OT: JBOD for MacPro Tube?

[Kevin Patrick]

Caldigit makes some pretty good products. In the short time I’ve used them (AV Pro), I’ve been very happy with the performance and reliability. I do believe you get what you pay for. I will most likely wind up getting their T3 for many of the same reason you list. Plus it’s Thunderbolt, which keeps USB 3.0 ports open.

https://www.caldigit.com/T3/

I’m sure lots of people are quite happy with OWC products. I however have one of their eSATA RAID products that developed an issue that would not allow me to write to it any more. Neither I nor OWC could figure out why. So I moved on from OWC to Pegasus2.

[John Rofrano]

I’ve read good things about the LaCie 5big Thunderbolt™ Series. I hear it’s very quiet and by the time you fill an empty enclosure with disks you’ll be up around the cost of the 10GB 5Big anyway (unless you are moving the 4 disks from your old Mac Pro into the new JBOD).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Craig Seeman]

[Kevin Patrick] “I will most likely wind up getting their T3 for many of the same reason you list.”

The one issue I have with the T3 is that it seems to require that you get drives from CalDigit. All reviews usually include

To ensure performance and compatibility, CalDigit limits user access to drive replacements. Users can still manually replace the included drives with almost any 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch HDD or SSD, but doing so will void the T3’s warranty. To keep things official, users in need of replacements will have to buy complete “drive modules,” which are HDDs or SSDs pre-installed into compatible drive trays. While the type of drive you receive in your own T3 may vary from ours, this restriction results in quite a large markup in the case of our 2TB Toshiba drives. A 2TB Drive Module from CalDigit costs $179 (although you get a drive tray and $10 Archive Box included in that price), while the same bare Toshiba drive model currently costs about $90. We certainly appreciate the need for compatibility and quality control, but that’s a hefty margin if you ever need to replace or purchase a spare drive.

[Jeremy Garchow]

There’s also the Sonnet Expansion Chassis that will combine both hard drives and PCIe slots.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpress3r.html

Jeremy

[Craig Seeman]

I’ve looked at the LaCie 5big.
My concern about preinstalled drives is that I think I need a variety of sizes to start with.
For example, my Bootcamp drive would be fine at 500GB. My TimeMachine may be OK at 1 or 2 TB.
The Photo, Music Library, Document drive might be fine at 2TB.
The “light media use” drive would be 4TB.

I want to avoid a lot of “odd size” partitioning, making it awkward for me to replace drives.
Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way.

[Lance Bachelder]

I have a Drobo 5D – it’s very quiet and reliable but not the speed I was hoping for. It’s strength is the raid system they employ and I think would be a waste of money as a JBOD.

I have 3 different Sans Digital boxes – one is a 5 drive with hardware Raid 5 and really solid for under $300. The other two are set up as JBOD’s and cost around 200 each. They have eSATA and USB3 – no Thunderbolt.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Craig Seeman]

[Lance Bachelder] “They have eSATA and USB3 – no Thunderbolt.”

I was thinking of USB3 for JBOD but the new MacPro only seems to have one bus (unlike the MBPr which has two). I decided that I’d keep USB3 open for whatever a client might walk in with on USB3 drives. My concern is using client material on their drive while also using stuff on my own simultaneously on the same bus. Granted one would have to push things very hard.

With the OWC ThunderBay (or some of the listed equivlants) I could pull two non critical drives and put two others in and RAID 0 them if I needed to.

[Lance Bachelder]

The Thunder bay makes sense in your situation with all those Thunderbolt ports at your disposal.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Andre Van berlo]

>The one issue I have with the T3 is that it seems to require that you get drives from CalDigit. All reviews usually include

Indeed that is true but the Caldigit T3 comes only with a 1 year warrenty, after that you’re on your own. So I’m probably going to buy a T3 and if after a year it needs an upgrade(read: more disk space) I buy the new drives but not from Caldigit.

[Herb Sevush]

[Craig Seeman] “All this could be a mess of separate daisy chained single drive enclosures but I want to avoid that mess”

I know I’m just dreaming, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could put those drives INSIDE the base computer. Wow, what a great idea, no cables at all, no ports used up, no separate power supply or cooling fans to deal with — I wonder why Apple never thought of that.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf