Lots of media, 4 hard drives need a solution

Funny I saw this thread, I'm looking at the same thing... my setup so far, which i believe would make a nice media server:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ZT1FAI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005869J4O/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G0WPLK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

and 2x (I might swap this out for the samsung ultra low voltage ram):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VZL6WK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

and 2x (for the hard drive bays):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0039825LM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER


This is $196 driveless. That little mini ITX motherboard has 6 6GB/s Sata ports too! The processor that is included is a duel-core 1.0ghz Atom processor than barely uses any power. Now, couple this with those new WD Red NAS drives that were recently annouced at (1TB at $109 a pop) and this is the route I'm going to share media throughout my household and back it up as well. I plan to get 2 2TB HDD's in a redundant RAID array to start.

I will be most likely running FreeNAS8 on this box, but it looks like in the 8.1 release, it will support being an iTunes server, which would be great.

I went a different route, I'm using an old white MacBook which is AFP sharing 6 external drives.

Ideally, I'll upgrade it to a used Mac Mini for under $300 and then run FW800 instead of FW400 which the MacBook is running.

This solution is great as it is a native Apple solution, works great with Time Machine without any monkeying around, and you can use Disk Utility to SPAN/BIG, or RAID disks as required.

AppleDApp said:

OWC has some new offerings,

Thunderbay IV

Mercury Elite Dual

Any advantage to getting two Mercury Elite over one Thunderbay IV?

Has anyone tried these out? I don't want these to eject when my computer goes to sleep.

Click to expand...

It seems to me there are only disadvantages to getting two of the smaller units to replace the larger TB IV.

1. $500 for TB IV vs 2 @ $300 for the ME - the larger unit is cheaper per HDD slot.

2. Multiple Thunderbolt cables

3. ME uses power bricks = 2 more pieces of crap on your desk. TB IV has internal power supply, uses standard 3 prong power cable.

4. Biggest difference: the Thunderbay iV has easily accessible drives. The manual states you can hot swap a drive that has been ejected from the OS while the other 3 drives are still active. Digiloyd stated that you can buy extra sleds, so the unit is much more like my Firmtek, which I partially use to hold a rotating bunch of BU drives. I believe the ME unit requires you to power down, unscrew and disassemble to replace a drive.

I have a TB IV sitting on my desk - hope to set it up later today when some work projects ease up.

CalfCanuck said:

I have a TB IV sitting on my desk - hope to set it up later today when some work projects ease up.

Click to expand...

I'm thinking about the TB IV, interested in hearing about your experience with it. have you done any read/write speed tests? how's the fan noise? what drives are you using? i'm about a month into enjoying my nMP and really need to consolidate my storage strategy. Thx

rasputin666 said:

I'm thinking about the TB IV, interested in hearing about your experience with it. have you done any read/write speed tests? how's the fan noise? what drives are you using? i'm about a month into enjoying my nMP and really need to consolidate my storage strategy. Thx

Click to expand...

I posted back on Feb 10 in another thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=18756488#post18756488

While I'm still temporarily pairing the TB IV with a late 2013 15" MBP with dedicated graphics, the performance issues will be different than with a nMP. My MBP does use TB2, but I think both of the ports might share the same channel, while I believe the nMP has 3 (?) for the 6 ports. Since I'm driving a 27" monitor over TB and a 24" via the HDMI, plus the internal display, I'm not sure what sort of performance hits my TB2 is taking. But as I mentioned above, I did see some decent read speed increases for my Crucial SSD.

So as I noted earlier, I am generally happy. The biggest thing for me is that the fan is a little loud. When I remodeled a bathroom in my house I put in an expensive Panasonic ceiling fan (that moves 2 cubic feet a second!) that you have no idea is even on. Most US bathroom fans are way too noisy for me, and I have an ancient one in my office bathroom that sounds like a bloody jet engine during takeoff. Drives me nuts... So I wish they had spent some more money on a quieter fan for the housing - I have a 2-drive Firmtek (eSATA) that is MUCH quieter so I know there are other options out there (although I must note it is a smaller fan than in the OWC TB IV).

CalfCanuck said:

4. Biggest difference: the Thunderbay iV has easily accessible drives. The manual states you can hot swap a drive that has been ejected from the OS while the other 3 drives are still active. Digiloyd stated that you can buy extra sleds, so the unit is much more like my Firmtek, which I partially use to hold a rotating bunch of BU drives. I believe the ME unit requires you to power down, unscrew and disassemble to replace a drive.

Click to expand...

It seem like the biggest difference to me is no hardware RAID on the Thunderbay IV. For dual drive enclosure that is not as big of a deal (use software RAID) but what about 4 disks? Software RAID can't do anything more than RAID 0 and 1 (and maybe 1+0 or 10) but not 5. I guess if you only want the system as 2 RAID1 arrays of 2 disks each that is OK but it seems like a mighty high price for that.

danny_w said:

Software RAID can't do anything more than RAID 0 and 1 (and maybe 1+0 or 10) but not 5. I guess if you only want the system as 2 RAID1 arrays of 2 disks each that is OK but it seems like a mighty high price for that.

Click to expand...

A new version of softraid will do R5. Don't think it's out yet.

thedeske said:

A new version of softraid will do R5. Don't think it's out yet.

Click to expand...

Yes I read a mention of SoftRAID and the beta version that did R5. I know nothing at all about them other than that and that they have an absolutely terrible website that doesn't even describe anything about the product, what RAID modes it can do, or much of anything else. The only documentation is for an old version and I have no idea what has changed since then. Maybe others know better, but personally I don't think I would want to trust my data to them based on the impression that I get.

AppleDApp said:

Considering just starting over and picking up four 1tb portable drives connected to a USB 3.0 hub.

Click to expand...

I've been running a home digital media network for over ten years. What I've found to be most convenient for me is to run 2 matching dual-drive enclosures. One of the 2-drive enclosure operate in RAID 1 that holds the media library (and other shared file storage). The other 2-drive enclosure operates in RAID 0 providing a large, fast storage to backup the media library and other computers on the network.

My previous home server (2009 Mac mini) used OWC Mercury Elite Duals via FW. Unfortunately the OWC has no failure detection for RAID 1 so I used OS X software RAID to create the mirror. It's ability to handle RAID 0 posed no such issues, so the backup device was configured via the hardware settings in the device itself.

Currently, my server is a 2012 Mac mini and 2 Lacie Thunderbolt 2big drives. Again, primary media and file data is on one enclosure configured as RAID 1, backups for server and other home machines are on the second enclosure set for RAID 0. As these are bus level enclosures without internal RAID controllers, all RAID is done via OS X. And all backups are performed using Time Machine.

AppleDApp said:

Seems like a good solution. I decided to purchase a 4 bay HDD enclosure I am currently testing it out. So far so good.

Click to expand...

So after all this time and hundreds of post, did you just decide that NAS wasn't what you were looking for? Big LOL.

CalfCanuck said:

I posted back on Feb 10 in another thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=18756488#post18756488

So as I noted earlier, I am generally happy. The biggest thing for me is that the fan is a little loud. So I wish they had spent some more money on a quieter fan for the housing - I have a 2-drive Firmtek (eSATA) that is MUCH quieter so I know there are other options out there (although I must note it is a smaller fan than in the OWC TB IV).

Click to expand...

They have listened! Review here: http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2014/20140407_2-OWC-Thunderbay-quiet-fan.html

rasputin666 said:

I'm thinking about the TB IV, interested in hearing about your experience with it. have you done any read/write speed tests? how's the fan noise? what drives are you using? i'm about a month into enjoying my nMP and really need to consolidate my storage strategy. Thx

Click to expand...

My Thunderbay IV arrived today and I'm currently populating it. I tested the Thunderbay, setup as a RAID0 of 4 x 2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200s, and benchmarked it with the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and it achieved 724MB/sec reads and 693MB/sec writes.

rasputin666 said:

They have listened! Review here: http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2014/20140407_2-OWC-Thunderbay-quiet-fan.html

Click to expand...

That's great to hear! Now I might consider one.

rasputin666 said:

They have listened! Review here: http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2014/20140407_2-OWC-Thunderbay-quiet-fan.html

Click to expand...

Could it be possible to install that fan in an FW800 OWC Enclosure?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/

iRock1 said:

Could it be possible to install that fan in an FW800 OWC Enclosure?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/

Click to expand...

The Thunderbay enclosure is very similar to the Qx2, so it's POSSIBLE for OWC to replace the fans in the Qx2 at some point in their next production run...

iRock1 said:

Could it be possible to install that fan in an FW800 OWC Enclosure?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/

Click to expand...

Perhaps but not sure. They told me there are no user serviceable parts in the Qx2 when I complained about the loud fan, but apparently they are allowing user upgrades on the ThunderBay:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TBIVFAN/

iRock1 said:

Could it be possible to install that fan in an FW800 OWC Enclosure?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/

Click to expand...

From the pictures of both units on the OWC website, it appears that the fans are of similar design and mounting (and even the same brand, although the camera angle precludes comparing the part number on the fan label).

It might be worth a try .... let us know if it works!

rasputin666 said:

They have listened! Review here: http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2014/20140407_2-OWC-Thunderbay-quiet-fan.html

Click to expand...

Thanks for the Link and info! Just ordered the new fan today - hope that solves my issue.

matreya said:

My Thunderbay IV arrived today and I'm currently populating it. I tested the Thunderbay, setup as a RAID0 of 4 x 2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200s, and benchmarked it with the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and it achieved 724MB/sec reads and 693MB/sec writes.

Click to expand...

excellent, thanks for posting results!

hfg said:

From the pictures of both units on the OWC website, it appears that the fans are of similar design and mounting (and even the same brand, although the camera angle precludes comparing the part number on the fan label).



It might be worth a try .... let us know if it works!

Click to expand...

Lol. I won't be a guinea pig.

I'm trying to purchase a DAS based (among other factors) on the loudness of the system. I'll probably choose something else.