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Any suggestion for firewire dual bay enclosure ?

L

lineageo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 22, 2011
6
0
My mac is totally full right now,:eek: I'm thinking to get a 2.5" dual bay enclosure.

I did some research online this few days, I saw two of those, but its hard to make a decision .


1. Caldigit VR Mini. $425 with 2TB
Many people said Caldigit is good, but its so expensive to me (for this price i could even get a new iPad 2). and I dont like LCD display in ORANGE color.

2. Akitio Taurus Mini. $109.00
Black color with blue LCD display ( It looks great for me), and the price is good, too. I saw eBay has a buyer are offering $99.99.

I like the Akitio Taurus Mini better, but never heard about this brand. is it good? or should I pay more to get Caldigit VR Mini? :rolleyes:

any advise?
 
lineageo said:
My mac is totally full right now,:eek: I'm thinking to get a 2.5" dual bay enclosure.

I did some research online this few days, I saw two of those, but its hard to make a decision .


1. Caldigit VR Mini. $425 with 2TB
Many people said Caldigit is good, but its so expensive to me (for this price i could even get a new iPad 2). and I dont like LCD display in ORANGE color.

2. Akitio Taurus Mini. $109.00
Black color with blue LCD display ( It looks great for me), and the price is good, too. I saw eBay has a buyer are offering $99.99.

I like the Akitio Taurus Mini better, but never heard about this brand. is it good? or should I pay more to get Caldigit VR Mini? :rolleyes:

any advise?
Click to expand...

Why do you need an LCD on the drive enclosure (why pay the money for it?)? You can get a dual drive enclosure from OWC.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/RAID/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

Cheers
 
What about the new Western Digital studio 2?
It has easy access to both drives and we have worked with literally 40-60 WD Studio disks over the last few years. Very solid drives
 
MacForScience said:
Why do you need an LCD on the drive enclosure (why pay the money for it?)? You can get a dual drive enclosure from OWC.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/RAID/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

Cheers
Click to expand...

This is nice, too . I love the looking. and enclosure only $84.50, Thank you. good suggestion. :rolleyes:

but enclosure with LCD display , it could set up RAID directly, looks cool tho. and it will show status of hard drives.

http://cgi.ebay.com/AKiTio-Taurus-M...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item1c1a2465f9

umm.. $10 dollars different. I got to think about it..
I just contacted this eBay seller, They said could give me $99.99 . Looks like pretty good deal..


I gave up the caldigit one.

Akitio or OWC Elite-AL.......
Akitio or OWC Elite-AL.......
Akitio or OWC Elite-AL.......
Akitio or OWC Elite-AL.......
Akitio or OWC Elite-AL.......

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
 
Last edited:
yoak said:
What about the new Western Digital studio 2?
It has easy access to both drives and we have worked with literally 40-60 WD Studio disks over the last few years. Very solid drives
Click to expand...

thanks , Yoak.
Let me go check it first..:D
 
This may or may not be useful to you, but I wanted to add something relative to the "headless" 2-drive RAID enclosures versus the fancier ones with an LCD and some internal ability to control themselves.

I recently bought a cheap (~$100 bare) OWC 2-drive 3.5" FW800 enclosure for work, then shortly replaced it with a much more expensive (~$450 bare) one from WeibeTech. After setting up the cheap one, I realized a couple of things: There was no practical way to do a "live" rebuild of an array if one of the drives failed, and really no useful status at all in the event of failures or drive problems. The fancy one, in contrast, gives status messages on the LCD whether it's hooked to a computer or not, and you can pull a drive and rebuild the array using a different drive from the LCD and without the help of a computer. Interestingly, they use the same drive signature (both are Oxford based), since the WeibeTech recognized the initialized drives from the OWC.

Now, if you're planning on running it as a RAID0 array (which I'm guessing is the case), then none of the fancy stuff matters--if one of the drives flakes, the whole thing is toast regardless of the controller. But if you're going to do a RAID1, I honestly can't see much value in using one of the cheaper sort with no independent control/rebuild capability--if a drive fails, you're going to have to pull the good one, copy the data off, replace both, format, and copy the data back, compared to just replacing the bum drive and telling it to re-sync. Might as well just have a separate backup drive. With one of the expensive ones, you can do what I do, and have a third drive that you swap in, then keep the one you pulled out as an offsite backup.
 
Thank you for all of information that you guys provide.

I will go with Akitio Taurus Mini, I really love the design, I have few enclosures but never try LCD display. And I just contacted eBay seller (RedGadget) this morning,and paid $99.99 (AMazon Price is $119)
Its a pretty good deal =)
I cant wait to get my new enclosure.:cool:


41zOF6YNN3L._SL160_.jpg
 
Last edited:
I, and probably others, would appreciate it if you'd post a quick review here once you've gotten it and used it for a while. It's an off brand, but at least on paper looks pretty good, and is very cheap, so if it turns out to work well for you I'd like to hear about it. (Same if it doesn't, of course.)
 
I believe Akitio was the OEM manufacture for Caldigit and G-Technology before, the quality should be the same. Don't you think those products looking are very smiler?
 
I've used the Taurus minis for a while now and works great for on-site vid editing. Use it with a MBP 13 w FireWire 800 and it's fast and portable enough to carry around since they're bus powered. I've been using the caldigit vr minis before and are very similar to the akitios. I picked the akitios because they're cheaper than the Caldigits and have 2 fw800 connections so u can daisy chain them (VR minis only have 1 FW800, 1 FW400). For my current vid project I have two 2TB akitios daisy chained to the MBP (I was editing on a 5-hr flight!). However they will suck up your battery tho. Hope this helps.
 
JesterJJZ said:
I'd assume because they are more shock resistant and portable.
Click to expand...

Correct, I bring my enclosure with me to work everyday.

The seller is awesome, I ordered on 3/24, and got my package on 3/26. super fast shipping. So far, i love my new toy. the quality is really cool. Happy to have it. :D
 
The Akitio looks awesome. Too bad it doesn't have a Thunderbolt port, ha. Can you use this in JBOD mode? (Both drives show up on the desktop, no RAID)
 
Tastannin said:
The Akitio looks awesome. Too bad it doesn't have a Thunderbolt port, ha. Can you use this in JBOD mode? (Both drives show up on the desktop, no RAID)
Click to expand...

yes, it could use by JBOD mode.
JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1

as i know Akitio's 4 bay Hydra Quad interface has JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID3, RAID 5, RAID 10. also with LCD display.
 
Akitio is a brand that sells some inXtron products.
inXtron was called Macpower (Mac doesn't mean their products were only for Mac).
I have one non-RAID Macpower case and it's very good.
 
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