DAS System Recommendations - 3.5" and 5.25" Bays Necessary

[Gizmo22]

Looking for an external enclosure with the following features. Striking out miserably myself so far, and beginning to wonder if it just does not exist.

• 4+ 3.5" bays
• 5.25" bay

Because of children, I have backed up just about my entire DVD/Blu Ray collection. This results in several bits and bytes of data stored in ISO containers. I do not currently have an interest in transcoding to another ATV available format. I do want to get rid of my Popcorn Hour system.

That said, my tentative solution is a DAS connected to a 2011 Mac Mini. The Mac Mini could AirPlay to various ATVs in the home from the media found on the DAS. I would like the aforementioned DAS to have a 5.25" bay as well. I intend for this to replace all USB drives I have for the family rMBP and MBA systems, and use a VNC to control the Mac Mini and rip media. I believe a copy of OSX Server will also allow me to save Time Machine backups on the Mac Mini attached drives.


Are there any glaring holes in this plan so far, other than my inability to find a 3.5"/5.25" external enclosure? I would really like to keep it as an all in one system.

 

[matspekkie]

Owc

Dear Gizmo,

I had a similar need for storage for my mac mini. After some searching i found this puppy http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/.

Since i already had 4 equal 1 TB drives i put those in, set it to raid 5 (safety & space)

For me this was a perfect match since i own a 2010 model and thus does not have a thunderbold port (connected via firewire 800). So far i had zero issues with it and it is pretty quiet. It is not the fastest but fast enough for what i need and the price seems right.

Anyway maybe this points you in the right direction.

 

[Gizmo22]

Dear Gizmo,

I had a similar need for storage for my mac mini. After some searching i found this puppy http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/.

Since i already had 4 equal 1 TB drives i put those in, set it to raid 5 (safety & space)

For me this was a perfect match since i own a 2010 model and thus does not have a thunderbold port (connected via firewire 800). So far i had zero issues with it and it is pretty quiet. It is not the fastest but fast enough for what i need and the price seems right.

Anyway maybe this points you in the right direction.

It's definitely close, and has most of the features I am looking for, but I would really like to find something that has a 5.25" bay in it as well.

 

[cmanderson]

It's definitely close, and has most of the features I am looking for, but I would really like to find something that has a 5.25" bay in it as well.

My guess is you'd be best served with one of the upcoming Sonnet Tech Thunderbolt Docks with built-in Blu-ray drive and internal 4TB SATA drive. There may be some other options out there (eSATA, mostly, which would likely require a Thunderbolt to eSATA bridge), but a lot of them look like something that died in 1995 and rose from the dead last year.

If you need more storage, hang additional Thunderbolt or USB3 storage off of that as needed.

One option to prevent "USB sprawl" - you could team it up with a 10 or 20TB LaCie 5big Thunderbolt (expensive but small and fairly quiet due to the nice cooling fan), obtain a copy of MacZFS and run RAIDZ on it (or the Greenbytes consumer edition, also free - with a few more options such as L2ARC support - but less "up to date" than MacZFS). Great performance that way, looks good, works to prevent bit-rot, no "RAID hole", doesn't make a lot of racket, etc.