Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Recommendations- SSDs, Ext drives for nMP
- Thread starter sparkie7
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'm using a Pegasus R6 12Tb, Drobo 5D, Lacie Little Big Disk2,
and a Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 in a Inateck FE2002 enclosure. I shouldve gone with a TB enclosure for the ssd though, since USB3 ob the nMP is painfully slower than on any other device.
and a Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 in a Inateck FE2002 enclosure. I shouldve gone with a TB enclosure for the ssd though, since USB3 ob the nMP is painfully slower than on any other device.
Anything can be migrated.
The OWC Thunderbay IV product is ideal for oMP owners who want to migrate their spinners or SSDs to the nMP. The Thunderbay 4 with TB2 is even better for RAID0 arrays of SSDs. Another choice for HD storage is a NAS or Drobo or any old networked computer with storage if 1Gbps throughput is enough.
Consolidating and simplifying is another route... Maybe one or two large (4-5TB) USB3 drives can replace a collection of older, smaller HDs? A couple of cheap ($180) Seagate Expansion 5TB USB3 externals can give you 10TB of capacity at about 300MB/s in RAID0.
I personally use the internal SSD for my daily work, a WD Velociraptor TB Duo for archives (I connect it to the nMP only to archive projects or access previous projects), and a NAS (really a Mac Mini with Thunderbay IV) for backups (and storing my HTPC media).
In the Thunderbay, can you run the 4 bays independently or does at least 2 have to be setup as RAID?
I've got a Pegasus 2 R4 and a StarTech dual bay thunderbolt enclosure with a couple of 1TB Samsung Evo 840 SSD's.
The Pegasus is quite a professional unit, well for desktop storage it is anyway and it's very quiet.
I got the StarTech to run VM's from SSD, but the Pegasus has been that good that I don't use the SSD's. I've also found the throughput of the StarTech to be fairly slow - around 350MB/s, much slower than the SSD's can deliver. The Pegasus is delivering around 600MB/s using the HDD's that came with it.
I've also got a Drobo Mini, but it's sat in a drawer. It's noisy, slow and gets very hot. It might be useful every now and again when I'm on the road, but otherwise I won't use it.
I backup the Pegasus to a Synology 412+ NAS, using a mixture of TimeMachine and rsync, depending upon what I'm backing up.
If I were to buy again now I'd get a Pegasus R4, maybe an R6 and the new Pegasus M4 with some SSD's. Their products aren't cheap but you do get what you pay for. I'd still keep a NAS as a backup.
The Pegasus is quite a professional unit, well for desktop storage it is anyway and it's very quiet.
I got the StarTech to run VM's from SSD, but the Pegasus has been that good that I don't use the SSD's. I've also found the throughput of the StarTech to be fairly slow - around 350MB/s, much slower than the SSD's can deliver. The Pegasus is delivering around 600MB/s using the HDD's that came with it.
I've also got a Drobo Mini, but it's sat in a drawer. It's noisy, slow and gets very hot. It might be useful every now and again when I'm on the road, but otherwise I won't use it.
I backup the Pegasus to a Synology 412+ NAS, using a mixture of TimeMachine and rsync, depending upon what I'm backing up.
If I were to buy again now I'd get a Pegasus R4, maybe an R6 and the new Pegasus M4 with some SSD's. Their products aren't cheap but you do get what you pay for. I'd still keep a NAS as a backup.
Thanks for all the info guys
One question, what is everyone using as portable drive? I'm using 2 G-Drive Mini's on my Mac Pro 2008. Which has 2x Firewire connections.. I assume there is something similar but probably SSD type with Thunderbolt connectors? whats the best out there currently?
One question, what is everyone using as portable drive? I'm using 2 G-Drive Mini's on my Mac Pro 2008. Which has 2x Firewire connections.. I assume there is something similar but probably SSD type with Thunderbolt connectors? whats the best out there currently?
To my nMP I ended up connecting the Sonnet Echo Express III-D Desktop Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis. I have a 1TB Accelsior card and a Sonnet Tempo Pro card with 2x500GB SSDs on it.
As for external mobile storage I have the 500GB LaCie Rugged SSD Thunderbolt. It features USB3 as well and is devilishly quick. I actually cloned my BootCamped Windows8 onto it, and it works just fine for booting into Windows and gaming there...
As for external mobile storage I have the 500GB LaCie Rugged SSD Thunderbolt. It features USB3 as well and is devilishly quick. I actually cloned my BootCamped Windows8 onto it, and it works just fine for booting into Windows and gaming there...
The Thunderbay IV/4 have 4-independant drives (JBOD). You can use them individually, or use Disk Utility to create a software RAID-0, RAID-1, or RAID-10 as your needs dictate.
I have a Thunderbay IV on my iMac with a pair of SSDs in RAID-0, and 2 separate hard disks for my needs there. My Mac Pro is the 2012 tower so the drives are internal there, but configured the same way to have duplicate workstation compatibility.