Anyone know a good 4 bay jbod enclosure (esata,USB, fw, tb) ?

[SkyStudios]

I'm trying to find a decent 4 bay external box to hold iMovie, iTunes dedicated 2tb hds, 4 to be persice.

Anyone here have good experience with these enclosures?
Like which brand, best price, what to look out for., I guess I need jbod set up, would like swappable option but I also have a few dual USB docks.

Thanks

[jmcgeejr]

Originally Posted by SkyStudios

I'm trying to find a decent 4 bay external box to hold iMovie, iTunes dedicated 2tb hds, 4 to be persice.

Anyone here have good experience with these enclosures?
Like which brand, best price, what to look out for., I guess I need jbod set up, would like swappable option but I also have a few dual USB docks.

Thanks

I too would like to know, however ideally I want thunderbolt. Oh and without the drives.

[maflynn]

I use Qnap, which allows hot swappable, syslogic is another one that's quite popular here.

Edit, never mind, Qnap is a full NAS that is ethernet, you're looking for a direct connect, i.e., USB/FW/TB

[ssgbryan]

I use aMercury Elite ProQx2 w/4 2TB Hard drives in a Raid 5 for my media needs - USB, FW400, FW800, SATA

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

Doesn't come with thunderbolt, but I haven't seen anything below 1,000 yet that does.

[paulrbeers]

Originally Posted by ssgbryan

I use aMercury Elite ProQx2 w/4 2TB Hard drives in a Raid 5 for my media needs - USB, FW400, FW800, SATA

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

Doesn't come with thunderbolt, but I haven't seen anything below 1,000 yet that does.

That's a nice piece of Kit. Too bad hard drive prices have skyrocketed (yes I know #firstworldproblems)

[SkyStudios]

Originally Posted by paulrbeers

That's a nice piece of Kit. Too bad hard drive prices have skyrocketed (yes I know #firstworldproblems)

Yes that's the main problem, way over priced, and getting one of those dual USB esata docs is a dodgy risk, cheep Chinese stuff., I had 3 break down on me, two of them where identical and both had their own unique quirks, one would unmount a second drive on the bay while the other would UN mount and remount the second additional drive on the bay, the third one simply broke, the USB port caved inside the unit, just fell in.

Icy dock sells a quad bay for 200 to 250, still over priced compared to some PC units that are internal but req hire power supply, I have seen some of those of for 79 bucks and have 5 bays., swappable and esata.

[AngryRedTicTac]

I don't have any experience with this model, but I love my Stardom ST2-WABC 2 bay RAID0/JBOD FW800/400/USB2 enclosure. Super well built, lives up to the SOHOTANK moniker, just a fantastic piece of hardware. There are a couple different models, guessing you'd want this. Come to think of it, I want this now too....

http://www.stardom.com.tw/sohotank_feature.html

Newegg is currently out of stock. This place has it for $279...
http://www.welovemacs.com/st56104ssb2.html

[ody]

Originally Posted by AngryRedTicTac

I don't have any experience with this model, but I love my Stardom ST2-WABC 2 bay RAID0/JBOD FW800/400/USB2 enclosure. Super well built, lives up to the SOHOTANK moniker, just a fantastic piece of hardware. There are a couple different models, guessing you'd want this. Come to think of it, I want this now too....

http://www.stardom.com.tw/sohotank_feature.html

Newegg is currently out of stock. This place has it for $279...
http://www.welovemacs.com/st56104ssb2.html

Sorry to revive an old thread but I wanted to get some feedback from people that gave bought the stardom products. I am interested in their 4-bay USB 3 jbod enclosure and it looks very well built with 200w power supply.

Is it noisy (living room usage whilst watching movies). I have seen a YouTube video and the fan was constantly on not just for the initial hdd spin up

Any advice/experience ?

Thank you

[The-Pro]

Have a look at the devices from G-Technology.
they are very nicely designed, I have a couple external single HDD's and tey are brilliant.
They have 3,4 and 5 hdd raid solutions I think

[Old Muley]

Are you just looking for the enclosure? I picked up one of the OWC enclosures on eBay for something like $75 and have been very happy with it. Of course it only holds two drives, but if you keep an eye out, one of the 4-bay versions might pop up.

[hardax]

I've had good luck with the Mediasonic line of Probox's (non Raid). I think the JBOD version is just over $100. Great bang for the buck.

[martinm0]

Originally Posted by ssgbryan

I use aMercury Elite ProQx2 w/4 2TB Hard drives in a Raid 5 for my media needs - USB, FW400, FW800, SATA

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

Doesn't come with thunderbolt, but I haven't seen anything below 1,000 yet that does.

I'd like to chime in and state that Thunderbolt enclosures really aren't any faster than fw800 used with HDDs I found. I have a Lacie 6TB (2x3TB) Thunderbolt RAID enclosure and I get transfer speeds of no more than 120MB/s. I also had two OWC Qx2 enclosures at one time as well. When I tested those enclosures with two old 320GB HDDs in RAID1, I got the same speeds over fw800.

Now, I did get the Lacie 6TB external for $360 refurbed from eCost, so it was a good deal for me as 3TB drives were $150. But, you won't get crazy speeds unless you have a 4-6 bay Thunderbolt enclosure for a faster cache (and you really need SSDs in there).

Hope that helps people save some money. The OWC Qx2 is a great enclosure and I should have kept the two I had. Oh well.