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RAID 5 Cable Length – Thunderbolt 3? 2?
So I am getting a Thunderbay 6 RAID enclosure from OWC. It has Thunderbolt 3 on it. As it stands, Thunderbolt 3 cables can only be 6.5′ in length (2m) and therein lies my problem. If I can set my drive enclosure about 8′ away from my iMac Pro it can go right into my closet, otherwise I have to have this noisy 6 bay RAID system sitting on my desk next to my computer. I looked into getting a QNAP and using 10GbE but they are so much more expensive and a lot more complicated to set up. I managed to get this 6 Bay RAID with six 4GB HGST drives installed for $1,100.
Is Thunderbolt 3 really needed for a 6 bay RAID 5 system? Can’t I just hook up a 10′ Thunderbolt 2 cable to it with adapters and have it perform the exact same with no performance hits? Even USB 3.1 Gen 2 gets 10Gbps, so wouldn’t that technically work as well?
– Derek
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4 Replies
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is Derek and Bob Wills the same person, or did you kill him and put him in the closet with the OWC RAID array ?
You have a $6000 iMac Pro, and a nice 6 bay Thunderbolt 3 RAID array, and all you are concerned about is putting the RAID in your closet ? Is this a real question ? You are willing to drop from 40Gb/sec to 10Gb/sec so you can keep it in your closet ? Do you do this for a living ?
Bob
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Haha, how’d you find out? Please give me at least a day before you call the police. I need to time to cover everything with bleach.
Derek is my roommate. We share the same system and this machine auto logs into my account. So I’m guessing he posted without thinking about it. Now I’m wondering what else he’s posted on my behalf!!
We built a small post production studio in the 3rd bedroom of our place. Sometimes rough VO needs to be recorded in there and so we were wondering about putting the RAID in the closet, for sound purposes. It is my understanding that although RAID 5 with six 7200RPM drives will be super fast, we still won’t ever reach a read/write speed fast enough to fill up even 1/2 of the 40Gbps bandwidth of TB3. So dropping the bandwidth from 40Gbps to 20Gbps to get some more distance between our main computer and the drive bay would still yield the same performance, yet be provide a quieter work environment that allows for VO recording.
Hope that makes sense.
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yes you can use the adaptors. 6 drives won’t even come close to Thunderbolt 2 speeds, so go ahead ! Does the RAID array make that much noise ? I can’t believe that. You can keep it on the floor below the iMac Pro.
Bob
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
We haven’t actually assembled it yet so maybe it will be a nonissue. I’ve got a box full of HGST drives in front of me right now and the enclosure should arrive tomorrow. Some of the Amazon reviews for these HGST drives say they are fantastic but can be a little noisy. And I figure after a few hours of putting the RAID under load while working 4k footage, the fans will start pushing some decent air.
Good to know about the adapters. Since the RAID is technically TB3, we weren’t sure if a Thunderbolt 2 cable would work with it.
I’ve also been reading that optical TB3 cables are supposed to be released very soon, and that should provide some longer cable lengths.
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