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Looking At RAID Enclosures ......

MCAsan said:
The link goes to a compare page with no products selected.....
Click to expand...
Well that's no damn good

I had selected two OWC units. Both were 4 drive enclosures.

First one was called Thunderbay. It has two thunderbolt ports. Four drive bays and black in color cost was about $497

Second unit also OWC 4 drive bays. Silver in color. Cost was $249.00
http://www.microcenter.com/product/...drive_enclosure_with_dual_Thunderbolt_2_ports

http://www.microcenter.com/product/443924/Mercury_Elite_Pro_Bus_Powered_Enclosure_Kit
 
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You can buy both direct from OWC for the same price without the 5-7 day delay...

http://www.macsales.com

I have the Thunderbay 4 - it is excellent. Have it setup as RAID5 with SoftRAID. Very fast.
 
Well it appears as if the Thunderbay is nothing more than a 4 bay drive container and not in an of itself a RAID system ... but a box to hold up to 4 drives for a Software RAID solution.

Not sure how this would work for me.

My desire is to have two drives mirrored, and BOOTABLE so that in the event the boot drive goes bad the mirror can take up the slack.

The second two drives would be data/apps ...... and also mirrored.

Is that possible to do with SoftRAID ..... the program that ships with the Thunderbay ???????
 
I would go with the Thunderbolt version if you can swing it. it will be better in the long run. plus I find that the Thunderbolt connection is more stable than a USB 3/ Firewire connection. I have the Elite Pro Dual and its been wonderful.
 
garysauctions said:
Well it appears as if the Thunderbay is nothing more than a 4 bay drive container and not in an of itself a RAID system ... but a box to hold up to 4 drives for a Software RAID solution.
Click to expand...
Well I've got 3 Thunderbays setup that way and it works well. The difference is that if an enclosure dies, I can still put the hard drives into another enclosure and use the RAID array as before.

garysauctions said:
My desire is to have two drives mirrored, and BOOTABLE so that in the event the boot drive goes bad the mirror can take up the slack.
Click to expand...

I know you can create a couple of RAID1 arrays, but don't know if you can make them bootable...
 
If I were to divorce the storage library from my Mac, it only to be hooked to a Mac Server like a Mac Mini.
 
It sounds like you're putting your boot drive in the external. Make sure you can boot off 2 drives with either Thunderbolt or USB. Typically, the drive in the first slot can boot. The others cannot. I have 4 multibay enclosures, one is an OWC, 2 are Thunderbolt and USB3, 2 are USB3 and FireWire. In all cases, via Thunderbolt and USB, only slot #1 will boot. I think with FireWire there's more flexibility. Haven't tried though.

As another said, Thunderbolt is totally stable, USB is not, I certainly would not want my full time boot drive running on USB. As well as even with the best cables, USB can still drive BT nuts. Also, how immune to fan noise are you? These are not temperature sensitive fans, they are on all the time. Though it sounds like this is a commercial install given bothering with RAID for a simple dual boot option.
 
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