Review on 📦 High-Speed OWC Mercury Elite Storage Enclosure with USB 3.2 5Gb/s and 7200 RPM Performance by Patrick Pearson

I needed a new direct-attached storage solution to use with my 2018 MacMini and Backblaze Cloud Backup Service, and I needed an enclosure to later replace the drive in, and I needed a drive that could take advantage of the USB-C speeds of the MacMini 2018's USB-C ports. I've used OWC products before, I had one of their external BluRay drives in my day and a few of their portable USB Hard drives (bus powered) so OWC was on my radar. The chassis itself is all aluminum with an aluminum stand with silicone skids on the underside, holding the drive securely upright so it fits right behind my ultra-wide 34" monitor on the desk. gen 2), it comes with a USB Type B to Type A cable, but I bought this Tripp Lite cable to use with it, not a Type A to USB C adapter. The cable itself seems well made and provides a solid connection: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08298VJY9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I've strayed from my usual MO when buying hard drives and paired it with a Toshiba -Bought desktop drive installed and the OWC is populating cases. At the time of purchase it was $229 for a 6TB capacity and it is a 7200rpm drive. I felt it was an affordable choice for both a hard drive and an enclosure, and if purchased with the drive installed, it's covered by a three-year warranty. And I figured I don't have to worry about getting an OEM. a WD or Seagate drive that may not be covered under warranty, which I've read about a lot in hard drive reviews. So since I'm new to a Toshiba drive, I hope it lasts a long time. Every day after turning off the computer, I also disconnect the OWC drive. There is no active fan in the case. The case acts as a heatsink to dissipate the heat generated by the drive. I transferred about 3TB of FLAC music files and shared documents in a few hours. I didn't measure the speed, but it's much faster than my previous Seagate bus-powered 4TB drive. My MacMini recognized the drive right away and I used the included OWC disk format utility and it automatically created the HFS+ volume and I was good to go. a matter of a few minutes. It's debatable whether to use APFS on newer Macs or HFT+ when formatting new drives, but HFS+ is said to be better optimized for mechanical hard drives, while APFS is better optimized for SSD drives. In general it is of very high quality and looks, the only negative is how it was delivered. It came in a box with styrofoam plugs attached to the drive and while its own packaging was adequate I would have thought it would come with an outer box for added protection. I'll report back after using it for a few months.