Startech 4bay FW800 enclosure. Any experience with one?

[gdourado]

Hi,

I was looking around the web and came up with the startech 4bay enclosure with FW800 interface:

http://eu.startech.com/product/S354UFER-35in-4-Drive-eSATA-USB-FireWire-External-SATA-RAID-Enclosure

It can take 4 hdds for a maximum of 8 tb and has usb 2.0 + fw800 + esata.

It is also made of alluminium an has an 80mm fan for cooling.

Does anyone know this unit? Is it good?
Could I load with with 4 drives, plug it to my macbook pro by FW800 and would OSX mount the 4 drives seperately on the desktop?

Thank you.
Regards!

 

[xlii]

It looks very flexible. These two documents will explain spanning and raid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanned_volume

 

[gdourado]

It looks very flexible. These two documents will explain spanning and raid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanned_volume

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
So, if I understood correctly, I have to either use a raid option or go with a spanned volume. I cannot mount the drives in single mode.
In regard to raid 0 vs a spanned volume, does the data become lost in both cases if one drive fails?

Regards.

 

[xlii]

I'm pretty sure that in both raid 0 and spanning if one drive fails you will need a backup of all the disks in raid 0 or spanning to make it good again once you replace the failed drive.

* I don't have raid and have never used it so I'm no expert.

 

[FireWire2]

JBOD mode

I dont think this startech 4bay supports 4 individual drives via FireWire8000 host connection

The enclosure fully support JBOD and hardware RAID in FireWire host

UF8-R5J from DATOptic - which you can get from MACSale.com

http://www.datoptic.com/usb-firewire-jbod-raid-enclosure.html

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/DAT Optic/UF8R5J/

This is the ONLY enclosure that can see FIVE drives via FireWire

 

[allan]

This unit also offers JBOD over FireWire:

DataTale RC-M4QJ

Unfortunately, it is not trayless so it can't really double as a dock (unless you buy more SmartGuiders). Does anyone have any experience with it?

I dont think this startech 4bay supports 4 individual drives via FireWire8000 host connection

The enclosure fully support JBOD and hardware RAID in FireWire host

UF8-R5J from DATOptic - which you can get from MACSale.com

http://www.datoptic.com/usb-firewire-jbod-raid-enclosure.html

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/DAT Optic/UF8R5J/

This is the ONLY enclosure that can see FIVE drives via FireWire