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4 bay HDD enclosure with USB 3.0

happycadaver

happycadaver

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 1, 2012
191
61
Germany
I'm looking for the above mentioned enclosure. It should be compatible with Mac OS 10.9. I have heard that JMicron chipsets are not the first choice for OSX, so most of the low-budget enclosures are not recommendable, i think.
My first choice had been the Lian-Li Ex-503, but according to the vendor the chipset is only Mac compatible up to USB 2.0. Can anyone confirm this? If 3.0 works, this will be my enclosure.

Pricing should be around 200 euros.

Can you recommend some enclosures? Thank you!
 
Last edited:
Do you need it to be empty? LaCie has the 4Big Quadra which works rather well. I think part of the cost is it uses Enterprise class hard drives. Which you would want for any RAID anyways.

Though I could be wrong about the drives it uses. LaCie does advertise it as Enterprise class so that would indicate Enterprise class hard drives.
 
I guess the Drobo 5d would be a candidate device. Another would be a Vantec vault, I think the typical street price (retail) is around $100-120.

Not too many other options, but I'm not surprised. This is a pretty esoteric market.

Anyhow, good luck.
 
@Velocity
Yes, have to be empty, since i already own 3x3TB WD Red drives. If that would not be the case, i already have bought me a WD Mybook with PLX chipset.

Thank you for your answers. I will go through them and give feedback.
 
Are you considering a NAS unit? I just got a Synonlogy DS414, I'm very impressed with it so far, the DiskStation functionality is great, it has USB 3.0, I haven't tested accessing it via USB 3.0 as I connect over the network.
 
I already have tested a NAS (DS213+), but the combination with ATV3 and iTunes server is not powerful enough for streaming 1080p videos. Direct streaming from an external HDD via iMac works great. The bigger DS are too expensive for my taste.
 
happycadaver said:
I already have tested a NAS (DS213+), but the combination with ATV3 and iTunes server is not powerful enough for streaming 1080p videos. Direct streaming from an external HDD via iMac works great. The bigger DS are too expensive for my taste.
Click to expand...

I had a DS213+ and I could stream 1080p .m4v videos just fine to my ATV3. My ATV3 was hardwired to the network as was the DS213+. These were Blu Ray rips encoded with Handbrake. I could stream via WiFi without problem from iTunes running on my MacBook Pro.

Tip: always run wired Ethernet to stationary devices, especially AppleTVs.

How are you backing up your RAID array?
 
System is running great for some time now.
@Blueroom
No extra backup, RAID5 is enough for me. The drives don't contain live-saving data, only media files. Personal things are stored otherwise.
 
happycadaver said:
System is running great for some time now.
@Blueroom
No extra backup, RAID5 is enough for me. The drives don't contain live-saving data, only media files. Personal things are stored otherwise.
Click to expand...
And if the RAID 5 fails, you have to go and recreate or redownload all the media files.

How long would it take you to get all of those media files back?
 
So you already have 3x3TB, and will get another 3TB and put into RAID5 for 9TB accessible. And your budget for enclosure is only 200 euro.

My experience with running RAID5 is that it is not good for using on a small scale. This is small scale. You are introducing multiple new points of failure, any one of which may cause the loss of all data on your entire RAID array. I have seen this happen multiple times on small arrays. Large RAID arrays guard against this by spending thousands on good quality equipment. Small arrays don't.

So, what to use for a small installation? I won't recommend any one thing, but you could choose from:

1) Drobo (some people criticise them)

2) Getting a cheap PC and stuffing it full of disks and do one of the below:

- assign some disks to storage, and others to backup the first disks (as in similar to time capsule, not as in mirroring)
- run an Unraid array (even if one disk dies, data on all other disks remains accessible)
- run a ZFS or ReFS or BTRFS array.

I personally prefer the cheap PC full of disks route as it is so flexible, and can be network accessible, and will deliver high bandwidth. But it does take a bit more time to set up.
 
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