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jean5927

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 27, 2009
6
0
So I got a pair of 3 TB WD REs in RAID0, using disk utilities in two of the internal bays of the Mac Pro 4,1. They serve as a working HD video edit space, and initially I got a Drobo with FW800 to serve as a daily backup station. It tested my patience with its slowness and weird behaviour to the point where I returned it to Amazon.

In the meantime I have realised that having a rotating backup with one of them for offsite keeping is a better strategy than a tower that holds all the data of the MP, so now I'm looking for two identical 2-bay esata enclosures which will hold 6 TB each (already got 4 x 3 TB WD Reds for that purpose). The challenge is to find a suitable enclosure AND an esata pcie card that will work under 10.6.8 for 6-8 months, until I upgrade to 10.8.x.

The enclosures will be for backup only, concatenated or RAID0, and will only run by the end of each day, using CCC as backup software. If the enclosure has both USB and esata, better, that would mean more options for restoring on a mac without esata if necessary.

Any of you guys have some suggestions for esata card and enclosure? I'm in Europe, and the Sans Digital stuff is a bit pricey over here on uk and german amazon. I've been eyeing the Fantec MR-35DU3, but the right pcie card is still a mystery.

Oh, and thanks for the help and experience you already shared in the many posts about making it better, the mac.
 

Ozric

macrumors newbie
Jul 22, 2004
23
3
NJ
I've had the Firmtek SeriTek/2ME4-E card with 4 eSata slots from OS 10.6 through 10.8 Mountain Lion along with the SeriTek/5PM 5 Bay enclosure. The card and enclosure have worked flawlessly throughout OS upgrades, as well as RAID0 scratch disks for a FCP7 through AVID Symphony edit stations which is what they are now. They are port multiplier aware, so one cable runs 5 hard drives in any configuration you desire. Started out with 2 RAID0 scratch disks, 2 RAID0 backup disks, and an extra HD for other things all in the same unit. Then, with extra sleds, I could remove a set of drives and replace as needed. Their enclosure is very quiet and small. I now have two of them, one is all RAID0 scratch disk, the other is RAID0 backup. Never a single issue in both hardware or upgrading through operating systems. I use Chronosync as a backup software. Only limit here is 3G speed, but 200MB/s is plenty for ProRes or DNxHD video files. Good Luck
 
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