• Apple OS X

  3 separate USB drives or one JBOD bay?

  Posted by Matt Larson on January 14, 2011 at 10:42 pm

  I’m looking to add some external hard drive space to my iMac. I currently have 2 USB 2.0 drives connected and this would be my third. I’m debating whether I would be better off connecting the third drive to USB 2.0 (leaving only one USB port available on the computer), or if I should look into an external USB 2.0 hard drive bay. I assume I would be able to remove the two hard drives I am currently using from their cases and install them into the bay along with the new drive.

  The pros of external enclosure: expandable, one USB connection to the iMac, one power cord, etc.
  The cons: potentially less stable, cost

  After I bought my last drive, I thought I was set for storage but of course now I am ready to add more space, so I assume I will want more storage space again in the future. I don’t have the budget for a high performance RAID set up. This is mainly storage for playing back videos on a media server.

  Any points I’m missing either way?

  2 x3Ghz Quad MacPro
  9 GB RAM
  Mac OS X 10.5.5
  QT 7.5.5
  FCP 6.0.5
  AJA Kona 3 (6.0.1 drivers)
  G-Speed XL 12 RAID

  Matt Larson replied 15 years, 4 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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