Looking for decent yet not overly expensive HDD enclosure

[hallux]

I'm seriously considering selling my home-built desktop that I built for gaming. I'm just not using it much for actual gaming anymore and it's becoming a VERY expensive way (electricity-wise) to host media files for consumption on my MBP over the network.

My plan is to grab a Mac Mini (sale of the desktop would offset this cost), bump the RAM to 8 GB and grab an external USB 3.0 enclosure for the HDDs in the desktop. I'm selling the desktop with NO storage devices and will use the OCZ Vertex 3 from that in the Mac Mini for the OS and the 64-bit Win 7 license from the desktop for Bootcamp on the MBP to satisfy my gaming desires.

I was looking at this Mediasonic unit because of the cost and that it'll give me expansion room, plus recent reviews seem to be decent. I'd say $150 would be about my limit on the enclosure, beyond that and I'd just grab individual ones for each drive. I have no experience with multi-drive enclosures, I'm hoping someone that knows more about them can chime in.

 

[matreya]

I was looking at this Mediasonic unit because of the cost and that it'll give me expansion room, plus recent reviews seem to be decent. I'd say $150 would be about my limit on the enclosure, beyond that and I'd just grab individual ones for each drive. I have no experience with multi-drive enclosures, I'm hoping someone that knows more about them can chime in.

I had one of these that I gave to a friend when I bought a RAID system to backup my files. It worked really well. That said I never put my Mac to sleep, so I don't know how well it responds to Macs sleeping/waking...

 

[hallux]

I had one of these that I gave to a friend when I bought a RAID system to backup my files. It worked really well. That said I never put my Mac to sleep, so I don't know how well it responds to Macs sleeping/waking...

Thanks. The specs say it supports 10.3 and later, I can't imagine it would be an issue.

 

[Ray2]

Thanks. The specs say it supports 10.3 and later, I can't imagine it would be an issue.

It may be an issue if you allow the mini to hibernate. If so, either kill hibernation or leave it on all the time.

 

[hallux]

matreya, do you happen to know what the power draw was? I can't imagine the draw of the combined setup will be more than the desktop that I'm currently using but a NAS may be a more power-efficient solution (which is the ultimate goal).

 

[matreya]

matreya, do you happen to know what the power draw was? I can't imagine the draw of the combined setup will be more than the desktop that I'm currently using but a NAS may be a more power-efficient solution (which is the ultimate goal).

No idea, but I can't imagine it's much more than the combined power draw of the HDDs inside it, given it's only driving a fan, a controller board and 4 LEDs.