a drive bay for a mid2010 iMac?

[zoran]

I have a mid2010 iMac with USB2 and FW800 ports only (no USB3 nor TBolt), and i want to purchase a drive bay to place drives that will reach around 6TB, 2TB for storage and 4TB for backup with TimeMachine. Is there something around that i can use with passive cooling?
Those WD myBookStudio drives were great but they don't max up to that capacities i need, nor do they come with the ports that i use on the iMac!
There are some NAS's that are great (WD EX2) but they are NAS's and i don't want them, i prefer good old traditional drive bays.
Any thoughts on my issue?

 

[Saint.Icon]

I have a mid2010 iMac with USB2 and FW800 ports only (no USB3 nor TBolt), and i want to purchase a drive bay to place drives that will reach around 6TB, 2TB for storage and 4TB for backup with TimeMachine. Is there something around that i can use with passive cooling?
Those WD myBookStudio drives were great but they don't max up to that capacities i need, nor do they come with the ports that i use on the iMac!
There are some NAS's that are great (WD EX2) but they are NAS's and i don't want them, i prefer good old traditional drive bays.
Any thoughts on my issue?

USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0. So you can get a USB 3.0 drive and still use it with a 2.0 port.

Seagate makes a pretty affordable 4TB drive that matches Mac styling.

 

[RMo]

I think there are a variety of enclosures that will suit your needs. I have a 2-bay StarTech USB 3.0 enclosure that is working well for me. I'm using it for extra file storage on my Mac mini server, which currently only has USB 2.0 ports (I got a 3.0 device because I figure I'll eventually upgrade and appreciate the extra speed; they are backwards compatible as a previous poster noted).

If you're fine with USB 2.0, there are enclosures much cheaper than that one that have good reviews. Search Amazon for something like "2 bay USB enclosure" (maybe throw "SATA" in there too if the results look weird). There are also 4-bay enclosures, but you certainly don't need that to reach 6 TB.

By the way, the enclosures I'm talking about usually don't come with drives, so you'll want to buy your own. I went with WD Red drives in mine (their firmware is supposed to be well suited for RAID and NAS), but that may have been overkill. I think I'd go with WD Green next time except using WDIDLE to reduce the excessive head parking that drive would probably do (Google it). For the StarTech enclosure I'm using, you can reach 6 TB of storage in various ways. I'd probably keep it in the default JBOD mode (each drive shows as separate volume) and use a 4 TB drive plus a 2 TB drive since it sounds like that's how you'd want your volumes divided, but you can use whatever combination meets your needs (JBOD, RAID 0, and RAID 1 are all supported on this device).

 

[zoran]

- What do you think about this one?
- Might there be something similar but other brand?

 

[matreya]

- What do you think about this one?
- Might there be something similar but other brand?

I have one of these and they are excellent...