jbod solution

[Foxdog175]

With the new Mac Pro, I'm looking for a simple jbod external solution. I've looked into Pegasus2 and Drobo and the only thing I don't like about them is that if the box dies outside of warranty, I have to buy another box to access my data. I'm also not crazy about having to use identical drives throughout those cases. I simply want something comparable to internal storage practices in the current Mac Pro (using jbod).

I don't require critical access speeds -- just something comparable to what I'm used to for internal storage in my current Mac Pro. Do I need TB1, 2, or USB3?

Ideally, I'd like a 4-5 bay enclosure, using jbod, where I can mix brands and speeds and when one fails, I can replace it with any drive I want. I'm also looking for a solution, where if the box fails, I can plug my drives into other units and recover the data. The one thing I love about the Drobo is that it notifies you when drives fail. Any suggestions?

With the expensive Pegasus/Drobo solutions, I feel like I'm paying for a Ferrari when I'd be using it like a Honda.

 

[VirtualRain]

USB3 is more than adequate for JBOD where performance is that of any single disk. Thunderbolt is overkill for JBOD but relevant for RAID0.

This is the highest reviewed USB3 enclosure I've seen... and reasonably priced for a full aluminum enclosure...

Product Page

Customer reviews on Amazon

 

[Rich.Cohen]

I'm also not crazy about having to use identical drives throughout those cases.

Just a small point. With the Drobo you don't have to use drives of the same size. However, the second drive is always dedicated as a mirrored or parity drive so you don't benefit from that as available storage. Also, if one drive is larger than all the others you can't use the overflow area. For example if you have a 4TB and a 3TB drive you will only have about 3TB of available storage. The Drobo website has a calculator that shows how much available storage is provided for any combination of disk sizes.

 

[unfragile]

I'm gonna use this with the nMacPro D300 / 6-Core

http://www.computeruniverse.net/en/products/90487873/raidsonic-icy-box-ib-3640su3.asp

and this

http://www.computeruniverse.net/en/products/90437697/fantec-mr-copydu3-dockingstation.asp

Both are SATA3.

 

[jasonvp]

With the new Mac Pro, I'm looking for a simple jbod external solution.

If you're settled on Thunderbolt for the connectivity, the Oyen Digital RS-M4T presents the drives as individuals to the OS. From there, you can format each, or use OS X's internal software RAID.