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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’ve been using the Yottamaster DF4RU3 for more than a month now, and so far so good. The built quality and its aesthetics are great and I don’t have any complaints about it. Although, I wish they would file down the edges a little bit if ever they release a similar design in the future. 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. 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. For me, I would prefer to use a DAS, rather than a NAS. It’s easier to use, just like any other external (portable) storage drive. And it’s plug and play, no need to do some network configuration or anything like that. But your mileage may vary and it primarily depends on your situation or use case.
The DF4RU3 model name is somewhat hard to remember, similar to how monitor manufacturers name their monitors. But it is a 4-bay external hard drive enclosure that has RAID capabilities. It uses USB3.0 as its connection, specifically a 5Gbps USB Type-B connection. 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. 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. Speaking of the fan, in a quiet room, the fan noise is audible. But I don’t consider it as loud or obnoxious. Some people may consider this as “noisy”, especially if they are used to very silent conditions. However, in my years of using a PC and testing several components with fans, like graphics cards or CPU coolers, the DF4RU3 isn’t the loudest I heard.Finally, I tested the drives using CrystalDiskMark, and this time random workloads are included. The results are similar to the other two tests above. The Samsung 870 QVO SSD performs best when connected to the motherboard due to the speed limitation of the DF4RU3. But it doesn’t affect much for hard disk drives since they are both slower than the SSD.
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. Each tray is made of a combination of metal and plastic. The frame itself is solid metal, whereas the sides and the front portion is plastic. The pull tab is plastic covered with perforated metal. I guess this is to give the pull tab more rigidity. However, the joints of the pull tab and the whole mechanism (except for the spring) are plastic. So, it’s best not to yank the tray with excessive force. Above, you can see the front and front-side view of the DF4RU3. It looks stylish and has a nice aesthetic. The design reminds me of Apple’s Power Mac G5 desktop PC. It is mostly metal on the outside making it very sturdy and robust. Whereas, its sides are covered with a clear acrylic side panel.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.) . 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. 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? 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
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. I’ve made a DIY NAS with a Raspberry Pi 4 and a couple of external USB 3.5" drives. I am planning on adding more drives but I am fearing the mess of cables that comes with that. To avoid it, I bought an external enclosure with 5 bays (Orico 9558u3) but I had to return it since, when trying to import the pool, it didn’t recognize the drives of the pool for their /dev/disks/by-id but rather for sdx. 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 SoftwareThe 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.
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. 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. 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 With this enclosure the output of the command ls /dev/disks/by-id corresponded to “serial number of the case.DISK1” and commands like udevadm could only see the data of the enclosure instead of the data of the drives. 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.A little fun fact, “Yotta” is the largest decimal unit prefix. Most of us are familiar with Mega, Giga, and Tera. Yotta is on top of that scale, and it has a base 10 value of 10 24; or in the English word, it is equivalent to a septillion. 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?
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