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External Thunderbolt Enclosure for SSD

S

shaunp

Cancelled
Original poster
Nov 5, 2010
1,811
1,395
Hi,

I'm wanting to by an external TB enclosure to house 2 x 1TB Samsung EVO SSD's. I'm not bothered about any RAID, JOBD will do fine.

I was thinking of these two:

DataTale RS-M4T SMART 4-Bay

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DataTale-RS...0324003&sr=8-4&keywords=thunderbolt+enclosure


StarTech 2-Bay

http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-Ex...mputers_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1PN50JQMR43ZEE0QQN6Q



The StarTech is nice and small, but I've heard one or two rumours about noisy fans, and the DataTale gets good reviews but it's a bit more than I want to spend unless I have to.

Does anyone have any experience with either of these two, or would you recommend any other enclosures? Incidentally I already have a Drobo Mini, but it's noisy, runs way too hot and is VERY slow.

Thanks



Shaun
 
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I have the StarTech and it's great, but the tiny fan is just too loud. I use the enclosure only occasionally and due to the noise level I can't imagine anyone using it permanently.
However, I guess you could just cut the power cables to the fan and make the enclosure silent. With SSDs and the way it is designed the thermals should be fine without that stupid fan.
 
shaunp said:
Hi,

I'm wanting to by an external TB enclosure to house 2 x 1TB Samsung EVO SSD's. I'm not bothered about any RAID, JOBD will do fine.

I was thinking of these two:

DataTale RS-M4T SMART 4-Bay

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DataTale-RS...0324003&sr=8-4&keywords=thunderbolt+enclosure


StarTech 2-Bay

http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-Ex...mputers_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1PN50JQMR43ZEE0QQN6Q



The StarTech is nice and small, but I've heard one or two rumours about noisy fans, and the DataTale gets good reviews but it's a bit more than I want to spend unless I have to.

Does anyone have any experience with either of these two, or would you recommend any other enclosures? Incidentally I already have a Drobo Mini, but it's noisy, runs way too hot and is VERY slow.

Thanks



Shaun
Click to expand...


I have this, with 4 random SSD's in it, and it works great!
http://www.amazon.com/Akitio-Thunde..._UL160_SR160,160_&refRID=1EK85K3A063EJFQACDNX
 
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After a bit of research Igot the Startech enclosure and it's a nice little unit. It's not the fastest, and while the fan isn't utterly silent you don't hear it unless you are right next to it and actually trying to listen for it.

The only concern I have with this enclosure is the maximum transfer rates I was able to get with Samsung Evo 840 Pro's - around 350MB/s. This is only an issue however if you are wanting high sequential transfer rates, if you are looking at pure random I/O you won't hit anything like this (more like 8-10MB/s) so it wouldn't matter anyway.

If you are wanting to sustain a high data throughput rather than random I/O I would look at the Promise Pegasus 2 R4 instead. It's a good workhorse.

As for the drobo mini, I have one of these and it is noisy and slow and sat in a drawer doing nothing.
 
You didn't mention what computer you have which might save you some money. If you are not using SSD in a RAID set up then you might as well use USB3. SSD with a proper USB3 enclosure "U3" capable will run as fast as being on a Thunderbolt line given that the max read/write of SSD is still less than a USB3 connection. Please don't take my word for it but research it and you will see that TBolt does have its place but its overkill for single drive SSD.
 
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