Question about External hard drive and hard drive dock.

[HaruAoki]

I have a 27 inch 2013 iMac and is starting to run out of hard dive space on the internal hard dive and looking into getting more space but was wondering on what you guys think I should get.

I should first start of by saying what I use the computer for and that's mostly for editing videos on fcp and after effect and graphic design.

What I was using the external hard dive or hard drive dock for is the hold video files and project files. Like running the Final Cut Pro project files off the external file.

What external hard dive or hard drive dock would you recommend ? If posibal under $2000 if possibal.

Thanks for reading this message and have a great day.

 

[ashman70]

I have the same model iMac as you and got the Thunderbay IV thunderbolt enclosure to resolve my external storage issues, works like a dream. It has no RAID capability but you can implement RAID within OSX if you want.


http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-4

 

[HaruAoki]

I have the same model iMac as you and got the Thunderbay IV thunderbolt enclosure to resolve my external storage issues, works like a dream. It has no RAID capability but you can implement RAID within OSX if you want.


http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-4

Thank you for getting back to me. Have you tried editing on it if so how well does it work and does it have a good read and write speed. Also do I need any software for it or is it just plug and play ?

 

[ashman70]

I use it for storage only, but can stream video from it no problem. The performance is dependent on what drives or SSD's you choose to put inside it, for the best performance you would probably want four SSD's in RAID 10.

The enclosure is plug and play, no software is required.

Here is an article on how to setup RAID 10 in OSX.

http://pietrzyk.us/raid-10-using-mac-disk-utility/

 

[SoAnyway]

I have the same model iMac as you and got the Thunderbay IV thunderbolt enclosure to resolve my external storage issues, works like a dream. It has no RAID capability but you can implement RAID within OSX if you want.


http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-4

Thank you for getting back to me. Have you tried editing on it if so how well does it work and does it have a good read and write speed. Also do I need any software for it or is it just plug and play ?

I got one of these last week both as a necessity as the hard drive in my iMac crashed and because I've been wanting a Thunderbolt solution for quite a while but the prices were just too high.

Setup was super easy. Install the drive(s) you intend to use, plug it in, flip the on switch, and format your drive(s).

Since I was in a rush setting it up simply to backup the data on my iMac, I wasn't able to set it up with RAID but plan to once I get my iMac back and get everything in order. However, from what I can tell, it does not have a hardware solution for RAID every drive is seen individually and you'll have to set RAID up in Disk Utility.

I don't intend to use it for editing but just data storage but I managed to transfer 500GB worth of data in about 1.5 hours to an HDD. The same amount of data would have taken over 7 hours with Firewire 800 from my own experience.

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I use it for storage only, but can stream video from it no problem. The performance is dependent on what drives or SSD's you choose to put inside it, for the best performance you would probably want four SSD's in RAID 10.

Indeed. However, it's too bad that SSD pricing is still very expensive compared to HDD pricing. The price per gigabyte ratio is horrible for SSDs.

We're still at the point where SSDs are great for performance in terms of os and applications but horrible for mass storage.

 

[HaruAoki]

Have you guys had any problems with the Thunderbay IV thunderbolt enclosure ? or read and write lag in speed ?

Also should i buy the Thunderbay IV thunderbolt enclosure empty and just buy my own hard dives for the devise or go with the stock ones ?

If I get the stock ones how fast are the drives ?

 

[ashman70]

I have had zero issues, I even have one of my displays plugged into the thunderbolt port of the enclosure, works great.

That's up to you, if you already have drives then buy it empty as I did and use them, if you find later on they are not fast enough, you can replace some or all of them at your convenience.

 

[hfg]

I have 2 of them now and they are working great with no issues. One is on a Mac Mini Server with 4 hard drives in RAID-5 using SoftRAID5 for storage and TimeMachine NAS functionality. The other is on a all SSD iMac and has a pair of SSDs in RAID-0, and 2 independent hard drives.

Note: I am not using any Thunderbolt video with them, they are simply for storage.

 

[SoAnyway]

Have you guys had any problems with the Thunderbay IV thunderbolt enclosure ? or read and write lag in speed ?

Also should i buy the Thunderbay IV thunderbolt enclosure empty and just buy my own hard dives for the devise or go with the stock ones ?

If I get the stock ones how fast are the drives ?

I got mine just last week and no issues so far.

I did notice a delay when I started the data transfer but that was on the iMac's end. Once the transfer was underway, everything was as smooth as butter.

As with any external hard drive enclosure, I bought mine empty and installed Western Digital Black drives. I much prefer this option as I find it less expensive to buy your own drives and you know what you're getting.

 

[HaruAoki]

Have any of you guys done a Disk Speed Test ? if so do you know the Read and Write speed of the dive is ?

 

[hfg]

Have any of you guys done a Disk Speed Test ? if so do you know the Read and Write speed of the dive is ?

That would depend entirely on what disks you are using, SSD or spinner, and how you have them configured. The enclosure can be very fast if you are running RAID-0 and / or SSDs.