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New iMac. Limited external drive options.

A

agrayphoto

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
24
1
Cleveland, USA
So I got my new iMac, 27", 3.8 I7, 2TB, 580. I am an imaging professional and need to store those images on an external mirrored drive. The Thunderbolt 3 options at the moment are limited. Lacie has something, as well as a new option from WD. I have not had much luck with Lacie and would rather avoid that. The WD option is a software raid system and that makes me nervous too from past experience. I would prefer a hardware raid.

I know I can get Thunderbolt 2 drives and use an adapter. This just doesn't make sense to me. Do I wait for someone like OWC to get their act together? Get the Thunderbolt 2 and adapter? Or one of the other two options? Thoughts?
 
agrayphoto said:
So I got my new iMac, 27", 3.8 I7, 2TB, 580. I am an imaging professional and need to store those images on an external mirrored drive. The Thunderbolt 3 options at the moment are limited. Lacie has something, as well as a new option from WD. I have not had much luck with Lacie and would rather avoid that. The WD option is a software raid system and that makes me nervous too from past experience. I would prefer a hardware raid.

I know I can get Thunderbolt 2 drives and use an adapter. This just doesn't make sense to me. Do I wait for someone like OWC to get their act together? Get the Thunderbolt 2 and adapter? Or one of the other two options? Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Check out the new Samsung T5 external SSD not raid however, comes in a couple of sizes. If you want a desktop workhorse with fans and power plug in, G-Drive makes a variety of sizes in consumer, prosumer, and pro lines, with TB3/USB-C combos, depends on how much you want to spend $400 to 8K. The consumer models will charge new MBP's and rMB.
 
I'm looking forward to getting a newly released Akitio Thunder3 Quad X. Akitio had a thunderbolt 3 enclosure available before, but it was Windows only. This new enclosure supports Mac and looks to be pretty nice.

I like the idea of being able to have 4 TB3 connected SSDs along with a DisplayPort, while only taking up one TB3 port on the iMac.

I have seen these listed on Amazon, but currently not available through prime. I am just waiting to see some reviews on these before committing.

Amazon Link:
https://www.amazon.com/External-Enclosure-2xThunderbolt3-1xDIsplayPort-Thunderbolt/dp/B072QBMBRB

9to5 Mac review and video:
https://9to5mac.com/2017/08/23/akitio-thunder3-quad-x-mac-pro-case/
 
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G-Tech has just shipped their new G-RAID TB3 series, I got myself a 8+8TB yesterday for ~$840 and am now setting it up. It uses HGST (of course) enterprise class HDDs, I think Ultrastar Helium 7200rpm. At RAID-0 config I am getting 400MB/s read and write which I found pretty impressive. At RAID-1 I am expecting half that which is still decent, if that's what you require. This unit also uses its own hardware RAID controller of course. TB3 is somewhat overkill even for dual drives but for stability and maximizing potential bandwidth from limited number of TB3 ports on an iMac, I chose this solution. The HDMI 2.0 output is also quite handy.
 
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Chancha said:
G-Tech has just shipped their new G-RAID TB3 series, I got myself a 8+8TB yesterday for ~$840 and am now setting it up. It uses HGST (of course) enterprise class HDDs, I think Ultrastar Helium 7200rpm. At RAID-0 config I am getting 400MB/s read and write which I found pretty impressive. At RAID-1 I am expecting half that which is still decent, if that's what you require. This unit also uses its own hardware RAID controller of course. TB3 is somewhat overkill even for dual drives but for stability and maximizing potential bandwidth from limited number of TB3 ports on an iMac, I chose this solution. The HDMI 2.0 output is also quite handy.
Click to expand...

The Op says that this is for work related imaging date. Raid 0 for any work related data is absolutely insane. Raid 0 is for scratch storage and replaceable date only. Have really rock solid backups.
 
BayouTiger said:
The Op says that this is for work related imaging date. Raid 0 for any work related data is absolutely insane. Raid 0 is for scratch storage and replaceable date only. Have really rock solid backups.
Click to expand...
Hmm, the unit having hardware RAID controller is of course able to be turned into RAID1 config for being mirrored between 2 drives, which I also mentioned. I was just pointing out how I am using mine as stripped, sorry if this created a confusion.
 
I wanted to update for anyone who may be in a similar situation. I got the LaCie 2big Thunderbolt 3 right when they were released a couple months ago. So far it is working brilliantly.
 
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I’d just get an AkiTio thunderbolt 3 enclosure and put whatever high quality drives in it you want. A 4 drive raid 10, two drive raid 1, quad SSDs in the mini. Lots of options there.
 
Moving from LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt 1 and LaCie d2 (TM backup) to Akitio Thunder 3 Quad X. Like the option of doing either a 2 disk or 3 disk RAID 0 for data with the 4th drive bay for TM backups.
 
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I thought I was going to do the Quad X back in January. But I needed up with a WD My Book Duo for RAID 0 and a WD My Book single drive for TM backup. The My Book Book Duo was a PITA always losing the USB 3 connection or getting too hot if it wrote or read for too long.

Finally did get the Quad X enclose. I shucked the two Red drives from the Duo and used Disk Utility to set them up as RAID 0 with block size 128 (something you can't set in the WD utilities). I shucked the white label drive from the My Book and put it into the Quad X as my TM backup drive. I did get a longer TB3 cable as the one with enclosure is only about 18" long. The drives have all worked perfectly. Nice to not have storage drama. ;)
 
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