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Drive bay with iMac look
- Thread starter zoran
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If you are in the US, check out the guys at OWC....
http://eshop.macsales.com/
Since they sell gear primarily for the Mac crowd, much of their stuff is aluminum or plastic painted silver.
Why specifically in the US? Don't they ship abroad?
Do they have anything fan less, nonRAID and with the lowest noise as possible?
1. Yes they do, but like anything shipping overseas gets expensive and takes awhile.
2. No idea but to be honest I find hard drives last longer with active cooling. I'm convinced that's why so many external drives fail because most off the shelf models do not have active cooling and are made of plastic....
what does plastic have to do with cooling?
how many db should those fans produce in order to be unnoticeable by the human ear?
It is physics, metal is a better conductor… but they cost more to manufacture obviously, and in the lower consumer end of hard drive products people don't hammer their drives, so being plastic is non issue.
I would say the WD MyBook Duo is the closest thing you want, it looks Mac-ish even though being plastic, it is fanless so quiet mostly, the HDD inside are WD green drives so they do not typically run as hot so lack of fan is not a problem. But its a hassle to open them up so I think they don't qualify as drive bays.
What is mixing me up is the option of Raid.
Raid0 can create data loss if one of the disks fail, Raid1 i believe is a waste of space because i will already be using Timemachine.
I believe what i do need is a fan less drive bay with fw800 to house a couple of drives that i will be able to use independently!
Anything around?
Raid0 can create data loss if one of the disks fail, Raid1 i believe is a waste of space because i will already be using Timemachine.
I believe what i do need is a fan less drive bay with fw800 to house a couple of drives that i will be able to use independently!
Anything around?
Any that have JBOD function will do that. However, I prefer Software RAID 1. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
I don't think you will find a multi bay enclosure without a fan, but they are easy to disconnect. Some have thermal sensors and only turn on at a certain temp.
The OWC guardian enclosures are quiet, but you can hear the drives spin up and spin. They also have some silver mercury elites. The fan, when running, makes about the same noise as a spinning drive.
Their miniStack looks like a mini, and uses a frictionless whisper quiet fan.
If you want even more quiet, throw a couple of SSDs into an enclosure and disconnect the fan.
Since most JBOD is eSATA, it sounds like you may be better off with two enclosures. At least you get independent drive connections. These are fanless:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
which are those ones?
i dont like the mini design for an enclosure
ssd drives? that would be awfully expensive, wouldn't it?
OWC does have drive bays that each drive will run as independent, cant remember which one it is though
Isn't there any other brand, other that OWC, that has enclosures that have the iMac style look?
LaCie may make a couple, the Porsche design desktop matches up nicely but a single 4TB drive. Buy two 
There is also the d2 Quatra goes up to 5TB and is fanless.
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10587
You also have the G-Technology products.
http://www.g-technology.com/Products
I think G-Tech uses so called smart cooling fans.
There is also the d2 Quatra goes up to 5TB and is fanless. http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10587
You also have the G-Technology products.
http://www.g-technology.com/Products
I think G-Tech uses so called smart cooling fans.
Thanx ColdCase, some very interesting solutions you posted there!
Personally i think that the MyBookStudio2 (MBS2) solution is very good since its fanless and i believe it would be great if it was made by aluminium!
On the MBS2, i really like the fact that the drives can easily be removed and also the lack of a fan! It is designed vertically so that heat can be let go from top. Fantastic!
I was hoping the other brands could of had a solution, similar to the MBS2 but i didn't see anything close to that philosophy. Are there any other bays similar the the MBS2 philosophy?
Personally i think that the MyBookStudio2 (MBS2) solution is very good since its fanless and i believe it would be great if it was made by aluminium!
On the MBS2, i really like the fact that the drives can easily be removed and also the lack of a fan! It is designed vertically so that heat can be let go from top. Fantastic!
I was hoping the other brands could of had a solution, similar to the MBS2 but i didn't see anything close to that philosophy. Are there any other bays similar the the MBS2 philosophy?
Careful with the "Mybook" drives, a friend of mine has just had 2 x this exact type go wrong, possibly due to being "fanless" ??
Getting replacements is one thing but losing data is another !
FWIW, The G-Tech's seem to have a good rep, I know lots of people using them
for Audio / Video storage with no problems ... though HDD's can always fail
M.