OWCMercury Elite Pro 16TB 7200 RPM Storage Solution w/USB 3.2 5Gb/s

I needed a new direct attached storage solution for use with my 2018 MacMini and Backblaze cloud backup service and I wanted an enclosure that I could replace the drive in later on and, I wanted a drive that could take advantage of the USB C speeds of the 2018 MacMini's USB C ports.I've used OWC products before, I had one of their external BluRay burners back in the day and a few of their portable USB (bus powered) HDD enclosures so OWC has been on my radar. The enclosure itself is all aluminum with an aluminum stand that has silicon skids on the bottom, it firmly holds the drive upright so it fit on the desk top right behind my 34" ultra wide monitor. It has a nice beefy USB Type B (3.2 gen 2) port, it comes with a USB Type B to Type A cable but I bought this Tripp Lite cable to use with it rather than using a Type A to USB C adaptor. The cable itself seems well made and made a reliable connection: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08298VJY9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1I departed from my usual MO in purchasing hard drives by getting this with an installed Toshiba desktop drive that OWC populates their enclosures with. At the time of purchase this was $229 for the 6TB capacity and it is a 7200 rpm drive and I felt it was an affordable choice for both the HDD and enclosure and, when you purchase this with the drive installed it carries a three year warranty. And I figured I didn't have to worry about getting a OEM hard drive from WD or Seagate that might not be warrantied, as I've read about many times in hard drive reviews. So not having had any previous experience with a Toshiba drive I'm hoping that it lasts. After shutting down the computer each day I'm also powering off the OWC drive.The enclosure does not have an active fan. The case acts as a heat sink to dissipate heat that the drive creates. I transferred about 3TB of FLAC music files and general documents in a few hours. I haven't clocked the speeds but it is much faster than my previous Seagate 4TB bus powered drive.My MacMini recognized the drive right away and I used OWC's included drive formatting utility and it automatically created an HFS+ volume and I was up and running in a matter of minutes. There is some question of whether to use APFS on newer Mac's or HFT+ when formatting new drives but HFS+ is supposed to be more optimized for mechanical HDD's whereas APFS is more optimized for SSD drives.Overall it has a very high quality feel and appearance, the only negative is how it was shipped. It came in its box with styrofoam end caps on the drive and while it’s own packaging was sufficient I would have thought it would be shipped with an outer box for added protection. I will report back after having used it for a few months.

I use the drive for backup on my home system. The disk is quiet, works well and I really like the looks. It also has a bright blue activity light which I also like. The real stand out so far has been OWC product support. For me they were on point, friendly and FAST. I recommend them.

so far so good. formatted the drive and it's working fine. but I know when it's spinning up from across the room. Not so much the drive but the low frequency vibration into the desk it's sitting on.otherwise works as advertised.

I'm very happy with this drive. It's as fast and as big as I need and a solidly built product.