Recommendations for a USB 3.0 dual HDD or quad HDD enclosure, with RAID?

[rmwebs]

I'm looking for a raid based hard drive array for local storage. I'm happy with USB 3.0 speeds, and wouldn't be able to take advantage of thunderbolt anyway due to being on a rMBP with two screens attached to the thunderbolt ports (cant use HDMI due to it being flawed on this machine).

What I want is either a 2 or 4 drive enclosure. If 2 drives, it should support RAID1, and if 4 drives, RAID 10. I know OSX can probably handle this, but if its baked in to the enclosure, that's a bonus.

I know there are a number of these out there, just wondering which ones people would recommend, and why.

 

[Giuly]

Most people tend to say that RAID baked into the enclosure is a minus, as with the software RAID you can just pop the drives in any other enclosure, even separate ones, and continue from there, whereas the hardware RAID needs to be replaced with the exact same hardware if it fails.

For 2-bay, have a look at the LaCie 2big.

For more bays, either the LaCie 5big, the Pegasus R4 or a Drobo 5D.

Eventhough you're using two displays on Thunderbolt, it should still provide high speeds for the disks.

 

[Ifti]

Just uploaded my Drobo5D setup and review video on my YouTube channel (link in sig).
Loving it so far!

 

[ColdCase]

I like the newertech guardian line sold by OWC. I have a Newer Technology Guardian MAXimus RAID-1 [MIRROR] . It has eSATA, FireWire 800+400, USB 3.0 interfaces and an Oxford 946DSE/3100 Chipset. I also have a previous model attached to my Mac Pro since 2009 used 24/7 for TM backups.

I've used LaCie in the past, but I had nothing but hardware trouble with them.

I don't think modern hardware RAIDs have any more constraints than software RAIDs. Drives certainly don't have to be identical. For most RAID configurations, the drives should to be matched in capacity for best results.

 

[Giuly]

I don't think modern hardware RAIDs have any more constraints than software RAIDs. Drives certainly don't have to be identical. For most RAID configurations, the drives should to be matched in capacity for best results.

If the RAID device itself happens to be defective, you'll need to replace it with the exact same model, because other RAID enclosures don't understand the format.
OS X's software RAID doesn't care how the drive is connected, so in the case of a defect, any other enclosure(s) will do.