Suggestions for a 4/5 bay RAID

[fuchsdh]

Hey chaps, here's my deal:

I'm looking for a 4 or 5-bay RAID. Thunderbolt would be great, but as I'm using it with an old Mac Pro another attachment method is necessary at this point.

I'm currently the owner of a 16TB 4Big Quadra FW800/USB3, but sadly the purchase has soured me on Lacie: the unit produced an abnormal amount of noise for months, which I finally decided had to be a defect and had shipped off for a RMA; I received the device back three days ago but as of yesterday the unit cannot be powered up, so i think I'm going to wash my hands of it.

I think I'd still prefer DAS. Given the horrors I've faced trying to get our host of Drobo NAS to appear and mount on the computers at work, I'm hesitant to go with that brand. Final consideration: being able to buy the unit without drives is a plus.

Any suggestions?

 

[iliasp]

One word, "Synology"

Forget about the Drobo, its almost plug n play, best interface i have experienced on a NAS and i am just a noob with their platform
For the last 7 years i was using one WD MyBook World Edition (Writing/Reading speeds made it almost unusable) and i just can't describe how much more functional this thing is (DS214+)

 

[matreya]

Hey chaps, here's my deal:

I'm looking for a 4 or 5-bay RAID. Thunderbolt would be great, but as I'm using it with an old Mac Pro another attachment method is necessary at this point.
Any suggestions?

Yeah, I have had one of these for a few years and it works perfectly. I bought it as a bare drive and populated it with 4 x 3TB HGST Deskstar NAS drives.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/

 

[OldMike]

I'm in the market for the same thing right now.

Right now I am considering the OWC Thunderbay4:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2IVKIT0GB/

and the

Akitio Thunder2 Quad:
http://www.akitio.com/desktop-storage/akitio-thunder2-quad
http://www.akitio.com/faq/258-thund...rmance-do-i-get-with-regular-hard-disk-drives

I haven't found much on the Akitio - but I might go this route since it doesn't require adapters when switching between 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

Here is some good reading on the OWC unit. If you read through the thread you will see that it actually outperforms the more expensive Pegasus RAID unit in RAID initialization and rebuilds (due to SoftRAID 5). It seems like a good unit.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1808641/

With either of these units I would recommend SoftRAID 5 (can be ordered as a bundle with the OWC drive):
http://www.softraid.com/

EDIT: Sorry my reading comprehension must really be off today. I didn't realize that you were looking for an alternative connection method. Since you are looking to move to Thunderbolt at some point - is there a way for you to add a Thunderbolt card to your Mac Pro? This way once your storage device will still fit you when you move to another computer...

 

[ColdCase]

The OWC stuff has always been good for me. If you need RAID for performance, don't bother looking at a NAS. Just about any DAS solution will work much better. On my old macpro I have like 10 drives connected mostly in separate FW or eSATA enclosures (4 internal) and use disk utility to RAID0 or mirror a few as I desire; CCC to backup otherwise.

 

[OldMike]

So I just came across this Oyen Digital Mobius 5-Bay FireWire 800/eSATA/USB 3.0 RAID Enclosure. What is interesting is that it is a good price, has hardware RAID, and is a trayless design allowing for the easy replacement of drives (a plus for me).

The unit has some very good reviews and the company seems to have good customer service.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...mobius_5_bay_raid_enclosure.html/prm/alsVwDtl

http://www.amazon.com/Mobius-trade-...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

http://oyendigital.com/hard-drives/store/3R5-EB3-M.html

Manual can be found here:
http://oyendigital.com/downloads/manuals/mobius_manual.pdf