Here's my review of an interesting solution if you want to install a Gotek drive but don't want to damage your Amiga 500 case.  I hope you enjoy it!
Looks like a neat solution, even if TBH I have little interest in hardware these days, I find these videos somewhat relaxing and admire that enthusiasm.
Wait - does that do simulated disk sounds? I loved the Amiga loading sounds. True (sad) fact, my sister and I would sometimes play a game - guess what's loading without looking, by the sound of the disk loading. New Zealand Story had a particular stand-out sound.
As standard the Gotek can't do the sounds but you can modify them to add a speaker , which is quite a cool touch.
As you said, you have to admire the enthusiasm and dedication that people in the retro scene are still developing new hardware, as well as supporting the community with small projects like this.
I've got a Gotek in my A600 and it's a great device, especially as floppy disks are now getting 20+ years old and are going to all start failing at some point. Being able to have a usb stick full of adfs and trick the Amiga (or any other floppy based retro platform) into thinking its loading a real floppy disk is a life saving solition to futureproof the continued use of older systems. If there is one issue it's that the Gotek is a bit fiddly to operate.. having to create a list file of the disk images, so that when you reboot it loads it like a disk index so you can select the image number from the drive's lcd. This also means you have to manually update the list when adding new images, and you then have to remember which number each image is assigned to. For this reason I normally only have a few disk images on a memory stick at any time.. such as a few demos. Keep meaning to set up multiple sticks for different purposes, but I don't actually use real Amigas that much any more. Getting a bit lazy I'm more likely to just boot up WinUAE these days.
Regarding this adapter to fit the Gotek into an A500, it had a few manufacturing issues but still a nice solution. However I don't know if I could live with the plastic not matching the colour of the case! I might need to paint it. Lol.
This does highlight the temptation for getting a 3D printer though, but I'm waiting until thry are even more affordable (you can get them for just over £300 now), faster to print, and a process that produces slightly better end products (at the moment you can still see the layer banding). It's definitely a key future manufacturing process though for many different applications.. even sighted as a key technology for missions to Mars.
Does a Gotek load much faster than a real floppy?
A bit maybe, but not much really, as it's emulating the floppy drive loading process using the floppy drive controller.
So if it's available WHDLoad is a much better solution. However it's great for anything that isn't supported by WHDLoad.
Ah, I see, that's kind of what I thought.
What about disk swapping? Do you press the little buttons until the number corresponding to the next disk comes up? And I'm assuming that as it's interfacing with the standard floppy controller it can only act as df0: - not any external drives, is that right?
Yes that's right, you just press the buttons until you get to the number you want.
You can use them as external drives, just mount one in an old drive housing. When you create the disk image list for the drive you use a Workbench utility. This saves a file on the usb stick that gets accessed when the drive next boots, so it can work for any drive.
But could one Gotek unit be multiple drives to reduce disk-swapping? I see how it's a bit fiddly to make it be both internal and external drives at the same time, but it could conceivably be made so that the amiga reads it as daisy-chained df1: - df3:, couldn't it?
@Teho, sadly no. The device works by you assigning numbered slots and then when you select the image it loads it into its ram to emulate the disk in the drive. When you swap images it emulates a disk swap. Think of it in a similar way to an Everdrive or similar console flashcart setup. To have multiple drives you woud need multiple Gotek units. They are not expensive though. I got my last one directly from China for about £15 two years ago.