OWC Introduces New ThunderBay 4 Mini Portable Storage With RAID 5 Option

[dashpuppy]

Guy's who makes a external 2.5" case with Thunderbolt ?

 

[burne]

it isn't about whether your CPU can handle the load, but rather whether doing so will get in the way of other more time sensitive processes that are more central to your work.

Again, modern computers are so incredibly fast you'll be amazed at what can be done. I hate commercial breaks in programs, so, often I record the show and start watching when I have enough to skip the commercials. To fill the time I play a bit of CoD4. Hold on. I'm recording 15Mbps HD DVB-S2 H.264 *while* gaming? Without any noticeable drops in either the video or the game? I must have a big, fat MacPro or something like that, right? Not a lowly Mac Mini with just some extra memory and two 1920x1200 screens?

Guy's who makes a external 2.5" case with Thunderbolt ?

LaCie, G-Tech and perhaps a bunch of Chinese manufacturers. From the top of my head.

 

[SteveW928]

Again, modern computers are so incredibly fast you'll be amazed at what can be done. I hate commercial breaks in programs, so, often I record the show and start watching when I have enough to skip the commercials. To fill the time I play a bit of CoD4. Hold on. I'm recording 15Mbps HD DVB-S2 H.264 *while* gaming? Without any noticeable drops in either the video or the game? I must have a big, fat MacPro or something like that, right? Not a lowly Mac Mini with just some extra memory and two 1920x1200 screens?

I think it's more about destabilization risk, but I'm getting much more brave lately as well. It has really only been in the last few years that I've found this to be the case though, so I think a lot of people are still in the mind-frame of trying to quit everything else when doing something more intense or sensitive. Of course, if you're recording that epic podcast, it might be best to still follow that rule of thumb... not because you probably have to, but because of the risk/reward ratio.

I pretty much run Folding@home 24/7 no matter what I'm doing any more (on 2 of 4 cores). I don't even notice it's there. But, if I were doing something really, really important, I'd probably temporarily quit that.

And, yea, I just have the entry-level iMac from a couple years ago. If anything, my problem is more one of RAM if I try to do too much (ex: running a virtual machine).

I'd LOVE to get a Mac Pro one of these days though. I think the big difference there, aside from some performance gain, is that it's built to run 24/7 at 100% with EEC RAM for extra stability. Your mini or my iMac is going to be degraded in terms of longevity if you run it 100% all the time.

LaCie, G-Tech and perhaps a bunch of Chinese manufacturers. From the top of my head.

Yes, they just need to do a bit of searching. I've seen lots of them, though I'm sure quality varies. The big problem there (which this OWC box solves) is that with most external TB drives, you're only going to be able to add 1 or 2 of them and then your TB ports will be used up. With this box, you can add 4 drives on 1 TB port, and still have 2 TB ports available.

 

[armut]

Has someone experience with the Thunderbay 4 mini?

 

[Msbeezy]

I have 2 of them..in one I run 4 1tb Samsung 840's in raid stripe0...smokin fast +- 1300..in the other I currently have 2 1tb in stripe0...I also have the full size thunderbay with 4- 2tb mag drives

 

[armut]

Thank you for your reply.
Do you have any issues depending automatically ejecting the drives?

 

[Msbeezy]

No issues ejecting but something causes the imak to NOT wake afer putting to sleep..not sure if its another hub device or these boxes or if it's just El Capitan 10.11.3

 

[monokakata]

Yeah this is great an all... but I think a solid portable SSD with thunderbolt would sell like crazy. I just want a single portable SSD that connects with thunderbolt. Thunderbolt has been out for what... 4 years or so? Why is this so hard to find?!

I don't know why it's hard to find, but I got a G Technology G-drive 2.5" TB enclosure with a spinning drive in it, and swapped the drive for a SSD. Works perfectly, and of course I knew I was voiding the unit's warranty.

 

[jdiamond]

I like the form factor and everything, but I'd rather my raid not be using my CPU for the raid math. I know OWC has been selling this idea for a while. But it just seems kind of cheeky to charge that much for dumb disk caddy that leans on your computers processor, even if it is only an infinitesimal load.
There are comparable NAS and DAS products in the same price range that don't rely on your computer at all for raid parity calculation.

And what's really sad is, IMO, the most important benefit of RAID is disk speed. Yet this RAID device somehow only reaches half the speed of high end single SSD drives! In fact, it does no better than comparable RAIDs using rotating disks, so why use SSDs in this at all? So *something* is a massive bottleneck here.

 

[SteveW928]

And what's really sad is, IMO, the most important benefit of RAID is disk speed. Yet this RAID device somehow only reaches half the speed of high end single SSD drives! In fact, it does no better than comparable RAIDs using rotating disks, so why use SSDs in this at all? So *something* is a massive bottleneck here.

It could be argued it's about reliability too, or some combination.

I haven't been following specs that much, as speed isn't my top concern, but where did you find that it's half the speed of a single SSD? That doesn't sound right to me.

BTW, as I mentioned earlier, I actually prefer software RAID for most situations these days, as then you don't have to have spare hardware lying around. And, as noted, the CPU load is quite low in the grand scheme.

 

[burne]

And what's really sad is, IMO, the most important benefit of RAID is disk speed.

'Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks'. Not 'Quick Array of Fast Disks'.

RAID 0 can offer speed, if you want. By striping alternating blocks of data over a number of drives you can read or write alternating to several drives, with less waiting and thus higher performance. However: a single failed drive destroys all your data. All other RAID levels offer less performance and less efficiency in storing data, but you gain resilience against failure.

I have quite a few disk drives. About a thousand physical servers, most of them with four or more drives. Several times a week a disk fails. The server just rumbles on, sometimes with slightly lower performance. I plan a trip to the datacenter, sometimes waiting a day or two to combine visits.

Speed is nice, but with drives failure is a certainty and availability of data despite failures is the only reason we use RAID.