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Yottamaster says they are planning to release a Thunderbolt version later this year. For now, let’s focus on the DF4RU3. Is this for gamers? It also supports 8 different RAID modes. You can choose from RAID 0,1,3,5 or 10 and can be configured to clone a drive or just use it as “normal” or JBOD. For now, I use mine in normal mode since I still need additional drives. I don’t have any major concerns at this point, as the product is working as expected. But I wouldn’t recommend this for SSD use. Who is this for?
The drive bays are numbered, with the top bay being the first one. There are no LED indicators or any buttons on the front portion. Only the drive bays can be seen at the front. There is also a non-RAID version, the DF4U3; and if you need a 5-bay solution Yottmaster has the DF5RU3 and DF5U3 as well. If you are looking for a much faster solution or a DAS that uses a USB Type-C (10Gbps) and can be daisy-chained, Yottmaster has the FS5C3 and FS4C3. AJA System test is mostly a sequential test and as you can see from the results above, I got similar results to the ATTO disk benchmark. The 870 QVO SSD performs best when connected directly to the PC’s motherboard. But both the WD Red and WD Red Pro hard drives perform similarly, regardless if connected directly to the motherboard or via the DF4RU3. CrystalDiskMark Benchmark Results However, I would not use any hard drive or external hard drive enclosure for gaming, especially if they are limited in speed. That would only increase loading time and some elements, effects, or texture may not load instantly with a slow hard disk drive.Like I mentioned earlier since I use the DF4RU3 in normal mode only, I didn’t have much further need of the software other than to update the firmware. But if you plan to use this external hard drive enclosure for RAID, you can use the software. I did not disassemble my unit since I do not want to damage it unintentionally. Here’s a peek of what’s inside the DF4RU3 from the drive bay’s view. You can see the SATA power and data ports from this angle. The unit that I got didn’t come with the latest firmware. And I was informed that it is recommended that I upgrade to the latest firmware since it includes some fix.
Important Note 1】The enclosure will enter into sleep after 10min of data inactivity-the function can be adjusted/cancelled. Use our firmware or the third-party software, like Amphetamine/KeepAliveHD/Prevent Disk Sleep (You can set it to write to your drive a 1kb noted file every 5 minutes. The device will no longer enter sleep mode.) .At the time of writing this review, the DF4RU3 can support up to 64TB of storage capacity. That’s 16TB each drive bay. Currently, the Seagate IronWorlf Pro, Seagate Exos X16, and WD Red PRO are some of the drives that have 16TB capacities. And they are also available in 18TB capacity. Although, I am not sure if Yottamaster will release a firmware in the (near) future that would enable the DF4RU3 to support 18TB hard drives or 72TB in total. Yottamaster placed a guide right on top of the DIP switch to show each switch’s config value. For best practice, I suggest that you use one mode and not switch from one mode to another. You could potentially lose (all) your data if you (accidentally) mess up with the switch/settings. The 80mm fan has a nice RGB lighting effect, but it can not be controlled or customized. I don’t consider the fan as noisy or obnoxiously loud, but it is audible. Surprisingly, hard drive vibration noise is kept at bay. I haven’t experienced or heard any buzzing, whirring, or vibrating sound coming from the drive bays. Each device needs to be connected to an AC power supply separately. "Main" port refers to the main data transfer port and "HUB" port is the serial port. I guess if one was planning to use the drives normally, having four connected via a single USB cable would affect performance compared to connecting each one to a separate USB port but I'd connect the drives to my PC whilst I'm filling them with plots and then once in the enclosure and connected to the RPi, they'd just be sitting there waiting to be read if any plots pass the filter. With some of the drives, I might need to add some plots later over the LAN but if I copy them as each one completes it shouldn't be too onerous and I'd only be writing to one drive at a time still.
On the flip side, aside from storing your non-active game folders, the DF4RU3 is a great solution for storing your gameplay recordings, and other large file-sized media. So, for gaming-specific use, I wouldn’t use this. But for media storage, yes, this is definitely a useful storage solution. Since the DF4RU3 has a USB 3.0 interface and is limited to 5Gbps of theoretical speed; I have more or less a rough idea of how this external enclosure will perform. I tested the DF4RU3 with a WD Red 12TB HDD and a WD Red PRO 14TB HDD. Also, I tested it with a Samsung 870 QVO SSD to see how much performance are we going to lose if we use a much faster drive. In my opinion, the Yottamaster DF4RU3 is best to be used with hard disk drives and not SSDs. You’ll lose more or less half of the performance if you use an SSD due to the limitation of the USB 3.0 interface. If you want something faster, you might want to consider the Yottamaster FS4C3 instead. Since it uses a USB3.1 Type-C interface, capable of 10Gbps theoretical transfer rate. Also notice that there is a bit of performance drop. Just a tiny bit, by a few megabytes per second. I doubt that it will be noticeable at all in real-world use. Okay, time to wrap up this review. Pricing and Availability I’m looking forward to seeing Yottamaster release a much faster version of this. Perhaps an external enclosure with a Thunderbolt interface or an enclosure with dedicated SSD drive bays. Games nowadays are getting more and more demanding, with larger file sizes, and require a much faster read/write speed.Other than the nice (RGB) lighting of the fan, there is (really) nothing to see from the inside. You can partially see the power supply area, and the Blue LED indicator for each drive bay. Nevertheless, the transparent side panels do look nice overall. Just be careful not to scratch it since it is not scratch resistant. Yottamaster RAID Manager Software
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