So, I took the next step and read the reviews, and not just from Newegg.  I did a Google search to find other retailers that carry this enclosure, and read the reviews there as well.

Overall, the only negative I came across was that the cooling fan was noisy.  In my computer room, I already have 3 computers, each with multiple fans (3-6 fans each); one more fan was not going to add much to the noise in the room.

The one disappointing part of my purchase experience is that the free shipping from Newegg used FedEx SmartPost– where FedEx delivers the package to the Post Office, who then completes the delivery.  But I was not in a hurry, and free shipping fits easily into my budget.

The device arrived on Friday, December 9, surprisingly VERY early – apparently due to the Christmas shipping season, the local Post Office started delivering early just to get all of the days mail and packages delivered in a timely fashion.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the shipping box was that the retail box had a plastic handle – I love it when they do that.  It shows to me that the manufacture gives more thought about the packaging than just a pretty picture.

Contained in the package was the enclosure, 4 handles, 8 screws, screwdriver, USB 3 cable, eSATA cable, power supply, and the quick install instructions.

As I mentioned, I have 4 MyBook drives.  This enclosure is not quite as wide as three, so once testing is complete it will not only use less outlets and potentially power, but also take up less space – another win!

As I was not willing to take down my MyBooks until I’m certain this enclosure will do as advertised and work as I want, I pulled out a few “spare” drives for testing – 500GB WD Black and two 2TB Seagate Barracuda.  Sadly the third Seagate I have developed SMART errors and failed to even format when I included it.

Installation was fairly basic, but not tool-less.  You have to attach, with screws, a handle onto the front edge of the hard drives.  However Mediasonic provides a screwdriver – so not too bad.

With the drives installed, I connected it to my HTPC’s front USB port.  This is the one PC I have that doesn’t have USB 3.

It took maybe a minute for the enclosure to boot up and report to the computer what it was and how many hard drives.  I went into the Computer Management Disk Management control panel (yes could have gone straight to Disk Management, but I have the habit of doing Computer Management to get there).  The Seagate drives had to be initialized and formatted, as they had last been used in a RAID array.  The Western Digital drive was fully recognized immediately and assigned a drive letter.

So far, so good.

With all the drives properly registered, now starts the testing.

Here are a few things I want to test prior to having this replace those My Books:

1. How reliable is the connection to the individual drives? Do they drop out or stay connected?
2. How effective is the small cooling fan? Do the drives stay within their proper ranges?
3. How noticeable is the fan noise?

I use Acronis TrueImage for doing local backups to external drives (hence the 4 MyBooks), so I decided to use it for testing.  I have setup test backups to save to each drive, in addition to the normal backup I’ve been running.

I also have HWInfo installed which allows me to monitor the speed and usage of the drives.

After 24 hours of testing, here are my results – promising:

1. None of the 3 drives have dropped out
2. The temperatures seem to be decent, though they are warmer than my server’s RAID array (which has 2 120mm fans blowing across them), they are averaging so far a little cooler than the MyBook’s which have no fans.
   1. Drive 1 – Western Digital Black 500GB – average temp 110 (high 120)
   2. Drive 2 – Seagate Barracuda 2TB – average temp 106 (high 118)
   3. Drive 3 – Seagate Barracuda 2TB – average temp 105 (high 118)
3. Even with the fan manually set to high speed, it is not noticeable to me, with the other noise in the room.

At 24 hours, this is looking promising.  For a temperature comparison, I’m only monitoring two of the MyBooks (the averages run for a few weeks on these)

1. Western Digital MyBook 6TB – average temp 115 (high 118)
2. Western Digital MyBook 3TB – average temp 109 (high 115)

Also, the here's what the internal drive on that computer looks like, temperature-wise

• Western Digital 320GB - average temp 99 (max 102)

All said, I think it is very promising.  I plan to continue the testing for at least a week before I start voiding the warranties on the MyBooks.