Mac Pro External Storage Option for Future Proofing

[Josh-H]

I could use some advice on the best option available for external storage.

I am running a 2008 Mac Pro with 32 Gig of Ram, Apple Hardware RAID with 4 internal WD Red Caviar 3TB drives in Raid 0+1. I also have a 450 Gigabyte OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD card for boot and apps. The machine is used for Lightroom and Photoshop Image editing. Its super fast with the SSD and I dont feel the need to upgrade to the new Mac Pro when it is released in December.

Currently hooked up to the Mac Pro is a Drobo Pro 8 Bay via firewire 800. The Mac Pro backs up to this daily with Super Duper.

The only problem is the Drobo is chucking drives and is starting to die. I need to replace it.

Ideally I would replace it with something like a Promise Thunderbolt Chassis so that when I do eventually upgrade to the ne wMac Pro in a few more years I can straight plug in via thunderbolt for my storage. Only problem of course is my current Mac Pro cant connect via thunderbolt. Are there thunderbolt to USB adapters?

What would you recommend as my best option for a new external storage array? Im not keen on a new Drobo as I would like to get away from their proprietary RAID.

BTW: I really dont want to upgrade to the new Mac Pro. The current machine is super quick with RAM being my only real bottleneck. And I can easily upgrade that 64 Gig with OWC ram for a lot less coin than the new Mac Pro.

Thoughts greatly appreciated.

 

[ScottishCaptain]

Only problem of course is my current Mac Pro cant connect via thunderbolt. Are there thunderbolt to USB adapters?

Nope.

Have you considered some kind of Mini-SAS chassis instead? You'd need a PCI-e card for your current Mac Pro, but in the future you'd be able to use that same card in a PCI-e Thunderbolt chassis with the nMP and attain the same speed. Such a setup will probably land up costing you a bit more then a native Thunderbolt chassis, but that's the price you'd have to pay to get that kind of speed in your current system and in such a way that you can easily upgrade it to Thunderbolt in the future.

-SC