Any Experience with OWC External Storage Enclosures and RAIDs?

[Traverse]

Hello. I've been looking for a storage solution for my media for some time (mostly TV Shows and Movies with a bit of miscellaneous file storage as well). I was even considering paying Apple's $2,600 or so fee on my next Mac to get the 8TB option, assuming it's available.

However, another option I found was OWC has an external enclosure that can hold 4 2.5" HDDs or SSDs. I can double that with four Samsung EVO 2TB drives and get 8TB for about $1,700 and it's expandable in the future as I see Samsung coming out with 4TB drives now (so in a few years I could double my storage to 16TB).

I assume with any enclosure that houses multiple drives, I can use the software and set it to RAID 0 (I know no data redundancy) which means macOS won't see 4 drives, but rather one single drive with all the storage combined - is this correct? Am I free to add and remove drives at will or will I have to reset the drive (not sure how well macOS handles it).

Sorry if the above is poorly worded, I've only ever dealt with single connected drives, but need additional space.

 

[Stephen.R]

I assume with any enclosure that houses multiple drives, I can use the software and set it to RAID 0

You could, yes but RAID0 across four drives for storage of stuff you want to keep, is... well it's a very bad idea.

Am I free to add and remove drives at will

No. In no RAID0 setup are you free to "add and remove drives" without complete loss of all data. Literally everything.

I've only ever dealt with single connected drives, but need additional space.

It's an understandable predicament. I've literally just ordered a bunch of stuff (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....1812245/page-373?post=28314290#post-28314290) to solve (for the second time - it's never a permanent solution) essentially the same problem.

Firstly, how much usable space do you want?

Secondly, is the speed from a mechanical drive enough for your needs? i.e. is it just streaming stuff for playback, or is there more intense I/O involved?

Thirdly, how much (if any) do you want to spend on redundancy? i.e. what is it worth to you, to not lose everything you've collected in the case of hardware failure?

 

[Traverse]

You could, yes but RAID0 across four drives for storage of stuff you want to keep, is... well it's a very bad idea.


No. In no RAID0 setup are you free to "add and remove drives" without complete loss of all data. Literally everything.


It's an understandable predicament. I've literally just ordered a bunch of stuff (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....1812245/page-373?post=28314290#post-28314290) to solve (for the second time - it's never a permanent solution) essentially the same problem.

Firstly, how much usable space do you want?

Secondly, is the speed from a mechanical drive enough for your needs? i.e. is it just streaming stuff for playback, or is there more intense I/O involved?

Thirdly, how much (if any) do you want to spend on redundancy? i.e. what is it worth to you, to not lose everything you've collected in the case of hardware failure?

So in RAID0, if I replace one of the drives or one of the drives files then all of the data stored on those drives is gone and not just the data stored on that specific drives? Redundancy isn't a huge concern of mine because I have the data backed up elsewhere. I was looking for a way to expand my current active storage space.

I *could* do HDDs instead, but would prefer to stick with SSD storage for some other purposes. I've looked in a bit to other RAID arrangements and I'm fine loosing some I/O performance, but I want to avoid cutting my available space too drastically.

 

[Stephen.R]

So in RAID0, if I replace one of the drives or one of the drives files then all of the data stored on those drives is gone and not just the data stored on that specific drives?

In raid0 the bytes of a file are split across all drives in the array - the goal being purely about speed (reading/writing less data to each physical drive, effectively)

if all you want is more space, concatenated set may be better - the data is written normally on single drives (possibly split over two when one reaches capacity) but it appears to the OS as a single big drive.

you can add more later but I am not aware of any facility for changing disks non destructively.

if you have reliable backups that obviously makes it less of a risk. Personally I can’t justify the cost ssds just for storing media like that but if you can afford it by all means go for it.

Apple has some docs regarding the setup and types of raid sets available in macOS. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/disk-utility/dskua23150fd/mac


there’s also of course hardware And software options where you could use raid5/similar, which have most benefits of raid0 but will sustain a single disk failure.

 

[Traverse]

In raid0 the bytes of a file are split across all drives in the array - the goal being purely about speed (reading/writing less data to each physical drive, effectively)

if all you want is more space, concatenated set may be better - the data is written normally on single drives (possibly split over two when one reaches capacity) but it appears to the OS as a single big drive.

you can add more later but I am not aware of any facility for changing disks non destructively.

if you have reliable backups that obviously makes it less of a risk. Personally I can’t justify the cost ssds just for storing media like that but if you can afford it by all means go for it.

Apple has some docs regarding the setup and types of raid sets available in macOS. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/disk-utility/dskua23150fd/mac


there’s also of course hardware And software options where you could use raid5/similar, which have most benefits of raid0 but will sustain a single disk failure.

Thank you for the advice. I think JBOD is actually a pretty nice answer and macOS appears to support it via Disk Utility. Right now my minimum is 4TB, but I'd like more for room to grow. I unfortunately have all my computer equipment relegated to a single small room so my desire for an SSD is more about elimination noise than for speed.

At the end of the day, I just need a very large (and quiet) bucket of storage for various items - larger than I can get in a single SSD purchase. All of my data is backed up to an external HDD at home, an external HDD at the office, and I plan to get Backblaze eventually, so I'm not concerned too much about data loss.

The only downside is that it appears if down the road I want to add another disk even to JBOD I'd have to rebuild the entire thing, but I suppose it can't be helped.

Thank you again or your input on this.

 

[Stephen.R]

The only downside is that it appears if down the road I want to add another disk even to JBOD I'd have to rebuild the entire thing, but I suppose it can't be helped.

you won’t be able to remove/replace existing ones, but the Apple docs specifically say that you can add extra disks

After it’s been created, you can use Disk Utility to add more disks to a concatenated disk set to increase its size.

 

[glenthompson]

As to the OWC enclosures I bought one to use with my old Mac Mini that serves as a file/media server. It’s a 2 drive model with 4tb drives installed. Also is a destination for Time Machine backups. Enclosure was easy to install and has worked well for a year or so.

you also need to think about you plan to backup the data on those drives.