Oyen Digital Novus USB-C Rugged 3.5-Inch External Hard Drive Enclosure

I bought this enclosure to use Sata drives as an external backup. The enclosure is sturdy and heavy duty. The outer shell is aluminum and the inner drive tray is plastic. I mounted a WD red pro inside with ease and had zero problems getting it up and running. The drive is secure inside and doesn’t move around at all. This enclosure has been running problem free for me like every other Oyen digital product in use at my business. That includes HDX drives, Helix drives, and Mobius 2c raid enclosures.

I've used a variety of external drive enclosures over the years, mostly just for USB drives attached to a computer. I bought the Novus because the drive I installed in it will have to go on the road with me from time to time and I wanted the protection afforded by the silicon "sleeve". It's electronics and a drive so I will treat it accordingly. The protection is for the occasional bump it may get.First, it arrived precisely as predicted, well done Amazon.Packaging was easy to open and everything was individually wrapped. There are actually PRINTED instructions included, although they're hardly necessary. This is a very simple, but well designed enclosure. And everything fits like a well engineered and constructed product. As nearly as I can tell it is manufactured in the USA using materials from the USA. But I could not find that specifically stated even on their web site.My 8TB (purchased separately) 3.5" drive slid right in - at a slight angle to enable aligning and mating the SATA connector in the case. This was very easy. Everything fit, aligned and went together perfectly. There was a small zip lock bag containing 12 screws - 8 for mounting the drive - only 4 required. Two different types provided. And there were four black screws to secure the "sled" inside the case. It is also very nice they included a small MAGNETIZED screwdriver. This is good because they ensure users have the right SIZE and tip screwdriver and also because the tiny screws are...tiny. MUCH easier to install using the magnetized screwdriver than trying to start them by hand.I may not get out enough but I haven't seen a lot of thunderbolt connectors, although I would like to. And I don't have any. So it is great that they also provided a USB-c - to - USB-A cable for connection to my system.The one 'ding' I'll give them is the freakin' wall wart! I would very much have preferred a slightly larger enclosure with the wall wart electronics inside the case and a normal AC power cord. I thought about taking off a star in the rating for that but they're not the only ones guilty of using them! So suffice to say, it's an area that NEEDS improvement.Overall, an excellent and very well designed and manufactured product. I would buy another if I needed another external enclosure and highly recommend them to anyone who may need one.

The enclosure works well for what it is, but it powers down and goes to sleep when left alone, but does not wake back up with the computer. I have to power cycle the enclosure to reconnect the hard drive. It is very annoying as I was looking for something that I could leave and forget.

I also like to have local storage. I use a 4TB locally attached SSD with my Linux box and the Novus for a further local backup. It's fast (for a hard disk), has a lot of storage and unlike other vendors I haven't had any problems with it. I have unstable power and live in California, so our power grid is third world quality. In the past before I put in extensive UPS, when the power would drop, it would cause problems with my local storage and NAS. I installed the Novus before all the UPS I have now and had power spikes and two day outage. The Novus came right up without data issues. Now I know that power spikes etc. can cause problems with physical media. All I can say is I didn't experience the problems I had with other vendors and the unit is fast and reliable. YMMV

Fast and low cost.

Saw a blog on OWC about this drive and how simple and reliable to use with a Mac. It has a nice protective soft gel housing over the drive and you must use AC to operate. There is a small off and one switch and a LED light that remains lit when in use. Pretty darn quiet, a very soft hum can be heard at times. There is no issues with overheating, disconnecting from the Mac during sleep, and all backups run quickly and without any fuss from my end. USB C drive cable is just the right length. A great purchase that allows me to backup using CCC and iDrive. Yes, I like to have redundant backups just in case.

Not really noisy, just what you would expect from spinning disks! I'm using it for TimeMachine, alternating between another 10T HDD I had. Not super fast, but this is a backup so don't care. Note that when a spinning disk fails, it is often possible to recover the data using a service. When an SDD fails, it is gone. I have cloud backup also, but why not have a fall-back for the backup.

Lots of space and a very useful hard drive

First off, the product seems robust and well equipped with cables and instructions. It seems to work well.However, it's made for the US market and ships only with an American two-pin adaptor. I can't find anything in the sales blurb that states this and Amazon does not seem to want me to contact the seller directly.I just don't understand why Amazon.sg sells products that weren't designed for the Singaporean market. I now have to go to a third party to enquire about replacement adaptors.Moreover, most adaptors nowadays come with a range of international fittings. Who still ships single market adaptors? 95% of us don't live in the US. Definitely time to broaden a few horizons.

I have tried everything to have it appear on Disk Utility or Finder, but it does not appear.My system : Mac Book Pro with Big Sur