Looking for a 4 bay JBOD enclosure

[dimme]

Looking for a 4 bay JBOD enclosure, I purchased the icy dock vortex but found it was not mac friendly so back it went. It looks like my only other choice is the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad, but I see many complaints of fan noise. The icy dock was silent with it's fan running. So I am looking for suggestions
Thanks

 

[Darth.Titan]

I went with the Akitio Thunder 3 QuadX and have been very happy with it.

 

[LorenK]

You had a problem with icydock black vortex: https://www.icydock.com/goods_cat.php?id=146? I am puzzled as I have four of them. Two are used as JBODs and two are used for a software raid. I switched from a couple of different enclosures, because they kept failing, their boards would fry from the heat, a constant problem for me with a variety of external drives, including a couple of well-regarded brands, and have not had any problem with my icy docks. Sorry to hear you had this misfortune, particularly since the alternatives are generally pricey. Good luck with your search.

 

[dimme]

You had a problem with icydock black vortex: https://www.icydock.com/goods_cat.php?id=146? I am puzzled as I have four of them. Two are used as JBODs and two are used for a software raid. I switched from a couple of different enclosures, because they kept failing, their boards would fry from the heat, a constant problem for me with a variety of external drives, including a couple of well-regarded brands, and have not had any problem with my icy docks. Sorry to hear you had this misfortune, particularly since the alternatives are generally pricey. Good luck with your search.

With the icy dock black vortex when I would eject a disk or the mac went to sleep I would lose access to all the drives and would have to reformat the drives. I found a few other people on Amazons site complaining about the same problem. It looks like it only effects macs over USB. I am sad it would not work it was build very well and was silent.

 

[LorenK]

With the icy dock black vortex when I would eject a disk or the mac went to sleep I would lose access to all the drives and would have to reformat the drives. I found a few other people on Amazons site complaining about the same problem. It looks like it only effects macs over USB. I am sad it would not work it was build very well and was silent.

Sorry to hear. Fromtheir site: Note: Some hard drives have power-saving features on the disk itself and in very rare cases (about 0.002%) that power-saving feature may cause the USB host of MB174U3S-4SB to refresh the connections. This refresh can cause interruptions in data transfers and could potentially cause data corruption on the drives. We have carefully tested and reviewed this issue and we believe this problem is closely related to the power-saving feature of certain HDDs. If you experience a data corruption issue related to refreshing connections, please contact us for the solution.

 

[posguy99]

Looking for a 4 bay JBOD enclosure, I purchased the icy dock vortex but found it was not mac friendly so back it went. It looks like my only other choice is the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad...

Hardly your only choice, there are lots of them out there. I've experience with this one:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...al_3r5_eb3_m_mobius_5_bay_raid_enclosure.html

I use it as RAID5, but obviously it supports JBOD.

They also have a newer one now.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1456541-REG/oyen_digital_3n5_c_m_mobius_pro_5_bay_dual.html

 

[wlossw]

Out of curiosity what kind of drives where you using in your external enclosure that kept unmounting?

If the answer is not “nas” drives, then that is the core issue. As mentioned above drives that focus on power saving (wd green for example) will do this when mounted in external enclosures.

 

[dimme]

Out of curiosity what kind of drives where you using in your external enclosure that kept unmounting?

If the answer is not “nas” drives, then that is the core issue. As mentioned above drives that focus on power saving (wd green for example) will do this when mounted in external enclosures.

I tried two types Western Digital RED and Segate barracuda

 

[posguy99]

I tried two types Western Digital RED and Segate barracuda

Barracuda's aren't NAS drives. Junk, yes, but not NAS drives.

 

[dimme]

Barracuda's aren't NAS drives. Junk, yes, but not NAS drives.

Yea but at that point I was just trying to figure out why my drives were getting wiped. I usually am good at figuring out how to make components work, but after 2 days of trying different setups I decided I could never trust this hardware. It's a-shame it was a really well made box.

 

[HDFan]

I would eject a disk or the mac went to sleep I would lose access to all the drives and would have to reformat the drives.

If the answer is not “nas” drives, then that is the core issue

My experience has been quite different. I would get unexpected ejects, which sometimes would result in having to reformat the drive. Turned out to be an issue with the enclosure hardware/software. Moved the drives (some NAS, some not) to another enclosure (OWC Thunderbay 4) and the problems went away regardless of drive type, NAS or consumer.