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External Hard Drive Enclosure

R

Rhendera

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 10, 2013
28
0
San Francisco Bay Area
I'm preparing to switch from my Windows system to a macbook (that's also going to be used as desktop) and I'm shopping around for all the components and things I will need.

Now one of my worries here is that I have two hard drives in addition to my SSD in my PC - so once I will switch systems I will obviously have to put my internal drives into external enclosures.

Now what I would prefer is one station that I can put both drives in, and preferably with room for upgrades. However I could also be happy with just two external enclosures - does anyone have any recommendations on that?

Thanks in Advance!
 
either that or some recommended hard drive enclosures... I have one 4TB drive so my options are limited.

Anyone recommend using a Drive bay for continuous use or not?
 
Get a USB3 dock that does USAP. That way you get max transport speed and can swap drives easily as needed.
 
MCAsan said:
Get a USB3 dock that does USAP. That way you get max transport speed and can swap drives easily as needed.
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I don't plan on swapping much though - I use both drives daily and I don't think swapping all the time can be good for the drive.

@Hallux - Did you end up getting that unit? I am interested but it doesn't look very portable to me - I'm still undecided between 2 separate enclosures, one 2 bay enclosure or a unit like the one you were looking at.
 
Rhendera said:
I don't plan on swapping much though - I use both drives daily and I don't think swapping all the time can be good for the drive.

@Hallux - Did you end up getting that unit? I am interested but it doesn't look very portable to me - I'm still undecided between 2 separate enclosures, one 2 bay enclosure or a unit like the one you were looking at.
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Seriously, if you want portable, then buy portable drives... 3.5" drives were never intended for portability :)

The MediaSonic enclosure is pretty good, I had one of them that I gave to a friend when I switched to Thunderbolt enclosures.
 
I tried to go cheap and suffered through USB3 storage for awhile, but you will have much better satisfaction using thunderbolt based enclosures. OWC sells a thunderbay IV (4bay empty) enclosure that is nice, compact, quiet and on the low end of TB stuff (~$400). It makes sense if you already have drives. USB3 is great for portable drives or backup storage, but for continuous use and use of large 2-6TB drives... you should just go thunderbolt.
 
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ColdCase said:
I tried to go cheap and suffered through USB3 storage for awhile, but you will have much better satisfaction using thunderbolt based enclosures. OWC sells a thunderbay IV (4bay empty) enclosure that is nice, compact, quiet and on the low end of TB stuff (~$400). It makes sense if you already have drives. USB3 is great for portable drives or backup storage, but for continuous use and use of large 2-6TB drives... you should just go thunderbolt.
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I actually have two of these and they're great. I've got an assortment of 2,4 & 5TB drives in them...
 
I have not. I've pretty much decided I am going to sell my desktop, just waiting for a Mini to appear in the refurb store.

I'm not entirely sure what route I'll go for the drives. USB 3 should be plenty fast, though TB is enticing a spinning HDD simply doesn't need that bandwidth and I don't plan to RAID the drives (especially since I have 2x 1 TB and 1x 2 TB drives). My only thoughts on doing RAID is once tax season comes around, I upgrade to a pair of 4 TB drives for redundancy since I would have no backup for them.
 
I was more addressing your statement about 4TB drives, expandability, multiple drives, using them for real time. Been there done that, and I still am using larger USB3 drives for backup and small ones for portable storage. TB for drive enclosures is much better than USB3 even if you don't RAID. You will likely end up using hubs and USB3 hubs that support USAP and are compatible with MACs can't be found everywhere for a bargain. Single drive enclosures with USAP tend to be $25 on the low end, and you can spend $50-$80 easy..

I guess what I'm implying is you are going to be using TB enclosures eventually, so why waste more than you have too by investing in USB3 enclosure stuff. Just something to think about, there is no wrong way.
 
By TB I meant TERABYTE, in the sentence referring to the 4 TB. I meant I'd be upgrading to a pair of 4 TERABYTE drives in the enclosure for redundancy. Not buying 4 Thunderbolt drives or enclosures.

The enclosure I'm looking at is $100 and supports 4 SATA drives, connecting over USB 3.0.
 
No I understood you were talking about 4 TerraByte drives and why I commented.

USB3 is cheap and will work like it. But only you know your use case. Not sure if you mean mirror for redundancy, but unless the enclosure mirrors in hardware, its gonna be slow on a USB3 link.
 
ColdCase said:
USB3 is cheap and will work like it. But only you know your use case. Not sure if you mean mirror for redundancy, but unless the enclosure mirrors in hardware, its gonna be slow on a USB3 link.
Click to expand...

One thing I did notice with the MediaSonic 4-bay USB3 enclosure is that transfer speed between hard disks inside the enclosure was approximately halved..
 
I use this works like a charm. Supports 4tb has esata and USB3 has room for expansion. Cost me about 100$.

1358497813_0.png
 
matreya said:
One thing I did notice with the MediaSonic 4-bay USB3 enclosure is that transfer speed between hard disks inside the enclosure was approximately halved..
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Because the data is probably traveling from the drive, through the USB bus to the computer then back out to the enclosure.

I don't plan on a lot of transfer between drives inside the enclosure so this isn't a huge concern to me.

Actually, does each drive appear individually?
 
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