I got the D5-300 (5-bay) during the black Friday sale and have been overall impressed with the product with minor fixes needed (sleep mode and additional ports).

Pros: Pros: - small - minor configuration - the manufacturer has decent customer service

Cons: - multiple defective units - noisy, abnormal grinding sound (not hard drive read/writes) on one of the units (I've had it replaced once & am working on getting a replacement for the second one so that I can move my data off of this) -

Overall Review: - I definitely would not recommend purchasing this. The cons mentioned above being the reason. I'm nervous as he!! about my data now, again! The first unit would not stay powered on, the second unit is dead as of this morning. I'm only, trying at least, to get another one shipped to me so I can buy something else and move my data off of this permanently. I'll end on a positive note by saying they have decent customer support (at least they ship out new units to replace defective one's).

Pros: - Great price compared to similar products - Easy to setup - 5x 6TB: ~22TB overall - RAID 5 - Windows 10 recognized it quickly without issue - Used for media storage for Plex streaming and it works without any issues. I can even stream media from this device from multiple media servers without any issue. - It has been running 24x7 for over a month without any issue.

Cons: - If you are in the same room as the device you can hear the drive heads clicking. This is not really an issue for me since I have the same issue with other devices. - As others have mentioned I would like the software to have direct firmware updates since finding this detail on the website is a bit of a pain. But not a big deal.

Overall Review: - Purchased HDSentinel for monitoring the disks and RAID.

Pros: Easy to setup - screws not so bad No improper ejection on Mac Fast Great appearance

Cons: None, so far

Overall Review: Bought 2 D5-300's. Great Raid! No improper ejections on my iMac. Vantec and Mediasonic, continuously had this problem. I highly recommend this for any Mac user with this annoying problem.

Pros: - The D5-300 is smaller than building a fileserver

Cons: - I haven't been able to get this thing to write files faster than 20 MB/sec on average - The D5-300 costs more than building a full NAS that isn't much larger, physically

Overall Review: I filled our D5-300 with 8TB drives and set it up for RAID-5. No issues for 2+ years, except it writes data very slowly. With the drives we use, RAID-5 should be averaging 185 - 300 MB/sec. There's no excuse for 20 MB/sec write speeds. That's an order of magnitude slower than expected. TerraMaster's RAID-5 implementation is terrible. As of yesterday, I purchased parts for a replacement. It will be physically larger, but cost me less money and actually perform properly. If you need a 5-bay RAID enclosure, you're quite probably interested in RAID-5. If so, I wouldn't recommend this device.

Pros: Drive nstallation was easy Windows immediately recognized the disks

Cons: Build quality. This case is mostly plastic which I am knocking it for that, but it does get pretty noisy. I do understand there will be some noise when writing to disks, but it was much quitter in my case with no noise dampening. Software. It works, but has cause my machine to BSoD twice. Really suggest streamling the interface and also add the option to check for firmware updates. The only to way check (from what I see) is to check the website. USB. Wish it had support for UASP for faster transfers.

Overall Review: This is not a bad device, but the lack of UASP and noise maybe the deal breaker for me.