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Thunderbolt storage options for iMac?

B

badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 20, 2003
1,531
418
I'm considering a new Hasewll iMac. I have three 4 TB drives (in my current Mac Pro 3,1) that I'd need to put in an external enclosure. I'm not that familiar with enclosures because I haven't needed one with my Mac Pro. Can someone make a recommendation, JBOD or otherwise?
 
I have one LaCie 5big right now, and while I would recommend it usualy, you already have the drives and just need an enclosure, which they don't sell by itself.

It is very fast, just like if the drives were internal, and also quiet. You can use it with raid 0, 1, JBOD or just plain separates drives.

I'm selling mine (check the marketplace section of this forum) but as I mentionned already, in your case you already have the HDDs you need, just missing an enclosure.

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If you manage to buy one without the drive, you can put your own hdd and it will work ;)
 
There are Thunderbolt RAID DAS-es available also from other vendors. Just check which ones offer them without drives installed.
Promise and Drobo are the first names that come to mind.
 
priitv8 said:
There are Thunderbolt RAID DAS-es available also from other vendors. Just check which ones offer them without drives installed.
Promise and Drobo are the first names that come to mind.
Click to expand...

Empty? Only for 2.5" drives. To date, no chassis that will take 3.5" drives.
 
Drobo 5D takes 3.5" disks.

Unless looking to RAID the drives then a USB3 enclosure would do the job, and are much more cost effective, available.

Pretty much companies with thunderbolt are either selling complete with storage built in or are quite expensive like the Drobo 5D.
 
mcnallym said:
Drobo 5D takes 3.5" disks.

Unless looking to RAID the drives then a USB3 enclosure would do the job, and are much more cost effective, available.

Pretty much companies with thunderbolt are either selling complete with storage built in or are quite expensive like the Drobo 5D.
Click to expand...

Thanks. What USB3 enclosure would you recommend?

I see that CalDigit is coming out with some JBOD/RAID Thunderbolt enclosures (single, double, triple) in Q4 of 2013. http://www.caldigit.com/products.asp But as you pointed out, these are probably overkill.

I just need a USB3 enclosure for two 4 TB drives.
 
Yeah, that DataTale looks perfect for my needs. Gets 5 5-star reviews on Amazon, and nothing under 5 stars. Small sample size, but encouraging.

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Also, this might be a silly question but I'm not familiar with these enclosures and how they work.

When using in JBOD configuration, is it possible to mix and match drives of different capacities and even sizes? For example, can I put two 4 TB HDDs, one 2 TB HDD, and one 480 GB SSD in there?
 
If you want the ultimate in capability, performance, and reliability as well as being easy to set up look at the areca ARC-8050. Everyone that owns one seems to rave about it. It has room for 8 Drives. Newegg is currently offering a free iPad with purchase.
 
mcnallym said:
Drobo 5D takes 3.5" disks.

... quite expensive like the Drobo 5D.
Click to expand...

My bad, forgot about Drobo 5D and the DataTale.

$599 is the cost for an empty chassis.

LaCie had some 2big and 5big Thunderbolt refurbs last week that disappeared quickly. Prices with drives were less than $599. I wonder who was able to take advantage of those. Even new, the 2big with 2x2TB is $499.

Keep your eyes open for refurbs at LaCie and also at MacMall which previous posters have noted.
 
Just saw this thread and thought I would chime in regarding the Datatale unit. I have two RCM4SP 4-Bay boxes. These are the USB 3.0 versions, but are essentially the same as the Thunderbolt version. I have had major issues with the drives manually ejecting and worse, corrupting data because of these unintended ejections, ever since I started using them. I've got both boxes set up (JBOD) with 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 7200RPM drives (as recommended by the manufacturer) and have been on the phone constantly with Oyen Digital (the US distributor). They have acknowledged there have been problems with these boxes and have attempted to solve my issues, but the main thing seems to the the JMicron chipset. After months of back-and-forth tech sessions, updating firmware, changing USB 3.0 cards and after trying just about every troubleshooting trick they could think of, I seem to be at a relatively stable place right now, but occasionally I still will have drives hang up on ejecting, and have to power the Datatale box down to remove it, of course risking corrupting my data in the process.

Again...these are the USB 3.0 boxes and I have no idea if the Thunderbolt controller chip solves any of these issues (for triple the price of the USB 3.0 box you hope it might!), but it's something to think about before you jump in with both feet like I did.
 
Brad Trent said:
Just saw this thread and thought I would chime in regarding the Datatale unit. I have two RCM4SP 4-Bay boxes. These are the USB 3.0 versions, but are essentially the same as the Thunderbolt version. I have had major issues with the drives manually ejecting and worse, corrupting data because of these unintended ejections, ever since I started using them. I've got both boxes set up (JBOD) with 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 7200RPM drives (as recommended by the manufacturer) and have been on the phone constantly with Oyen Digital (the US distributor). They have acknowledged there have been problems with these boxes and have attempted to solve my issues, but the main thing seems to the the JMicron chipset. After months of back-and-forth tech sessions, updating firmware, changing USB 3.0 cards and after trying just about every troubleshooting trick they could think of, I seem to be at a relatively stable place right now, but occasionally I still will have drives hang up on ejecting, and have to power the Datatale box down to remove it, of course risking corrupting my data in the process.

