QNAPTR-004U 1U 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure Direct Attached Storage (Das) with Hardware RAID USB 3.0 Type-C

I loaded drives, plugged it into USB-c, configured via MS Widows Storage Pool and it worked perfectly. I will try it as an expansion on a QNAP NAS shortly.

First, this is a great unit that I have used for years and it has performed quite nicely. There are however a number of things you should know before purchasing:- This unit excels at being a JBOD. Running it as a RAID will yield slower than expected performance because the RAID is being run on an underpowered CPU. Having said that, there is nothing stopping you from running Software RAID (Windows Storage Spaces, OpenZFS on Linux or FreeBSD GEOM-based RAIDz) and achieving the expected throughput.- You need to make sure you are using 20Gbps (or higher) USB-C cables! Those complaining about poor performance should ensure they're using the correct cabling! 4x HDDs can max out a 10Gbps link, and 4x SATA-based SSDs can push double that with ease.- Make sure you're connecting the USB-C cable in a 20Gbps or 40Gbps USB-C port on the host computer. As expected, 5 or 10Gbps ports will yield lower throughput.- Make quintuple sure the screws are flush with the hard drive caddies. If they're not, you may end up with a drive that you cannot remove from the unit. I had to physically destroy my first enclosure to retrieve a drive because of this design flaw (this is why I docked a star).I hope this review helps you make an informed decision!

Disclaimer - for many users of RAID your #1 priority is data safety and recoverability. My review does not address these critical points but instead focuses on my disbelief, confusion and finally shock at the speed available from the device.On initial setup I populated the array with 3 8tb WD Red nas drives that had been running in a QNAP Ts 4 bay model. Install was easy enough and I initially striped the drives at RAID 0 to get a baseline. Now these drives are built for durability, not speed and are SATA 3 5400rpm with very little cache. However I was expecting to see speeds in the 100mb/sec range at least over a USB 3.0 connection to my MBP. I regularly see speeds of 80mb/sec+ transferring files _OVER WIFI_ to the QNAP nas with the same drives. When I started testing locally (giving the drives plenty of time to stripe and synch up) I could not push past 40mb/sec on either write OR read.TBH I thought I had made a mistake somewhere. So I reset everything, set the test up again and ... 40mb/sec.So I tried some other RAID modes. Same speed. Not breaking 40mb/sec.My last thought that night was "guess my drives are bunk. Time for new ones!" and ordered 4 Seagate EXOS Enterprise drives. These are _fast_ drives at 7200rpm and 256mb of cache. They're hot and noisy and generally overkill for a homelab setup, but whatever.These drives arrive and I set them up - and still can't break 40mb/sec on either write OR read!Just for fun I moved the old drives back into the QNAP Ts, set it for RAID 5 and started moving 6tb of data over the network. With the same drives that wouldn't break 40mb/sec in this QNAP DAS device were easily doing 80mb/sec+ in the QNAP Ts.I'm returning this and going with another OWC Mercury Rack Pro which easily writes 200mb/sec in RAID 10 and a respectable 160mb/sec+ writes in RAID 5.

I have not run into any problems like other reviewers have. Works great

This device is clearly not ready to be out in the public. The setup was pretty straight forward but it seems there may be a complication with QTS 4.4.1 or with the unit itself as it constantly fails my RAID 5 and won't actually tell me why besides "multiple disk have failed" which I've determined to be completely bogus. I've tested over 10 NAS (RED & Ironwolf) drives with this unit that work in both my TVS-872XT and 453Be but fail in the TR-004u randomly. QNAP support has been absolutely great trying to help me solve the issue but I've decided to return it. It's been too much trouble off the jump.