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October 2019 update: After almost a year, my comments below stand. I've had no technical issues with the Thunder3 Quad X. I leave my computer on nearly 24/7 using an SSD in the enclosure as my boot drive on the iMac. Same drives are in use as installed a year ago. No problems with reliability or connections. The fan noise is not an issue for me, more of a calming white noise easily covered by music or podcasts I usually have playing anyway.
Original review in Nov. 2018: Overall I like the Thunder3 Quad X, despite the following comments, which are not really the fault of the manufacturer, as far as I can tell.
I was updating from a 2009 Mac Pro tower, which had 4 drives (3 HDD, 1 SSD) that I wanted to remove and connect to a new iMac. My goal was to simply move my old drives to a new enclosure, connect them to the iMac via Thunderbolt 3, and get back to work. I researched and decided the QuadX was at the pricepoint/feature set that might work, with some possible future-proofing for RAID and SSD capabilities. I have not used RAID before, and am not quite ready to do so (though may soon), so I'm using JBOD (4 separate disks) in the enclosure. There's a lot of hype about Thunderbolt 3 speeds (from Apple and others) which I have come to learn do not really apply to spinning hard drives, unless you're using a RAID. As I understand it, single spinning drives simply cannot move data to match the speed of Thunderbolt. (They can't even reach typical USB 3.0 speeds.) Even SDDs may not do so unless in a RAID config. Still, I wanted to believe I'd get more speed.
So in my ignorance I've felt somewhat let down that my HDDs and the SSD are not performing any "faster" than they were in an 8-year-old Mac Pro (as measured in Blackmagic Speed Test). Specifically, one 4tb 7200rpm drive is about 160MB/s in either system; an 8tb 7200rpm drive measured around 120 MB/s in both. (I've since purchased a newer 8tb drive which is running closer to 160 MB/s after cloning from the older one). Maybe there are faster spinning drives but it's hard for the casual user to discern the truth through all the marketing hype by hard drive manufacturers, and even through reading reviews. I was unable to test the 2tb SSD as it is my boot drive (installed in the QuadX) and there's some kind of permissions issue in the new device when booting my iMac (which I am trying to resolve but everything works otherwise). I am using the short cable which came with the QuadX, connected directly to my iMac's Thunderbolt 3 port.
I thought about just going back to a USB 3.0 enclosure for my drives, but I do like the quality, non-plastic (aluminum) construction and relative ease of mounting the drives in the QuadX, and the design which reminds me of the "cheese grater" Mac I am leaving behind. I am also using the supplied Displayport connection for a second monitor and that works great. So I may actually buy a second one of these units for backups and as for testing as I ease into using a RAID setup in search of faster speeds, probably what I should have been doing before.
BTW I'm not bothered by the fan noise level others have reported as a negative. When I shut off the fan during testing, I can still hear the 3 spinning drives, making about 50% of the overall noise, with 50% coming from the fan. The Mac Pro was far noisier (multiple fans including 2 on graphics cards) so I don't consider it a major issue but YMMV. Despite my comments above, moving to the 27-inch iMac has been great, it's faster overall and the monitor is awesome.
| Hard Drive | thunderbolt 3 |
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