MP 1,1-5,1 Multi-HDD Setup like a Mac Pro for a Mac Mini

[Engender]

Hello everyone,

My Mac Pro 4,1>5,1 was down yesterday after updating to Venture 13.7.2 using OCLP 2.2.0. I have a 2018 Mac Mini sitting in a drawer—I got it in 2021 to use in an office at a job from which I was fired in 2022. It's just been sitting there. . .

Can someone recommend an external drive enclosure that I could use to house the four drives I have installed in my Mac Pro? Are there external drives like that?

Basically, I'm strongly considering moving to the Mac Mini as my daily driver. I love my Mac Pro, and I love working on it . . . I just can't really accept the down time when I have an alternative Mac in my drawer. I just don't want to give up all the storage space!

I know I could use my Mac Pro in firewire mode, but that seems like a waste of power consumption. At that point, I might as well be using my Mac Pro!

Thanks!

 

[Bigwaff]

Can someone recommend an external drive enclosure that I could use to house the four drives I have installed in my Mac Pro? Are there external drives like that?

There are.. Google for "multiple drives enclosure". Want to make sure the enclosure supports mounting each drive individually. Most multi-drive enclosures are meant for RAID configurations. If you do go this route, keep in mind all the drives will be accessed over a single connection. Depending on your workloads, performance reading and writing to the drives could be much slower than if the drives were individually attached. Recommend a Thunderbolt enclosure for this reason.

 

[krakman]

I just don't want to give up all the storage space!

Do you need to access the storage constantly through out the day?

What size hard drives have you got in the Mac Pro?

I'm in a similar situation...One of my Mac Pros has issues with the latest sequoia 15.2 + OCLP ( Safari not loading sites and emails not displaying properly. App Store and Creative cloud app crashing.)

I am planning on keeping the Mac Pros in my small office as archive servers. I can work on a project on my laptop and then offload the data to a Mac Pro once finished. The Mac Pros need not be on all the time, only for the period of the backup. Saves on buying a Synology NAS.

 

[Engender]

Do you need to access the storage constantly through out the day?

What size hard drives have you got in the Mac Pro?

I'm in a similar situation...One of my Mac Pros has issues with the latest sequoia 15.2 + OCLP ( Safari not loading sites and emails not displaying properly. App Store and Creative cloud app crashing.)

I am planning on keeping the Mac Pros in my small office as archive servers. I can work on a project on my laptop and then offload the data to a Mac Pro once finished. The Mac Pros need not be on all the time, only for the period of the backup. Saves on buying a Synology NAS.

I think the Safari problem is related to the 18.2 update. I used this website to download and install Safari 18.1. I'm running Ventura, however, and I haven't had problems with emails, the App Store, or Adobe software yet.

I have a 1 TB NVME drive in a PCIE slot, two 1 TB HDDs, and one 500 GB HDD. My Mac Mini only has . . . 512 GB . . . so, I am concerned about running out of space a bit. Currently, I'm using 317.22 GB of the 1 TB NVME drive in my Mac Pro.

What kind of workflow are you going to use to offload from your laptop to your Mac Pro?

 

[krakman]

What kind of workflow are you going to use to offload from your laptop to your Mac Pro?

I photograph/video business conferences. Once the media has been processed and delivered I have no use for the data so I archive it in case the client comes back to me in the future with a request. The main Mac Pro has 12TB + 10 TB + 4tb SSD data + 2TB NVME Boot drive + 6TB + 5TB and I have 48TB NAS. Hard drives are cheap these days.


I'n your situation it sounds you are accessing the data regularly so perhaps consider an external Thunderbolt SSD as a working drive and then back up to the Mac Pro in the evenings. Connect a Ethernet cable between the two computers and use software such as Carbon Copy Cloner to automate a back up for you.

 

[Engender]

Some Mini docking stations have drive bays, like this $250.00 options from OWC, which has a slot of an HDD and an NVME drive. That's not all the storage I want, but it would be nice to have that storage in the form of the Mini. It limits the NVME speed to 770 MB/s . . . my Mac Pro's NVME drive has a write of 1291 and a read of 746. Assuming that the OWC station limits reading to 770 MB/s, that's not really a big deal.

Anyone know of anything comparable but cheaper?

 

[mattspace]

Some Mini docking stations have drive bays, like this $250.00 options from OWC, which has a slot of an HDD and an NVME drive. That's not all the storage I want, but it would be nice to have that storage in the form of the Mini. It limits the NVME speed to 770 MB/s . . . my Mac Pro's NVME drive has a write of 1291 and a read of 746. Assuming that the OWC station limits reading to 770 MB/s, that's not really a big deal.

Anyone know of anything comparable but cheaper?

I'd be inclined to look at a USB (non-RAID) JBOD tower for all your SATA stuff (including SATA SSDs on adapter carriers), and then get a dedicated TB enclosure for NVME.

I'm using one of these for all my SATA drives, and it works pretty well:

ICY BOX External 8X JBOD Enclosure for 8X 3.5" SATA I/II/III HDDs (IB-3680SU3)

The external JBOD enclosure can accommodate a total of eight SATA I/ II/ III hard drives or SSDs. It consists largely of aluminium and is therefore stable and dissipates heat very well. The cooling of the drives is achieved due to two temperature controlled 80mm fan on the back and corresponding ...

www.amazon.com.au

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I think the Safari problem is related to the 18.2 update. I used this website to download and install Safari 18.1. I'm running Ventura, however, and I haven't had problems with emails, the App Store, or Adobe software yet.

I have a 1 TB NVME drive in a PCIE slot, two 1 TB HDDs, and one 500 GB HDD. My Mac Mini only has . . . 512 GB . . . so, I am concerned about running out of space a bit. Currently, I'm using 317.22 GB of the 1 TB NVME drive in my Mac Pro.

What kind of workflow are you going to use to offload from your laptop to your Mac Pro?

Isn't it cheaper to buy an external 8TB HDD to replace the 3 small HDDs + MacPro you have?
Less headache.