Oyen Digital 100TB Fortis 5C 5-Bay USB-C External Drive Array

As a video editor, I'm always looking for additional storage. This is a compact 5-bay enclosure for 3.5" HDDs. It uses a 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface. It is relatively quiet, and the performance is good. I populated it with five 16TB Seagate Exos 7200 rpm drives (80TB total) in RAID-0 using AppleRAID, also SoftRAID Pro 7.5. I tested both 64KB and 128KB stripe sizes. Test machines were an M1 Ultra Mac Studio, M1 Max MacBook Pro 16, M2 Pro Mac Mini, and 2017 i7 iMac 27. Performance was similar on all of them, about 900 MB/sec write, and 700 MB/sec read on the Blackmagic test. See attached ATTO disk test for performance at various I/O sizes.Some may wonder why use rotating drives; aren't SSDs the way to go? Look up how much 80 terabytes of SSD storage costs and compare that to this unit populated with 7200 rpm HDDs. Mechanical drives in the proper RAID configuration are still very fast and much cheaper than SSDs. With the correct adapter, you can also put 2.5" SATA-type SSDs in this enclosure.MacOS has RAID-0 and RAID-1 software support built in. For higher RAID formats you would need SoftRAID. Windows 11 Pro has RAID-5 in software.I also have four OWC Thunderbay 4 Thunderbolt enclosures with similar HDDs. Compared to the Fortis 5C they are generally louder and slower at most I/O sizes, but those are 4 x 12TB Seagate Exos drives vs. the 5 x 16TB drives in the Fortis 5C.The question may arise about the performance and utility of the Fortis 5C USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface vs. Thunderbolt 3. I previously preferred only Thunderbolt storage on my Macs because of the performance and ability to daisy-chain drives. However, USB 3.2 Gen 2 has no performance penalty vs. Thunderbolt 3 when using five 16TB 7200 rpm drives.The USB 3.2 interface is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and 4 ports. As a result, I never felt constrained by the point-to-point USB 3.2 cabling.The Fortis 5C has a fan switch that allows it to run either continuously or intermittently at a lower speed, based on a 35C internal chassis thermostat. I preferred the intermittent operation as it was quieter overall.Unlike my other RAID enclosures with air intakes on the front, the Fortis 5C has a good-sized bottom-mounted air intake. Provided you don't set it on a carpet, the supply of cool air should be no problem. I have done rigorous multi-day stress testing with dedicated I/O tools, and where the enclosure is fully populated with always-on 7200 rpm drives. So far, I've never seen any sign of thermal issues, even with the fan set to intermittent.I found myself using the handle on the top more often than expected. The rubber case might seem superfluous but prevents knocks and scrapes when moving the unit.This is a good cost-effective drive enclosure that is relatively quiet and compact.

As of the moment, this and Oyen's other 5 bay unit are *probably* the best 10Gbps USB enclosures available. Probably...The case is solid, nice handle, the rubber housing is a nice touch, and so far it operates as one would expect. This unit would be perfect if not for the airflow. The tray doors have 6 microscopic holes that do almost nothing, so most of the flow is going through whatever random crevices it can find. It's not a bad fan, and the fan itself is pretty quiet. But even on full blast, you don't feel the amount of air you would expect for the amount of turbulence noise being produced.At normal room temp, 5x 18TB Exos drives will idle at 42-45 C with the fan at full power (loud). 50-53 C on Auto (quiet). Under load, full fan power will keep it in the mid 50's while auto gets right up the operating spec limit of 60 C.I haven't decided whether to keep it and try to swap fans, drill holes or whatever. It's disappointing because it would have been so easy to make this an easy-to-recommend winner with very little engineering effort.