INTRODUCTION

   At first glance multi-bay external drive enclosures may not seem as a big deal to many people but when you have high data storage demands and you've got to choose between 4 (or more) external desktop enclosure/drives or a single multi-bay enclosure the result is clear. Of course, even though the number of available bays is extremely important (which is why there are enclosures out there with as many as 24 bays) connectivity is equally important and even though the fastest models currently employ Thunderbolt 3 (and now 4) connectivity the most "common" ones feature USB 3.0/3.1 which is what every computer out there has had since 2012 (if memory serves). Yottamaster may not be the very first name to come in mind when talking about multi-bay enclosures but they have released quite a few popular models and today I’ll be testing their Y-Defender 4-Bay Professional External Drive Enclosure (DF4RU3).

   Yottamaster is a professional high-end storage brand, that aims to provide professional-grade storage solution for individuals, small and medium enterprises worldwide.

   As the title clearly states the Y-Defender DF4RU3 is a 4-bay external drive enclosure (uses the JMB394 SATA port multiplier by JMicron) which fully supports both 2.5" (of all heights) and 3.5" SATA I/II/III drives and features USB 3.0/3.1 connectivity (5Gbps type B or C based on the JMS578 SATA bridge controller again by JMicron) complete with UASP support. Each of its 4 bays is complete with an activity LED and as for the drives themselves they can be hardware configured in several different modes for optimal performance and/or data safety (RAID 0/1/3/5/10/JBOD/BIG). Moving to the enclosure itself well it's primarily made out of aluminum and features two removable smoked acrylic side panels which allow the end user to see the fixed (not addressable) RGB lights from its rear 80mm exhaust fan. So, let's see what Yottamaster offers with their Y-Defender DF4RU3 Professional External Drive Enclosure.