Recommendations for an External SATA RAID tower

[Mitchji]

Hi,

I really like the Seritek. They are two drive enclosures but can be laid sideways (they come with feet for this purpose) and stacked. One shortcoming of SATA drives is the connectors are easily broken. The Seritek use hot swapable trays so you never actually plug a connector into the drive. They are reviewed here:
https://www.barefeats.com/hard46.html

The Macgurus “Burly Box” enclosures are a little cheaper and come in different sizes. Also reviewed at barefeats:
https://www.barefeats.com/hard41.html

“RELATED PRODUCTS
Some of you are considering MacGurus Burly 2 drive removable kit as an althernative to FirmTek’s SeriTek/1EN2. The main difference is that you have to assemble the Burly kit…”

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Bob Carpenter]

Why not just use your own powermac. Transintl.com makes a package for aournd 400.00 that can convert 3 drives into a raid. I bought the hitachi 400 to create a 1.2 internal raid. Its lighting fast and flawless. You can buy the drives reasonably for around 160 from zipzoomfly.com So for under 1000.00 you can have an internal raid.

[Lance Bachelder]

I’m looking at the Burly box myself. They even have one that holds 8 drives. Sonnettech.com has 4 and 8 port SATA cards for Mac that are very fast. Not sure about the noise of the cases. I’ve found Seagate makes very quiet drives. Have 2 internal 4 drive RAIDs at work I built with Seagate 300GB drives – very solid, fast and quiet.

http://www.mwave.com has the new Western Digital 320GB drives (3200SD) that are designed for RAID and also very quiet for $159.

Lance Bachelder
Southern California
Cow Forum Host- Magic Bullet

Apple Dual 2Ghz G5 ATIx800, 2.5GB RAM, OSX Tiger FCP Studio
Intel P4, 2GB RAM, PNY 6600GT XP Pro – Vegas 6 Studio

[Rob Poquez]

I have been leaning toward the burly as well. I like the design and size of the SeriTek the only think i am not sure about is, is the SeriTek use eSATA cables? I want to use the Sonnet 4+4 card instead of the Seritek card and am not sure of the Seritek enclosure would work well with the Sonnet Card. anyone know?

Rob

[Mitchji]

Hi,

The Transintl kit is way overpriced compared to this “drive bracket”:
https://www.g5drivebracket.com/

reviewed here:
https://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/g5bracket/

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Mitchji]

Hi,

You could email Rob at barefeats.

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Dan Riley]

I have a MacGurus 4 drive box. It has 4, 400gig Hitachi drives in it.
I have the Sonnet 4+4 card in the dual 2.5 gig G5, only using
the 4 external connections. Room to grow I guess.
You hardly know it’s on. Very quiet. The G5 is much louder,
especially when you do rendering and it ramps up the fans.

However, if I had it to do again I’d do a 6 or 8 drive setup.
Why? Well, although the tests people post show very fast
data speeds, in real life, they aren’t as fast as that, at least
not in my experience. I get some dropped frames now and then
and also only get 3 or 4 video tracks (if that) before I’m red lined.
If you look at the graphs that are displayed on these drive
tests that are available, you will see downward spikes every now
and then on SATA drives. Seems like they aren’t as consistent
with data output as SCSI. Not to say I like SCSI at all.
I really like my setup, I’m just saying 4 drives may be the
lower end for an uncompressed 10 bit SD setup.
For HD, I’d definitely do 8 drives.

Dan