RAID Enclosure for Macbook Pro Retina

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Level 1

8 points

RAID Enclosure for Macbook Pro Retina

I am looking for a 4-5 bay RAID enclosure for my Macbook Pro Retina. I don't want to drop the money on a Drobo as there seem to be countless enclosures out there that I feel will eventually work with the macbook Pro. I need fully functional USB3.0 and eSata. Has anyone had positive experience with any of the current enclosures out there? Below are the working options that I have found:

EnhanceRAID E500Fr:http://www.barefeats.com/hard155.html (seems like a good solution, but can't find out where to buy it and pricing seems to be over 1K

Guardian Maximus: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/GM3QKIT0GB/ (good solution but only two bays; I have the voyagerQ and with new firmware it works with USB3.0 so I have confidence in their RAID enclosure)

Newegg.com has countless enclosures that seem reasonable, but I am not confident that they will work with the macbook pro retina (HEY MAC, why not let you computers work with the stuff that is out there; you're lucky microsoft is such a joke)

macbook pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), i7

Posted on Nov 5, 2012 9:00 AM

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Answer 1

sidonsoft

Level 2

275 points

Nov 5, 2012 9:43 AM in response to chesbrougha

4-5 for storage or for performance or you need the redundancy?

careful with raid devices some of them don't perform as well as they are advertised.

Custom built raid storage devices are best imho and often most cost effective.

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Answer 2

chesbrougha Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 5, 2012 10:02 AM in response to sidonsoft

For now it is going to be for storage. The following is my setup and backup plan:

Macbook pro Retina

Editing setup; real world transfers of 220/200 R/W with the following setup

-sonnet pro expresscard thunderbolt adaptor

-sonnet pro 34/expresscard adaptor (6gb/s version)

-Mercury Elite pro 4TB RAID0

Storage Solution:

RAID1, two drive setup for archival purposes

RAID1, two drive setup for RAW footage

single hardrive for backing up editing hardrive (which I also will mirror with an identical RAID0 MEP 4TB hardrive so that I don't have any work interruption should my editing hardrive go down)

I would setup the backups to run at the end of each day using chronosync. I am not all that experienced with RAID arrays or building a custom RAID storage (which would be ideal...just built a hackintosh). Any and all information or opinions on my process are greatly welcomed.

Thanks

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Answer 3

sidonsoft

Level 2

275 points

Nov 5, 2012 10:17 AM in response to chesbrougha

I would recommend a Raid-5 array with a hotspare.

Give you the speed you need with inbuilt redundancy so backup is not as critical

if budget is a constraint the Hotway HFR2-SU3S2 are good value capable of raid 5 with 4 bays and USB3 and e-sata connection.

a custom setup for you wouldn't give you the speeds you would desire but may be an option for backup/archival purposes and used over a gigabit ethernet.

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Answer 4

chesbrougha Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 5, 2012 12:30 PM in response to sidonsoft

I obviously have to look into RAID5 more. Because I am going to be backing up from multiple different drive locations I was under the impression that a couple RAID1 would be ideal (since RAID5 takes three drives).

I was thinking about a NAS setup, but of course the MBP Retina doesnt have a ethernet and at this point I can't give up a thunderbolt (sonnet adaptor and dell U2711).

It blows my mind that if thunderbolt allows to daisy chain without the loss of speed then what is the hold up for getting a thunderbolt hub (besides those couple that are coming out and have a bunch of ports that I will never use).

What are you referring to as a custom setup. Im not really all that concerned with editing off these drives since I edit from the Mercury elite anyway.

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Answer 5

sidonsoft

Level 2

275 points

Nov 5, 2012 7:43 PM in response to chesbrougha

Raid 5 NAS with a thunderbolt connector would be heavenly 🙂

custom raid box, pretty much build a machine choose a motherboard with reasonable sata ports and raid capabilities or buy a dedicated raid card (this is for people where speed is vital)

small inital setup and expandability that will last you years, also there are motherboards available that give you thunderbolt, esata and dual gigabit and wireless capabilities.

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Answer 6

chesbrougha Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 5, 2012 8:13 PM in response to sidonsoft

Do you install an OS on the custom machine? I'll look around the internet to see what is going on as this seems like the best cost effective solution. I just built a hackintosh so am capable just need to understand how these other types of systems are built. Thanks for the recommendation

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Answer 7

sidonsoft

Level 2

275 points

Nov 5, 2012 8:34 PM in response to chesbrougha

Just like any PC build really, just the important aspects are different.

case size 5.25" bays for HDD or external access for removable drive bay

i'd suggest a linux operating system as you will notice alot of ready made NAS already run linux.

processor is not so important if you are utilizing a hardware raid controller card

ports like thunderbolt and gigabit ethernet etc on the motherboard

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Answer 8

sidonsoft

Level 2

275 points

Nov 5, 2012 8:37 PM in response to chesbrougha

My custom NAS & Media Server yes, this is a 12 Bay 🙂

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Answer 9

chesbrougha Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 6, 2012 9:26 AM in response to sidonsoft

Looks good. Can you post your components. My main question is about setup. Which version of Linux would I install and how do I get it to work with my mac? Would the mac just see it as a bunch of harddrives and would I configure the RAID within Linux?

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Answer 10

Nov 29, 2012 3:22 PM in response to chesbrougha

For building your own NAS I'd check out NAS 4 Free which is FreeBSD 9 based, and uses ZFS v28. It's managed with a web browser based interface so it's pretty straight forward. It also includes AFP support which should work with Time Machine backups (although many people have problems with non-Apple NAS Time Machine backups).

ZFS has limitations on growing storage pools based on RAIDZ so you need to incorporate that into the planning. If your data is particularly important, if you need high availablity, then you may consider two NAS units. Instead of safer RAID10 you could go with RAIDZ1 (effectively RAID5) to save on drives, but then mirror the two NAS units (or more correctly unidirectional sync from one to the other by rsyncing ZFS snapshots from one to the other). Now you have not only a backup of primary storage, which you should have anyway, but when growing you can blow away one NAS entirely, upgrade the drives, reconfigure the storage pool, and restore from the other NAS again using ZFS export/import.

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Answer 11

Nov 29, 2012 3:25 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

Also you could built one large NAS with two independent storage pools and sync between them rather than two NAS units. Of course if that one NAS itself dies, you don't have redundancy in this case.

Another thing is that you should definitely put the NAS on a UPS. I think NAS 4 Free has UPS support for autoshutdown in the event of a power failure. This will help avoid file system corruption.

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