Oddly, I'm not seeing many available Thunderbolt2 4-bay (or 5) diskless enclosures available. Seems the Pegasus2 and Lacie 5big were available, but are no longer. I'm looking for something that is priced reasonably, will take my 4TB HGST NAS drives, and has hardware RAID 10 support. What products should I be looking at?
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Looking for 4-bay Thunderbolt2 diskless enclosures
- Thread starter Avery1
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You can go a couple of routes - OWC /MacSales I believe have some TB enclosure offerings and if you have the money and want one step up - try the Areca line of enclosures (TB1 4 drive or TB2 6 drive). The Areca offerings are not cheap but they are highly rated.
Thanks guys. The OWC enclosure is software, which is something I'd prefer to avoid if possible. QNAP -- well, I haven't gotten to the point their NAS where I can say I trust their ability to develop a product (I bought a TS-653 last year). Way too much marketing of features that aren't implemented well and can't be trusted. If there's one area I care about trusting my hardware vendor, it's on the storage side. I'll check out the areca, though it looked more spendy than I'd prefer. Thanks!!
I prefer the computer to control the DAS rather than built in firmware on an enclosure doing the RAID. For me, the Areca 6 bay is an ideal choice but it too, depends on software (I find that an advantage as I like to fully control the RAID options and maint.).
As for QNAP, I have a 559pro for a few years now and have had zero issues. I do agree some of the apps are well, lackluster at best. As for Spinaltap's suggestion - rather an interesting option. I look forward to seeing tests on that new QNAP offering and hope someone makes a less "bells and whistles" counterpart for a lower price.
I've looked into this a lot in the last few days, and have spoken with the folks at SoftRAID. I still feel hardware raid is the best option, and also feel if I have a robust backup strategy, software RAID may be a reasonable path. There are some nice advantages.
Really, it looks like the options are an Areca 5026 or an OWC -- about $300 difference in price. I've also looked into RAID 5, and am still looking closer at that... it seems attractive on the surface, but seems way more complicated (to me, that means less robust) than RAID 10.
Really, it looks like the options are an Areca 5026 or an OWC -- about $300 difference in price. I've also looked into RAID 5, and am still looking closer at that... it seems attractive on the surface, but seems way more complicated (to me, that means less robust) than RAID 10.
I spent many years with hardware RAID (for SCSI) in the ol' days. It usually seemed faster and robust until anything happens or you want to make a change. Software RAID when done properly, works quite well and gives far more control and the best of breed is the combo of the two where arbitration is dedicated and software control the entire process of build, maint and rebuilds.
I can't speak to this particular model, but my experience with Areca Thunderbolt arrays has been only positive. I also like the fact that should my desktop die, I can just plug the array into my laptop and not miss a beat.
As to RAID 5 vs 10, 5 just buys you more space per dollar (at the cost of that complexity you mentioned).
A.
I concur, RAID 5 provides more space with reasonable speed increase (over one drive). RAID 10 offers greater advantages at the cost of space but another option is RAID 6 which is becoming more common place with those truly concerned about loss of data. With large drives, RAID 10 rebuilds are quicker and less likely to have build issues than some RAID 5 solutions with 1 failed drive swapped out and reconstituted or RAID 6 with 1 or 2 drives failed and reconstituted.