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JBOD enclosure

S

stanw

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 29, 2007
842
5
I want to get an enclosure to put either 2 or 4 hard drives inside to be used as JBOD. I was considering either a 4 drive from OWC ThunderBay IV or a G Tech 2 drive one.

I might want to use these drives depending on if I get a 2 or 4 bay:
- 6TB for photos and videos for Lightroom
- maybe a separate drive for editing video
- maybe a separate drive for documents
- maybe a separate drive for music

1. Anyone have any thoughts about either of these?
2. If I want to unmount a drive that is in the enclosure, how do you remount it?
3. Do you nee to keep drives in it all the time for it to work properly? Do I need to keep 4 drives in the 4 drive one and not 2 or 3?
4. Do all of the drives need to be the same type/storage capacity?

Thanks.
 
stanw said:
I want to get an enclosure to put either 2 or 4 hard drives inside to be used as JBOD. I was considering either a 4 drive from OWC ThunderBay IV or a G Tech 2 drive one.

I might want to use these drives depending on if I get a 2 or 4 bay:
- 6TB for photos and videos for Lightroom
- maybe a separate drive for editing video
- maybe a separate drive for documents
- maybe a separate drive for music

1. Anyone have any thoughts about either of these?
2. If I want to unmount a drive that is in the enclosure, how do you remount it?
3. Do you nee to keep drives in it all the time for it to work properly? Do I need to keep 4 drives in the 4 drive one and not 2 or 3?
4. Do all of the drives need to be the same type/storage capacity?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

For JBOD if ejected a disk you can remount it from DiskUtility. You should be able to put different size hard drives in the different slots as each hard drive will act as independent hard drives. You should also be able to remove hard drives without affecting the other hard drives.

I am currently using the OWC Thunderbolt enclosure for (2) Raid 1 configurations. I have not used it in the JBOD configuration. The downside to using a multi-disk enclosure is that it needs a fan and that adds extra noise to the environment.
 
Startech also make good JBOD enclosures, both 2 bay (2.5") and 3 bay (3.5")
 
There are some considerations for you. As a JBOD, you gain only in appearance of drive space. ie you can have a bunch of small drives that appear as one big one. But loose out in if any of the drives in the bunch fail, then you lose the data on all the drives (well, can recover with tools).

Going with direct storage, you gain in speed. But to take advantage of that you need to have a fast drive. So unless you are putting in SSD's into the attached storage, your gain isn't really that large over something like a NAS.

I have both. I use a 3tb Lacie as a scratch disk and my downloads folder. I have a multi drive TB case that I have my Windows10 Bootcamp loaded onto (SSD) and a few other laptop spinner hard drives that I use for backup (CCC).

All my music, movies and media along with offline home is sitting on a large NAS. I don't need speed for them, but wanted a large amount of storage and some fault tolerance on the storage.

Buy the tools that need the need.
 
As a JBOD, you gain only in appearance of drive space. ie you can have a bunch of small drives that appear as one big one.
Click to expand...
This is incorrect... JBOD .. JUST A BUNCH OF DISKS and each one appears as its own identity, and 100% independent of all other drives. It requires some level of RAID (Random Array of Independent Drives) to "combine" them together.
And in a RAID (depending on which level you install).... failure of one (somethimes even two drives) DOES NOT affect the ability to recover the data (in JBOD, if one drive fails you lose the data on that ONE drive).
 
When using an enclosure as JBOD
1. Can I put drives into it that already have data or do you need to start with drives without any files on them?
2. Can I use drives of different storage amounts? Example: one 4TB and one 6TB?
3. Do they typically involve just putting the drives in and plugging it in, or is there some type of configuration needed to make the Mac recognize them?

Thanks.
 
stanw said:
When using an enclosure as JBOD
1. Can I put drives into it that already have data or do you need to start with drives without any files on them?
2. Can I use drives of different storage amounts? Example: one 4TB and one 6TB?
3. Do they typically involve just putting the drives in and plugging it in, or is there some type of configuration needed to make the Mac recognize them?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Yes, yes, and yes (new drives need formatting)
 
1. Yes you can
2. Yes, UNLESS the enclosure specifically says you cannot (Note: this is for JBOD, a RAID usually requires identical)
3. Usually plug and play
 
They appear just like any internally attached SATA drive. If they are already formatted it will mount them, if not they will need to be mounted.

Any RAID, JBOD etc happens via software by the OS.
 
When I took my Mac Pro 5,1 out of service, I got an OWC Thunderbay IV to connect to an iMac 27 retina. I put the 3 drives that had been in the Mac Pro (one a SSD), added another one, and that was that. No fuss, no tinkering, no nothing. The 4 drives appear in Finder and I work with them just as I did when they were in the Mac Pro.

It hasn't been completely trouble-free, though. No data lost, nothing like that. But I get unexpected dismounts/ejections sometimes when I plug a USB 3 device into the iMac, and sometimes for no reason at all that I can understand. And sometimes I get the system message for unexpected disconnect . . . but the drives remain connected, visible on the desktop, and accessible. And finally, I sometimes get unexpected dismounts and then Disk Utility cannot see the OWC even after I power cycle it, unplug the TB cable, etc. I have to reboot the iMac to get everything back.

I get these annoyances at most once every 10 days or 2 weeks, so I'm not too upset by them. I would like to know the cause(s), though.
 
stanw said:
I want to get an enclosure to put either 2 or 4 hard drives inside to be used as JBOD. I was considering either a 4 drive from OWC ThunderBay IV or a G Tech 2 drive one.

I might want to use these drives depending on if I get a 2 or 4 bay:
- 6TB for photos and videos for Lightroom
- maybe a separate drive for editing video
- maybe a separate drive for documents
- maybe a separate drive for music

1. Anyone have any thoughts about either of these?
2. If I want to unmount a drive that is in the enclosure, how do you remount it?
3. Do you nee to keep drives in it all the time for it to work properly? Do I need to keep 4 drives in the 4 drive one and not 2 or 3?
4. Do all of the drives need to be the same type/storage capacity?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I would look at the 4bay trayless JBOD from DATOptic
http://www.datoptic.com/ec/quad-4-sataiii-to-usb3-0-support-uasp-for-mac-windwows-linux.html
You can hot plug the any drive at any time - just eject it and hot insert it back when ever you need it
It does not matter what size of HDD it can be 200GB to 10TB because it has 48 bit LBA per bay
 
cvdave said:
There is nothing special to support JBOD, and RAID can be software OR Hardware
Click to expand...
JBOD or Just a Bunch of Disks is creating a single logical volume that spans multiple disks. Essentially creating one large disk with no redundancy or performance improvements out of multiple drives. Almost every OS supports it, but it is a software feature.

The OP asked about JBOD enclosures so the assumption was that he wasn't interested in a HW based raid enclosure. With those simpler enclosures SW raid is the only option for raid.

Mac OS out of the box supports JBOD, Raid1, Raid0, Raid10 and CoreStorage (Fusion) volumes. To get Raid5 or 6 etc requires a software add on package like SoftRaid in these types of enclosures.
[doublepost=1475560533][/doublepost]
cvdave said:
This is incorrect... JBOD .. JUST A BUNCH OF DISKS and each one appears as its own identity, and 100% independent of all other drives. It requires some level of RAID (Random Array of Independent Drives) to "combine" them together.
And in a RAID (depending on which level you install).... failure of one (somethimes even two drives) DOES NOT affect the ability to recover the data (in JBOD, if one drive fails you lose the data on that ONE drive).
Click to expand...
You are confused regarding the term JBOD, it is used to describe spanned volumes instead of raid volumes. Disks that are "bunched" together. When you use the appleRaid command to create the volume passing the option JBOD specifies a spanned volume.
 
Last edited:
danielwsmithee said:
JBOD or Just a Bunch of Disks is creating a single logical volume that spans multiple disks. Essentially creating one large disk with no redundancy or performance improvements out of multiple drives. Almost every OS supports it, but it is a software feature.

The OP asked about JBOD enclosures so the assumption was that he wasn't interested in a HW based raid enclosure. With those simpler enclosures SW raid is the only option for raid.

