Mac Pro to MB Pro...help me get there

[sjordan]

So I have a 2010 Mac Pro and a 2011 MBP that I want to consolidate down to one machine. What I am wanting to do is get the new Retina 2012 MBP with 16gigs of ram and 512Gig internal drive.

The fun part here is getting this consolidating the Mac Pro. My idea is when on the road I will just use the internal drive, but when I am home I want to have full access to all my stuff (not over a network).

So here is my challenge.

1) When I am in my office I use 2 monitors. One a 30inch Dell (requires Dual Link DVI) and a 19inch HP monitor. Can I hook the Dell 30 to one of the thunderbolt connectors and the HP to the HDMI?

2) I have 4 hard drives (not counting boot). 3 internal SATA drives and 1 external Firewire drive (sata) for Time Machine. I need a solution that will allow me to get these 4 drives connected via thunderbolt. My guess here is I will need a external enclosure that can hold 4 drives that is setup as JBOD. Is there anything on the market for that?

Anyone have any suggestions? Can this be done?

 

[tezro]

Why not get a NAS that can hold all your drives?

I have a Synology DS209 (2009 model, dual bay in RAID1) which supports Time Machine.
It holds almost all my stuff I don't need/want on my internal drive.
Music, photo's, movies/series, etc.

I am struggling myself with consolidating my aging Early-2008 Mac Pro and Mid-2009 MacBook Pro. Would like a rMBP because it's 15" and lighter then my current MBP.
But it's pretty damn expensive (almost 3200 Euro's for the 2.7GHz/8GB model here in The Netherlands).

I don't do heavy stuff on both of my current machines.
MBP is mainly web browsing, email, IRC and the occasional series watching in the train.
The Mac Pro is mainly for playing some games. WoW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Portal. So nothing too heavy there either. Nothing a 650m videocard can't handle at my monitors 1920x1080.

Just the price is a bit steep, plus selling the current machines hasn't been succesful last year when I tried to sell them.

 

[sjordan]

I dont want to go the NAS route because of speed. I deal with 200meg to 2gig images on a daily basis and it is just way to slow over a network

 

[tezro]

Over 100MBytes/s isn't fast enough?
What do you got in those bays, all SSD?

 

[sjordan]

No I don't have all SSD's...but I have yet to find a NAS device that can reach the full potential of the hard drives. The highest I have seen was 45MB/s. I am sure there are newer devices that are faster....but if I did go that route I would have to use a Thunderbolt port for ethernet

 

[tezro]

So you'd rather have a whole bunch of noisy drives on your desk connected by Thunderbolt. Instead of having a Ethernet over Thunderbolt with the NAS in a different room?

Plus the 45MB/s... Seriously? What age are you in?

 

[theSeb]

No I don't have all SSD's...but I have yet to find a NAS device that can reach the full potential of the hard drives. The highest I have seen was 45MB/s. I am sure there are newer devices that are faster....but if I did go that route I would have to use a Thunderbolt port for ethernet

A decent NAS can do over 100 MB/s, but you need to spend a bit of money. Your best bet for performance would be a Thunderbolt or USB 3 enclosure with a RAID controller, such as the Promise Pegasus or Lacie 2BIg (either USB 3 or TB version) or Caldigit VR2 (USB 3).

http://store.apple.com/uk-business/product/H5184ZM/A/Thunderbolt?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=topSellers
http://store.apple.com/uk-business/...raid-hard-drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=topSellers
(you can find the USB 3 version of the Lacie elsewhere)

http://www.caldigit.com/vr2/

 

[sjordan]

So you'd rather have a whole bunch of noisy drives on your desk connected by Thunderbolt. Instead of having a Ethernet over Thunderbolt with the NAS in a different room?

Plus the 45MB/s... Seriously? What age are you in?

Start editing files that are 2Gigs each and you will understand why I want faster than 45MB/sec