OWC has SSDs inside enclosures, so maybe they sell the enclosure...but any enclosure should work no?
MonoPrice rules!
If they are using the WD10EARS or WD20EARS you won't hear a thing...
Last edited by a moderator:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Thunderbolt Cable and Promise Thunderbolt RAID Systems Hit the Apple Store
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
OWC has SSDs inside enclosures, so maybe they sell the enclosure...but any enclosure should work no?
MonoPrice rules!
If they are using the WD10EARS or WD20EARS you won't hear a thing...
Intel has said that you will be able to plug a fiber TB cable into an existing copper TB port because the electrical/optical conversion will be done in the cable itself. Guess we will see if they stay true to their word.
The only reason it has to be at the end is because there are no monitors with TB ports on them. If one were to come to market there is no reason it couldn't be the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth one in the chain.
Why wouldn't you want to pay extra for the cable? It will help Apple make more profit and that is what we really want. It's not about the consumer, it is all about Apple being the most dominating company on earth and making more money than everyone else. That is what a true follower would want.
If this is indeed true wouldn't that make it so the current version of Thunderbolt able to go at even faster speeds than the 10Gbps it currently is?
Short answer, no...
The thing is to reach 100Gb/s we'll have to switch to PCIe 3 (with the added benefice of reducing the overhead from 20% to around 1.5%) and augment the number of channel used by TB.
Assuming you want 2 separate channels able to reach 100Gb/s, you then need a total of 200Gb/s knowing a PCIe3 channel is going to be 10Gb/s you need x20 channels reserved for TB.
Right now TB is PCIe2 x4 that's what the controllers in the computer and the devices being sold are able to handle.
When TB 100Gb/s becomes available you'll need a new computer, new devices to reach those speeds, this generation would still be compatible but used as legacy at the end of the daisy chain (in order not to bottleneck any other devices).
Think FW800 Vs FW400...
Well that's perfect. $1K entry (minus the cable).
I think I'll just buy a cable and stare at it. Maybe pretend.
Cheaper that way
The thing is at those data rates the only way to reach them is trough RAID...
Even the fastest SSDs right now wouldn't saturate a TB port (although they would saturate an USB3).
And whenever RAID becomes necessary to reach the max speed you know you'll either underuse the port (like most single disk USB3 drives that reach around 100MB/s for a bus capable of 400MB/s) or need to jump to more complex architectures... RAID (hell even RAID of SSDs to reach the max possible real life data rate of 1GB/s after having removed a 20% overhead).
Ok, go for it. I'll just wait for an enclosure for my 240GB Sandforce SSD that needs a home. Of course, I don't want to spend a bunch.
Since the network is the bottleneck anyway, who cares ?
You don't know much about the NAS box options out there. Mine supports AFP, CIFS, NFS as far as exporting filesystems goes. I'm linked to what exactly ?
It also has industry standard DLNA for media serving, an iTunes server, torrent client and is a full on Linux box in its own right. I even installed NRPE on it to monitor it from my home Nagios.
I think you need to get a little education on what's out there. The Apple ecosystem (Airplay, Airdisk and all their other stuff) is too rigid and locked to other Apple products or a few expensive consumer products for me.
Hum... all off-the-shelf routers I've found didn't marry the NAT and DHCP server options. They all had web interfaces for configuration which means I can configure them from any device, not just Apple approved devices that can run the fat client.
Funkiest configurations ? You must have very very simple needs. Sure the AEBS is easy to configure (not like most off-the-shelf routers are any more complicated anyhow), but it lacks a lot of flexibility. Flexibility and simplicity aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, and Apple failed on this one.
Putting 4 3TB disks in RAID-0 is asking for trouble. Any other RAID level will hurt write performance compared to a bare drive. Since these are spinning platter disks, Thunderbolt is useless on such an array currently. It's there just to be a Thunderbolt device, this thing could've been 100$ cheaper and have been an eSATA enclosure.
Except it actually isn't, some Drobo NAS have been tested has giving a meager 30MB/s data rate while its ethernet port could reach +100MB/s. So the device is the bottleneck not the network.
Who gave you those softwares? Some NAS working on proprietary gear, development is usually limited to the company that builds them. If the softs don't perform well, you're stuck.
Says the guy repeating that networks is the bottleneck while benchmarks ha shown NAS devices underperforming their connexion.
As for Apple being rigid, I can only agree.
My point was that people buying a TC right now are looking for trouble (single 3TB drive... how many will see them fail before having filled them up) and if someone really wants some kind of reliable system he needs RAID.
As for Apple they, unfortunately, don't offer any product that could solve that problem (some kind of NAS box). But the NAS market doesn't fare any better.
RAID 0 is evil, that much is true but RAID 5 doesn't KILL performance...
RAID 5 enclosure like the LaCie 4Big Quadra was benchmarked at 180MB/s read and 120MB/s write (average measured in 2009 through eSATA with a degraded drive).
In case you don't realize it that would be OVER the reach of a single gigabit Ethernet port and with a faster average data rate than a single disk (around 100MB/s for a single drive). The access time sure increased from 12ms to 16-18ms, acceptable while benefiting from faster transfer data rate and redundancy.
And that was a 4 disk enclosure in 2009 (1099$ back then) what RAID5 performance can we reach now?
Drobo this, Drobo that, there's a lot more to NAS boxes than Drobo (which while it has an interesting RAID setup, is really limited as far as what's out there).
