Switching from cMP to iMac

[ABQdude]

I am planning to retire my cMP 3,1 and switch to a 2017 (or 2018) retina iMac 27" this year. I wonder for those of you who have switched to an iMac from a cMP, what did you do regarding the 4 bays of hard drives/SSDs in the MacPro? I use all four of my cMP's bays for music, video, photography and backup (clones and TM). I also have a Synology 5 bay NAS, so I don't need another one of those yet. I want to get a 4-bay USB or Thunderbolt external enclosure for JBOD to use with the iMac.

My question is between USB vs Thunderbolt enclosures, which is more reliable regrading mounting/sleep/wake from sleep, and yet quiet(er)? I don't necessarily need the speed of Thunderbolt now since all 4 drives from the cMP are 3 TB spinners, but maybe future proofing for SSDs? I would appreciate your advice. Gracias!

 

[jerwin]

one advantage of thunderbolt is that the windows installer complains about usb3 and firewire. Allegedly, it doesn't complain about thunderbolt.

 

[hfg]

I use a OWC ThunderBay 4 with mine so I have an exact clone of my cMP 5.1. If I were buying today I might spring for a TB3 unit, but for hard disks my TB2 with adapter is working fine on my 2017 iMac 5K. No sleep/wake issues at all.

 

[Krevnik]

Agreed with hfg on the ThunderBay. I've had one attached to my iMac for a couple years now with no problems. During the last month, I setup a Mac Mini server with it, since I mostly use the storage for archival and media server purposes. Works well there.

 

[BayouTiger]

My Pegasus R6 has now outlived two iMacs and my nMP and has been solid except for one drive failure, at which point I swapped all 6 out for higher capacity.

 

[danielwsmithee]

I’d recommend the AkiTio Thunder 3 Quad X. There previous version Quad isn’t officially supported on OS X but this one is.

https://www.akitio.com/desktop-storage/thunder3-quad-x

OWC hasn’t released a TB3 version of their enclosure yet.

 

[joema2]

I use a OWC ThunderBay 4 with mine...for hard disks my TB2 with adapter is working fine on my 2017 iMac 5K. No sleep/wake issues at all.

Likewise I have four Thunderbay 4 units connected to a 2017 i7 iMac via TB2 and TB2-to-USB-C adapters. They work fine, no sleep/wake issues. Since the Thunderbay units generally use software RAID, you are not locked in to a single manufacturer's proprietary low-level RAID format from hardware RAID units. You can pull your drives at any time and use them in another brand JBOD chassis without reformatting (assuming you use SoftRAID for anything beyond RAID 0/1).

However I also have a Promise Pegasus R4 and it works OK too.

 

[ABQdude]

Thank you all for your replies and experiences. With the upcoming CES, I also will keep an eye out to see if the Mobius Thunderbolt 2 and/or the OWC Thunderbay 4 will get updated to TB3. I will then choose between them and the AkiTio Thunder 3 Quad X.

 

[danielwsmithee]

Thank you all for your replies and experiences. With the upcoming CES, I also will keep an eye out to see if the Mobius Thunderbolt 2 and/or the OWC Thunderbay 4 will get updated to TB3. I will then choose between them and the AkiTio Thunder 3 Quad X.

FYI this is what OWC has to say about advertising their new gear at CES.

• ThunderBay 4 Thunderbolt 3 – Thunderbolt 3 speeds up this award-winning, highly-acclaimed product line. With speeds up to twice as fast as the original and capacities up to 48TB, this new version will continue to provide to performance the pros rely on to create workflows without limitations and meet the demands of the most complex projects. Starting at $699 for 4TB.

https://blog.macsales.com/43169-owc-to-launch-cutting-edge-thunderbolt-3-products-at-ces-2018

My guess is it will be an almost exact replica (exact same chips) of the AkiTio Quad X with a slightly different appearance. Just get the one that you think is the most aesthetically pleasing.

 

[ABQdude]

Hmmm. Looking at the warranty info, OWC gives a 1 year warranty on an empty unit, and AkiTio gives a 2 year warranty which if you register with them is extended an extra year.

 

[MCAsan]

This coming week I will likely order a Quad X enclosure. I like no hardware RAID controller so I can define how many drives are in the RAID set, the block size..etc. If I do a 2 or 3 disk RAID 0 then I can put a larger drive in the 4th bay for TM backups of the entire file system.