Again...these are the USB 3.0 boxes and I have no idea if the Thunderbolt controller chip solves any of these issues (for triple the price of the USB 3.0 box you hope it might!), but it's something to think about before you jump in with both feet like I did.
Click to expand...

Yikes, that is scary. What are some good alternatives?

I wonder why the DataTale gets such great reviews on Amazon. Maybe they're fake.
 
badlydrawnboy said:
Yikes, that is scary. What are some good alternatives?

I wonder why the DataTale gets such great reviews on Amazon. Maybe they're fake.
Click to expand...

As I said...my experiences were with the USB3.0 model. Since the Thunderbolt version uses a totally different controller chip it may not have the same issues. If you're gonna buy one of these things, my advice would be to make sure the return policy is in your favor in case the thing craps out...
 
Brad Trent said:
As I said...my experiences were with the USB3.0 model. Since the Thunderbolt version uses a totally different controller chip it may not have the same issues. If you're gonna buy one of these things, my advice would be to make sure the return policy is in your favor in case the thing craps out...
Click to expand...

Right, good point. I see it has a 2-year warranty. Have they offered to replace your unit or give you a refund?

I'm planning to buy from Amazon. My concern is that it will work for the first 30 days, but then start having problems after that. I want to know that Oyen will take care of me.
 
I just found this review of the DataTale Thunderbolt unit. He raves about it initially, but at the end he has an update where he describes a drive failure. It sounds a little like what Brad described:

Over the week*end, dur*ing which I was not edit*ing, one of the Toshiba dri*ves in the unit started mak*ing a click*ing sound about once a sec*ond, but inter*mit*tently. I assumed it to be the click of death. The RAID Mas*ter soft*ware did not indi*cate there was a drive prob*lem, nor did the sta*tus lights on the front of the unit. Still, I know that sound means prob*lems so I yanked the offend*ing drive out of the bay. To my plea*sure, the unit kept right on work*ing at full speed, but when I replaced the drive into the unit it showed up as a sin*gle drive (as expected) that was ver*i*fied to be fail*ing (via Disk Utility).

I exchanged the drive for a new one at Micro*Cen*ter (easy and nice cus*tomer ser*vice) but then could not get the RAID Mas*ter soft*ware to fully rec*og*nize the unit. A quick call to cus*tomer ser*vice found that a reboot of the com*puter would clear it up and I was back in action. The unit and drive were rec*og*nized and I was able to ini*ti*ate the RAID Rebuild. I expected the rebuild to be quick (these are pretty fast dri*ves, after all), but I started it at 12:05pm and it was only at 18% at 2:22pm. Near as I can tell from spot check*ing, it took slightly more than 12 hours to rebuilt the RAID, which was nearly empty. We need faster RAID rebuilds. It would have been much faster to delete the entire RAID and recre*ate it. Yes, as Pete says, RAID is not backup.

The other dis*cov*ery I made is that the RAID Mas*ter inter*face is lack*ing some fea*tures that I glossed over dur*ing ini*tial setup (it was a fresh sys*tem, I didn’t expect to see much there). I was unable to get emails based on sys*tem Noti*fi*ca*tions work*ing, which would cer*tainly be use*ful if a drive went bad. And the Logs don’t quite appear to be fully func*tional either. I would say these omis*sions, as well as the lack of hard*ware fail*ure indi*ca*tions via the sta*tus lights, are a huge lia*bil*ity in the cur*rent soft*ware. I would deduct at least one and a half stars from a 5-star review for this.
Click to expand...

He also said he couldn't get notifications or logs to work, which I read on one of the Amazon reviews.
 
Brad Trent said:
Just saw this thread and thought I would chime in regarding the Datatale unit. I have two RCM4SP 4-Bay boxes. These are the USB 3.0 versions, but are essentially the same as the Thunderbolt version. I have had major issues with the drives manually ejecting and worse, corrupting data because of these unintended ejections, ever since I started using them. I've got both boxes set up (JBOD) with 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 7200RPM drives (as recommended by the manufacturer) and have been on the phone constantly with Oyen Digital (the US distributor). They have acknowledged there have been problems with these boxes and have attempted to solve my issues, but the main thing seems to the the JMicron chipset. After months of back-and-forth tech sessions, updating firmware, changing USB 3.0 cards and after trying just about every troubleshooting trick they could think of, I seem to be at a relatively stable place right now, but occasionally I still will have drives hang up on ejecting, and have to power the Datatale box down to remove it, of course risking corrupting my data in the process.

Again...these are the USB 3.0 boxes and I have no idea if the Thunderbolt controller chip solves any of these issues (for triple the price of the USB 3.0 box you hope it might!), but it's something to think about before you jump in with both feet like I did.
Click to expand...

This is a quite common issue with some popular USB3 chipsets, at least when directly connected to a Mac.

It seems that the way around it is to connect via a hub or dock that does not attempt to do power management (I think this is true of most hubs).
 
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