Thinking about an external RAID for my iMac

[eljanitor]

I've been thinking about getting a RAID array for an iMac that I have. I have all kinds of data ranging from documents to media files. I was looking around at some external USB RAID enclosures and I'm just not sure whats the best set up for my iMac. It has a 1 TB HD installed and its almost maxed out.

When I think RAID array I usually think of something connected to an Ethernet cable, through a network, that costs alot of money, and needs to be mounted in a rack.

However it looks like there's a few companies that make USB RAID enclosures. I'm still not so sure on what to do here. Id really like to find something that has Firewire 800 over USB 2.0 for the transfer rate. Any suggestions?

 

[smithrh]

Any suggestions?

I'm running 3 pairs of external FW drives on my Mac server, serving a total of 6TB in Mirrored RAID configuration (software RAID). While I'd kinda like them to be in a nicer enclosure, it's fine this way.

You could at least try this out with some external drives before committing to a dedicated enclosure.

 

[tcassio]

Take a look at the Synology NAS solutions. I have a DS410 with 4-2TB drives in a raid 5 config. This is a little pricey, but they have cheaper and smaller solutions. No rack mount necessary.

 

[guv.c]

nas / fw800

ok so usb is a tad slow when you are going to be shifting a lot of data around, so your two options are fw800 or NAS (via gigabit ethernet plugged into network)

Nas - time consuming and expensive to set up. but its an independent server and you dont need your computer on to use it (i use a freenas server for my storage needs) and its faster than fw800, and its flexible... you can easily add to it later.

fw800 - I've been using one of these since my mac came with a firewire 800 port... very much improved over USB... but not as flexible as NAS. but you can daisy chain.

Now with each of those options you can do hardware raid or software raid... either is ok, but hardware inherently should be more stable..

you need to figure out what you really need in terms of raid

raid 0 - data written across two or more disks. for speed
raid 1 - mirrored data.
raid 5 - bit of both. requires 3 or more disks. one disk is lost to parity (call it backup).

once you figure out what is best for you then you can look at products.

I've used LaCie's for a while. speed is great for fw800 and they do raid 0 and 1 on some of their products. They are relatively inexpensive.

in terms of nas - build your own! (freenas) or drobo or synology as already suggested.

good luck

dont forget to backup!!!

 

[jborko]

I agree to tcassio... Consider NAS storage with 2 or 4 bays...
There are many on the market for relatively acceptable price, offering up to Raid 10 and they are mostly book shelve models...

 

[eljanitor]

Yeah after doing some more shopping here I think that NAS might just be the way to go.

was looking at this: Sabio Storage CM404 1234783 4TB Network Attached Storage Device. seems like a good priced NAS and it can support RAID 5

but you know they still have ths one its not Ethernet but: Sabio Storage DM4 1234791 Direct Attached Storage Device - 4TB

they just both look good and within a decent price range. under $700.00

 

[Plod186]

Check out www.drobo.com

They have a range of easy to use storage devices that can be shared on a network and they have beyond raid technology making for easy setup and ability to mix disk sizes.

 

[smithrh]

Check out www.drobo.com

They have a range of easy to use storage devices that can be shared on a network and they have beyond raid technology making for easy setup and ability to mix disk sizes.

I looked at Drobo a while back and essentially decided that it's slow and expensive. On top of that, it's proprietary.

What this means is that you have a bunch of drives that can only be read by a Drobo. Forget about disk recovery if things go south with your Drobo unit.

Ars did a review of the Drobo recently, it's a good read. Note, it was something of a "junior" review as it was the author's first review, but it was still generally decent.

 

[archer75]

The drobo does have, IMO, one huge advantage: the ability to use drives of any size. This is very important to me.

I built a WHS box because I didn't want to throw drives away to buy matched drives. So now I just get whatever drive is the largest at the time I need more storage and add it to the pool.

 

[Benni-chan]

you can also look at an unraid server, if you are not afraid of building your own server. (the prebuild servers are a bit expensive...)

http://lime-technology.com/

(currently running a 7 TB storage server with about 6 TB available for secure storage (one disk fail safe).)

 

[tcassio]

Any raid device that allows you to use different drive sizes is going to be proprietary. Drobo is not the only nas that offers this feature. I know that Synology supports different size drives, and I believe there are several other manuf. that offer this also.

 

[archer75]

Any raid device that allows you to use different drive sizes is going to be proprietary. Drobo is not the only nas that offers this feature. I know that Synology supports different size drives, and I believe there are several other manuf. that offer this also.

It depends. There are several that allow you to use any size drive and still be able to pull the drive and plug it in another computer and get the data off. WHS is one. Flexraid is another. Several of the 3rd party features for WHS v2 will also allow this. I'm not sure about unraid.

 

[ncc1701d]

+1 for Drobo. It may be proprietary, but the service is excellent. I've had a drobopro since the day they came out and never had a problem. When the day comes it does go to god, I will happily purchase another (drives go out of one, straight into he other). For ease of use it's hard to beat. If they make one with thunderbolt... it will be sweeeet.