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Storage Dilemma

T

thrasherx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 12, 2011
18
0
Backstory:
My wife has a photography business, and I do photo/video stuff on the side. I have about 4TB of data distributed across 3 drives in my Hackintosh. For backup, I had 2 copies of each of the 3 drives (8 drives total), which were backed up using CarbonCopyCloner every 12 hours. Every 2 weeks or so, I'd swap the backup drives and move the other ones to an offsite location. Everything was great.

Last week, I bought a refurbished 27" iMac 3.4. It's amazing. The only problem is that I'm limping along with a single USB hard drive dock. I need 6TB+ of fast(ish) data. FW800 is as slow as I'd want to go. I go back and forth with doing the eSata mod. I'm planning on throwing an SSD in alongside my 1TB internal (I'll save that can of worms for another thread). The 1TB would be great for a scratch disk/boot camp, so I don't really want to lose it, much less cut a hole in my iMac.

I know I could get a NAS and be done with it, but I dislike the extra interface and web management. Plus, speed is key
My goal is to eventually have a 6TB+ RAID5 with an external 6TB backup.
Here are the options I've considered:

$344 - 6TB WD MyBook Studio Edition II: Inexpensive and could later be used as a backup when I get a Thunderbolt RAID setup. FW800 interferes with sleep :(
$440 - 6TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Drive + 2 Hitachi Desktar 7k3000 Raid 0: Any better than the WD Mybook?
$940 - 9TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2 + 4 Hitachi Desktar 7k3000 Raid 0: almost as expensive as I imagine a Thunderbolt solution, without the extra speed.
$1000 - 3TB Pegasus R4: Not enough space and somewhat negative reviews
$1500 - 4.7TB Pegasus R6: Same as above

The only other TB disk that has come out (Lacie) is way overpriced. Should I wait for an OWC Thunderbolt bay? Am I overlooking something?

tl;dr: Need 6TB+ storage, no reasonable Thunderbolt RAID 5. Help.
 
sigamy said:
What about Drobo? Or do you not want their proprietary backup method?
Click to expand...

I've heard not so great things about Drobos. I also prefer DAS to NAS, if possible. My needs are simple- storage only.
Detrius said:
It may not be shipping yet, but this is a step in the right direction:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html
Click to expand...

Are you referring to a USB 3.0 Expresscard/34 to Thunderbolt route? I've heard that it can be tempermental. Not a bad option though. Do you have experience with it?
 
I thought at one point you couldn't have both SSD & HDD in an iMac and get the eSata added in because of space? Not sure but I think OWC may have it in small print or at least for the 2010 iMacs?

I would think down the road TB would be good for you but that's down the road when $$$ is much better.

Good luck :)
 
Artful Dodger said:
I thought at one point you couldn't have both SSD & HDD in an iMac and get the eSata added in because of space? Not sure but I think OWC may have it in small print or at least for the 2010 iMacs?

I would think down the road TB would be good for you but that's down the road when $$$ is much better.

Good luck :)
Click to expand...

The 2011 iMac has 3 SATA ports (2xSATAIII and 1xSATAII). I would be adding the SSD to the free SATAIII port and skip the eSATA all together. The performance benefit over FW800 (albeit almost 50%) isn't enough to cut a hole in the case.

Come on TB!
 
thrasherx said:
I've heard not so great things about Drobos. I also prefer DAS to NAS, if possible. My needs are simple- storage only.
Click to expand...

I love my Drobo... connected via FW800. As far as I can tell, the problems people report from them all stem from power loss while writing large amounts of data, which would screw up pretty much any large disk system. But you would never use a Drobo as the only place your data is stored, right? So that would never affect you.

Also, the new version of Drobo Dashboard (the software for configuring the Drobo from your Mac) has been greatly improved in the last 12 months.
 
NorCalLights said:
I love my Drobo... connected via FW800. As far as I can tell, the problems people report from them all stem from power loss while writing large amounts of data, which would screw up pretty much any large disk system. But you would never use a Drobo as the only place your data is stored, right? So that would never affect you.

Also, the new version of Drobo Dashboard (the software for configuring the Drobo from your Mac) has been greatly improved in the last 12 months.
Click to expand...

What kind of Read/Write speeds do you get over FW800?
 
thrasherx said:
Are you referring to a USB 3.0 Expresscard/34 to Thunderbolt route? I've heard that it can be tempermental. Not a bad option though. Do you have experience with it?
Click to expand...

Did you even click the link? It's thunderbolt to Expresscard.

But, no, I don't have any experience with it, considering I don't even know if it's shipping yet.
 
Detrius said:
Did you even click the link? It's thunderbolt to Expresscard.

But, no, I don't have any experience with it, considering I don't even know if it's shipping yet.
Click to expand...

Yes, I know. But without the USB 3.0 Expresscard, it isn't a storage solution. I was asking if you were implying the USB 3.0 portion. :rolleyes:
 
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