I evaluated Drobo and opted for something else that was both cheaper and had broader protocol support.
Except for NRPE, all the software on my NAS comes from my NAS vendor. NRPE is a supported add-on through Optware, which my NAS vendor ships themselves.
Basically, anything I use on my NAS, all the protocols it supports, it does it through my NAS vendor.
Again, you need to look at what's out there before you comment.
Get a better NAS device then. My wireless network is very much the bottleneck since wired speeds on my NAS are far better than what I can achieve from my wireless connection.
Time Capsule is a backup device. It's not a NAS. I wouldn't RAID my backups. If the backup drive dies, plug in a new one and do a full backup.
Fares good enough for me. There's solutions for everyone out there, from the geekiest "build your own" with FreeNAS software to Drobo "simple and easy and unflexible" going through fully open yet vendor supported Linux blackbox type appliances like QNAP offers.
Heck, if you have a NetApp support contract, there's even the Netapp simulator that can be used as a full on production ready NAS.
This is something I will definately try now that've upgraded my home server to a modern box from a 13 year old PC (which was an upgrade to a then 15 year old Sun Ultra box).You're right, calculating parity for every written block doesn't hurt performance at all.
I didn't say kill, I said hurt. Put the hyperbole down and stop hyperventilating.RAID-5 is a compromise. It has better storage capacity per drive in the array than RAID-1 at the cost of slower writes and rebuilds. My home NAS right now uses RAID-1 since it's a 2 slot affair. I would definately
You're proving my point about the network being the bottleneck btw (see bolded). I think I realise that since I was the one who made that point, which you struck down.
Contradict yourself much ?
Conversation over, this is leading nowhere fast. We'll have to agree to disagree. You want Thunderbolt, I find it useless and overpriced for my home use and would never touch a host based storage array again in my professional use if I could (managing 100s of different arrays without being able to share the storage over my 100s of servers is a big no with the SAN... I think I'll go hug my FC switches some...).
it's an "extension cord" - longer, not faster
No, it would run at the same speed as current TBolt. The cable would be active, and translate the signals from copper to optical and back to copper on the other end.
Copper limits the length of a TBolt cable - optical allows for much longer cables. Optical cables will likely be quite pricey.
No, it would run at the same speed as current TBolt. The cable would be active, and translate the signals from copper to optical and back to copper on the other end.
Copper limits the length of a TBolt cable - optical allows for much longer cables. Optical cables will likely be quite pricey.
That was my point if your NAS vendor screws the soft you're screwed until they correct it
Like I said since my first post, any single network connection won't saturate a TB RAID5 device but when they start to add up (wireless access +wired) they could. What then when wireless speed increases? Are you going to change your entire system? I would rather just change some of the networking bits and keep the storage part untouched.
Losing the incremental backups which could prove usefull. Nice.
I agree. Then again how many people have modern PCs lying around.Fares good enough for me. There's solutions for everyone out there, from the geekiest "build your own" with FreeNAS software to Drobo "simple and easy and unflexible" going through fully open yet vendor supported Linux blackbox type appliances like QNAP offers.
Heck, if you have a NetApp support contract, there's even the Netapp simulator that can be used as a full on production ready NAS.
Still you won't recognize that a good RAID5 system can perform at data rates over those of a single drives.You're right, calculating parity for every written block doesn't hurt performance at all.
Actually I don't, since I always said that of a SINGLE port, the question is what happens when you try to concurrently access data (multiple ports woa).
By by!
Although in theory the cable may be able to do that, in the real world nobody needs it to switch back to copper. Who is going to be buying optical TB cables if the host machine and the device they are connecting are both still using copper. It would be a huge waste of money and you would see no performance benefit.
The switching inside the cable simply allows you to hook an optical TB drive to your copper TB port, or hook your copper TB drive up to an optical TB port when they are introduced.
The purpose of doing the optical/copper switch inside the cable itself is to allow backwards compatibility between current TB ports/accessories and future ones. It is NOT to give current TB devices future TB speeds.
I did read it. It says you posted just to say you don't like other people posting their opinions and felt the need to put them down for expressing themselves while you prefer to keep quiet about high cable prices.
Perhaps you should stop reading other people's posts if you don't like opinions. Or have a ritalin capsule, as an alternative.
The KING has spoken with his usual pearls of wisdom.
iMac as Display?
With these thunderbolt cables will I finally be able to plug one end into a mini-displayport and the other into my iMac, then use the iMac as a display? I was upset to find that I could not connect my PC to my iMac over a mini-displayport cable.
With these thunderbolt cables will I finally be able to plug one end into a mini-displayport and the other into my iMac, then use the iMac as a display? I was upset to find that I could not connect my PC to my iMac over a mini-displayport cable.
yes you can, you have to set the iMac to target display mode. command and F2 switches between target display and normal modes.
Yeah I have already tried this and searched google to find that the 2011 iMac cannot take video input over displayport, only over thunderblot. Thanks anyway.
What are you trying to ask? You need a 2011 MBP or iMac with TB port to use the new TB accessories.
If you are asking how to use a new MBP or iMac with TB port with the adapter you listed, you have the wrong one. You need mDP (mini displayport) > DVI
I have a 2011 MBP with a display port adaptor what I was trying to say and failed badly at it, is where is the cable that lets you use multiple TB devices on one port?
Kimbie
