Review on Yottamaster Aluminum Drive Enclosure Support by Kevin Campos

I got a 2 bay Type C device and I wanted to love this device.TL;DR - Overheating issues and failed Hard drive --> thrown out. Don't buy a fanless block for multiple drives. This is a basic design of an extruded metal case, small control board, power supply and decorative front door. I installed two drives to serve as two drives for my Mac: a 1.5TB shared data drive and a 2TB Time Machine drive. Both were full-size 3.5-inch hard drives. I bought it to use as a USB-C connected device for two drives on one USB-C port and at USB-C speeds (never measured directly, but some operations were acceptably fast). The device worked when I first got it, but it got very hot. I decided to keep it, so I started making mods. A simple modification is to remove the front door for better airflow, but that wasn't enough for me. I took my dremel tool and cut a big hole in the back panel for better airflow. Better, but still not enough. The controller board is mounted horizontally on the back, but there is a vertical panel connector board that blocks flow. I tried for a while, several months. I started getting crashes - Time Machine complained that the backup had failed and Disk Utility showed that the TM drive was just not responding. The other disk, the data disk, stayed. Shutting down and shutting down the drive case will usually restore the TM drive, but this is a bad decision. I considered installing a small fan, but that vertical panel would still clog badly. Eventually the TM drive stopped responding at all. Not exactly a death click, but the death sound effect delivered the bad news. Failed. Was it the drive itself? Was it driving in a hot environment caused by the case? Without further testing I don't know. But I went back to an open air controller with a vertically mounted drive and the spare drive runs MUCH cooler. The original Time Machine drive previously ran on the same outdoor controller, and it ran cool back then. Indirect evidence, but they are. Having disassembled the Yottamaster pretty thoroughly I don't feel like I'll get it back and I don't need the replacement unit so it's scrapped. I have a single drive (fanless Yottamaster) for my wife's Mac and it works great, but multiple drives seem to require a fan. Air movement might be enough if you're using 2.5-inch drives or SSDs, so I give the device credit for that.