Dear Yottamaster Team,
I hope this review finds you well. I have been using your product for over a year now, and I wanted to share my feedback with you. Please consider this as constructive criticism aimed at helping you further improve your product.
Firstly, I would like to mention that I do not have the version with RAID hardware; instead, I utilize SoftRAID by OWC for my storage needs. With that context in mind, I have noticed a couple of areas where I believe there is room for improvement:
Tray Design: I must express my disappointment with the trays provided. They simply slide into place without a secure locking mechanism, making them prone to vibration. As a result, this vibration triggers an audible humming noise. While I have found that touching the trays can dampen the humming, this is far from an ideal solution. It would greatly benefit your product if you could re-engineer the trays to address this issue. The constant humming is not only annoying but may also have adverse effects on the drives themselves.
LED Visibility: Another concern I have is regarding the LED indicators. Although they are bright when the door is open, they become barely visible unless one's eyes are in direct line of sight. Enhancing the LED visibility would greatly improve the user experience and make it easier to monitor the status of the drives at a glance.
These two issues, in particular, have been sore points for me and significantly impact my overall satisfaction with the product.
Additionally, I came across another potential issue, which may be power-related. When I had two 8TB drives and two 3TB drives installed in the bays, SoftRAID reported the following error in the logs during the disk certification process: '(offset 0, i/o block size = 512). This disk should be replaced immediately.' However, upon detaching the 2x3TB drives, the certification process, which took about 24 hours, completed without any issues. I suspect that this may be indicative of a power issue or a communication problem with the USB connection, as the offset 0 typically refers to sector 0.
Considering the severity of these shortcomings, I have chosen to leave a rating of 3 out of 5. While your product has its merits, these issues significantly impact its overall usability and performance.
I hope you find my feedback valuable and consider addressing these concerns in future iterations of your product. Thank you for taking the time to read my review and for your dedication to providing high-quality storage solutions.
Best regards,
Alex Santos
