Cheap HDD Disk Tower Dock (DAS), USB3/Thunderbolt

[trvfb]

Hi,

I'm seeking some piece of hardware that permit to be able to connect some (2,3,4 depends of cost) sata disk.

I'm thinking to some tower rack or similar.. dont know..

4IMac, interface must be usb3 and/or thunderbolt and I prefer for possibility to detach disks rapidly 4 backup or data switch..

any idea?

PS:
NAS are too many expensive and unuseful for my exigence.
I seek a more simple system.. similar to docking station but for more disk than only one.

TNX

 

[itsamacthing]

You should look at the new Drobo 5D

 

[trvfb]

You should look at the new Drobo 5D

thx but it's too expensive and full of other stuff that go away from a simple das..

I think it's possible to build that with proper interface and a specific disk tower but is the slow-harder way

 

[phrehdd]

There are plenty of USB3 external enclosures on the market. There are also DAS style raid enclosures. Tbolt is great but expensive. One option is to get something like the smaller Seagate offering and instead of adding a 2.5 drive to the adaptor, run a SATA cable to an external enclosure that does hardware RAID to an eSATA port. The latter solution requires getting the right cables.

There are conventional USB3 externals that can be somewhat daisy chained. That may be the easiest solution for non-RAID storage. I guess I find the Tbolt offerings to be too expensive for the most part and in my case I use FW800 DAS and a NAS.

You might want to check out OtherWorldComputing and see what they have to offer to get an idea of what is out there whether you buy from them or not.

Good luck

 

[Giuly]

There is the nifty little LaCie Thunderbolt eSATA hub. If you hook it to a rather inexpensive 4-bay eSATA enclosure such as the Mediasonic HF2SU3S2, you have built yourself a 4-bay thunderbolt storage system for under $300. As the hub has 2 eSATA ports, you could could add a second enclosure later as well, and access them both simultaneously at full speed, and if that's still not sufficient, you can add a second, third, ... eSATA hub as well. It's the least expensive way you'll find, unless you want a RAID, in which case the Mediasonic won't suffice.

The Synology DS413J is a pretty inexpensive Gigabit NAS, if the price is the problem.

Otherwise, the 4-bay Drobo Mini, which is less expensive than the 5D but has Thunderbolt as well.

 

[trvfb]

tnx,

x the solution seems to be good but I noticed some problems:

(from mediasonic site)
2: We have tested and confirmed that HF2-SU3S2 works with Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.
3: If you have a 2012 Mac with build-in USB 3.0 and you are experiencing only USB 2.0 transfer speed, please contact us for more support.
4: If you are planning to purchase a HF2-SU3S2 to use with your 2012 Mac with build in USB 3.0, please contact us for more info.

AND I also noticed that the system is external powered.
It is cheap but it is a solution too spartan.


It seems that finding a solution at a reasonable cost is difficult.
It seems that the market doesn't offer a good choice.

a little time ago I found a site that sold the separate components;
cabinet, power unit, interface/bridge. I can't find it!

At this time I think that's the better solution instead of a lot taiwan plastic or some infernal machine

I thought it was a less thorny. with the PC I get a lot of space in the cabinet but for the imac it's different so I thought it was a very popular know how to use multiple disk w/o spending a fortune (promise etc at apple store)


ps: example of simple bridge:

is not a matter of greed but did not want to spend on something superfluous as a raid / nas but in any case have a reliable connection for a hard drive to mac