Has anyone used/using a vantec hx4 for media server?

[creativet]

I have a vantex hx4 (http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/488) that I am thinking of putting 4 x 3TB drives in to serve as my itunes media server for my music and mostly, movies for my 3 appleTv's. Has anyone used or are presently using this HD enclosure for this purpose? I can't seem to find any information of someone using this enclosure for this purpose. (maybe I didn't search hard enough).

The idea is to hook it up to my late 2012 mac mini 2.3 Ghz i7 as a media server. It's always on 24/7. Any thoughts, advice, suggestions and or experience with this enclosure to share? Thanks in advance! 😎

 

[creativet]

Anyone? 🙂

 

[chabig]

Has anyone used or are presently using this HD enclosure for this purpose?

The literal answer to your question is "yes".

 

[JonHimself]

I cannot speak to that specific enclosure, but use a different enclosure for a similar purpose. I've been using this Mediasonic 4-bay enclosure and the 2-bay USB 3.0 Mediasonic box hooked up to my Mac mini (whatever the recent one is). Your box may have this feature, but the reason I liked the Mediasonic one is that it will turn itself on/off depending on the computer's state. My Mac mini is a headless media server as well but I have it shut down from 8am-5pm because no one is home.
In terms of keeping it running 24/7, I would assume that as long as you have decent hard drives (maybe even those WD Red drives, meant for NAS/always-on boxes) and good ventilation, you should be fine. The one setting in OS X that I had to change was the 'put hard drives to sleep whenever possible' because it seemed to be causing problems.

 

[creativet]

In terms of keeping it running 24/7, I would assume that as long as you have decent hard drives (maybe even those WD Red drives, meant for NAS/always-on boxes) and good ventilation, you should be fine. The one setting in OS X that I had to change was the 'put hard drives to sleep whenever possible' because it seemed to be causing problems.

Yes, I purchased 4 x 3TB WD NAS Red drives. I was going to fill it up with WD green 3TB drives. After carefully debating it I figured the extra $10 per drive and the reliability factor was worth it. What type of problems were you having with "put the hard drives to sleep whenever possible" in Mac OS?

-- As a side note... cool you live in the same city as me 🙂 Noticed from the link for the mediasonic 🙂

 

[JonHimself]

What type of problems were you having with "put the hard drives to sleep whenever possible" in Mac OS?

I think it may have been a) the hard disk sleep option and/or b) the actual computer going to sleep. I never bothered to confirm this (since unchecking 'put hard disks to sleep....' and setting the power settings to never let the computer go to sleep appeared to fix it) but it seemed like when the computer went to sleep, because of either the power-synching feature of the external box or the 'putting hard disks to sleep' OS X feature, they would quasi-unmount (or do something) that would cause iTunes problems (not being able to save the library) or wouldn't allow files to be copied to the drive withouth forcing an unmount and re-mounting it.

Either way, after making those two adjustments, I don't see those errors anymore.

 

[Mrbobb]

Either way, after making those two adjustments, I don't see those errors anymore.

So are u saying your drives are now on 24x7?

 

[JonHimself]

So are u saying your drives are now on 24x7?

Sorry about the delay. They are not on 24/7. I schedule my computer to shut down during a time period during the week. However since I adjusted those settings, there has been a few times where it has remained on (and the drives running) for several days.

My current approach is to shut my computer down (with the System Preferences scheduling) from 10-3 every weekday since no one is home. As I mentioned, my hard drive will power-off if the computer it's attached to is off so the drives are not running for that 5 hour period during the week.