I hate tech refreshes this close to NAB

[Bob Zelin]

I have not seen the new “no sled” OWC chassis, but I certainly have seen their other “RAID” chassis, and it is, without question, the worst piece of crap tin can on the market. When we debate on these forums – “should I get a Dulce, Cal Digit, Small Tree, G-Tech, Active, SNS, Maxx Digital, Lacie”, etc, etc. all of these products are manufacturered better than the tin can that OWC sources out.
But again, I have not seen the new “no sled” product, so I can’t accurately comment on this.

When I look at cheap eSATA cards, for example, you can get the “good” cards from Sonnet (for example – like the E4P) – or a similar OWC no name card for 50 bucks. Will they support drivers for new MAC OS, when Lion comes out, etc. – is that worth 200 bucks more that you are dealing with a manufacturer that will continue to support and write new code for their products ?

If that is worth nothing to you, and you say “hey man, I want to save the 200 bucks” – then I have nothing else to say. Professionals expect reliability and support, and they expect their media to be safe. As it is, expensive drive arrays are unreliable
compared to what they should be. As for the low end cheapo products – I only ask – do you have to make a living with this stuff, and expect your clients to pay you for your work ?

BobZelin

[Alex Gerulaitis]

Thanks for the answers Rick.

[Rick Sebeck] “Reliability is key – which is why I’m looking for recommendations/real life stories of the difference between the OCW and the sonnet enclosures – since the price for each is so different.”

Haven’t worked with either and like neither because of cheap appearances and difficulties and compromises inherent in making a decent 4-bay RAID5 box on a budget.

The one box I do like (worked with the manufacturer for over 12 years) – does have good quality but I know little of its RAID functionality. It also needs a refresh to SATA/600 and USB 3.0.

(Do any 1-st tier vendors have 4-bay RAID5 eSATA boxes? NAS – yes, but how about eSATA/USB/FW?)

There is also an issue of connectivity: 4 drives can potentially have a combined throughput of close to 600MB/s, and using SATA/300, USB 2.0 or FW800 doesn’t do it justice. USB 3.0 and SATA/600 are more appropriate.

Then there is a question of what happens when the drive fails. How easy and reliable is the box’ volume rebuild procedure and how long does it take? This really is a key question – so I’d hold off buying one until you have a good answer to that.

Generally, it’s hard to trust a small and inexpensive RAID5 box for quality of construction and components inside, and thus, ultimately for data integrity. Even half-decent RAID5 controllers aren’t cheap – and you aren’t going to find one in an el-cheapo 4-bay RAID5 box.

See if you can find documentation on how to rebuild a RAID5 volume after a drive failure: if it’s well documented and clear – you may have a winner. If not, I’d look into using dual-drive RAID1 boxes.

HTH.

Alex (DV411)

[Bob Zelin]

here is an 8 TB “RAID” box from OWC
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2T8.0S/

If you go to the “specs”, you see that OWC does not make a RAID controller for this, but recommends several cards.

the only real raid controller that is shown is from Highpoint –
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoint%20Technologies/RRAID3522/

which means that you do not get your support from OWC, but from Highpoint. The other cards, from Newer Tech, Firmtek, and Sonnet are not RAID cards.

This product line from OWC –
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/
appears to have an internal RAID structure, and uses a simple
single port interface.

I am hard pressed under the support tab to see any discussion of how the RAID works, how to rebuild, or where to find a manual on line of how to do this. Maybe it’s based on faith, maybe it’s based on a lot of phone calls and begging.

Bob Zelin