Two HD RAID enclosure w/option of using only 1 drive ?

[dnadrifter]

Does any one know of a two hard drive enclosure that will house two drives capable of setting the drives up in a RAID 0, BUT also let you only put one drive in one of the slots if you want (non RAID).

I am looking for an external backup solution. Ideally I would just by a two drive RAID enclosure from macsales and then buy two 1TB drives. However, I don't really need 2TB of backup right now, but I likely will in a couple years. I would like to find an enclosure that would support both a single drive and a two drive RAID 0 setup, so I can grow into it without laying out the cash now.

 

[sammich]

From a sample drive description:

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro "Quad" eSATA / FireWire 800/400 + USB2 Hardware RAID Dual-Drive Enclosure Kit for up to Two SATA Hard Disk Drives. Oxford 936 chipset. All cables included. Supports up to 2 x 2TB Drives! 1 Year Warranty. (OWCMEFW936AL2)

I guess this means you can put in one, and another one for later.

 

[dr. shdw]

I think these can..

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW934AL2/

But you'll need to reformat to do RAID 0 in the future...

 

[dnadrifter]

From a sample drive description:


I guess this means you can put in one, and another one for later.

I think these can..

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW934AL2/

But you'll need to reformat to do RAID 0 in the future...

That was actually the enclosure I was planning on purchasing. When I called OWC though they said you had to have two in at the same time. You didn't have to have them configured as a RAID, but you both slots needed to be occupied.

I was also optimistic that the description said up to 2, but I guess it could be read as up to two 2TB drives rather than say two 1 TB drives, etc.

I asked the tech support guy several times and he was fairly adamant that both drives needed to be there.

 

[geoffreak]

Drobo does this. Can hold up to four drives. Just pop in drives to add storage without formatting.

 

[dr. shdw]

Drobo does this. Can hold up to four drives. Just pop in drives to add storage without formatting.

Drobo is slow though..

 

[nanofrog]

Drobo is slow though..

You might want to look into ATA over Ethernet (AoE).