Mac OS out of the box supports JBOD, Raid1, Raid0, Raid10 and CoreStorage (Fusion) volumes. To get Raid5 or 6 etc requires a software add on package like SoftRaid in these types of enclosures.
[doublepost=1475560533][/doublepost]
You are confused regarding the term JBOD, it is used to describe spanned volumes instead of raid volumes. Disks that are "bunched" together. When you use the appleRaid command to create the volume passing the option JBOD specifies a spanned volume.
Click to expand...

Base on what you're saying, what would you call when plug in a PM box and four or five INDIVIDUAL drives show up on your mac?

How is it that a combination of drives, where we call SPAN/BIG/Concatenation, now is JBOD?!
 
FireWire2 said:
Base on what you're saying, what would you call when plug in a PM box and four or five INDIVIDUAL drives show up on your mac?

How is it that a combination of drives, where we call SPAN/BIG/Concatenation, now is JBOD?!
Click to expand...
I'm not saying the whole thing does not lead to massive confusion. Just saying the term JBOD is used, at least by Apple, to refer to Span/Concatenation.

If you have a few drives internally mounted in your machine do you say you have JBOD? If not there, why here?
 
Last edited:
matreya said:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-RAID_drive_architectures
  • JBOD (derived from "just a bunch of disks"): an architecture involving multiple hard disk drives, while making them accessible either as independent hard disk drives, or as a combined (spanned) single logical volume with no actual RAID functionality.
Click to expand...
We used to say Earth is flat, that was wrong.
Whatever in Wikipedia does not mean it correct, do you know that anyone can edit wikipedia? Do not believe what you read. Use common sense, it helps
As I was asking what do you call multiple individual drives? JBoD
A just a bunch of disks combine - already has name for it as BIG/SPAN or Concatenation
 
I'd rather trust Wikipedia, than some individual on a bulletin board. At least Wikipedia is reviewed by peers.

All the wikipedia entry was saying is that JBOD refers to both individual and SPAN modes
 
matreya said:
I'd rather trust Wikipedia, than some individual on a bulletin board. At least Wikipedia is reviewed by peers.

All the wikipedia entry was saying is that JBOD refers to both individual and SPAN modes
Click to expand...
Read the Wikipedia agian :)
 
FireWire2 said:
Read the Wikipedia agian :)
Click to expand...

Congratulations, now you've defiled Wikipedia, you can be sooooo proud....

The fact is that while I might prefer to refer to JBOD as independent drives only, the point has been made that JBOD is referred by others including manufacturers as also being a union of several drives into one volume.

If you'd looked closer at the wikipedia page, you would have seen that there's been debate about the meaning of JBOD for years.
[doublepost=1475779245][/doublepost]
danielwsmithee said:
I'm not saying the whole thing does not lead to massive confusion. Just saying the term JBOD is used, at least by Apple, to refer to Span/Concatenation.
Click to expand...

Apple doesn't use the term JBOD in appleRAID, the 3 types of volume it creates is mirror (RAID1), stripe (RAID0) and concat (NRAID)
[doublepost=1475779613][/doublepost]
monokakata said:
When I took my Mac Pro 5,1 out of service, I got an OWC Thunderbay IV to connect to an iMac 27 retina. I put the 3 drives that had been in the Mac Pro (one a SSD), added another one, and that was that. No fuss, no tinkering, no nothing. The 4 drives appear in Finder and I work with them just as I did when they were in the Mac Pro.

It hasn't been completely trouble-free, though. No data lost, nothing like that. But I get unexpected dismounts/ejections sometimes when I plug a USB 3 device into the iMac, and sometimes for no reason at all that I can understand. And sometimes I get the system message for unexpected disconnect . . . but the drives remain connected, visible on the desktop, and accessible. And finally, I sometimes get unexpected dismounts and then Disk Utility cannot see the OWC even after I power cycle it, unplug the TB cable, etc. I have to reboot the iMac to get everything back.
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, are you using a Thunderbolt dock? And are you putting the dock in the middle of the TB chain, between the iMac and the Thunderbay? If so, try putting the dock at the end of the chain.
 
gotta laugh... everyone is so convinced .... when the term defines itself

JUST A BUNCH OF DISKS... is not nor does it infer access as if it were one unit..

FYI.. the term has been in use for longer than WIkipedia has been in existance..... and don't believe everything your read on the internet.

But you kiddies go on about your life thinking the earth is flat....
 
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