Silent hard drive bay

[SD2]

Hello everyone,

I've just received a bay for both SSD NVME and SATA HDs to use along my Mac Studio.
My previous setup (Mac Pro, HDX, etc...) used to be in another room for noise purposes but, now that I've chosen to go full native (with the M2 Ultra) I was hoping to be able to keep the whole setup in the mixing room.

The M2 Ultra is super quiet, the Hub (Ethernet/HDMI, etc...) is super quiet but the hard drive bay ( OWC miniStack STX ) is freaking loud!
It seems that, no matter the temperature, the fan is always running at maximum speed and is of poor quality (plastic).

I'm gonna return it and am looking for a quiet solution, hoping this exists.

Does anyone have recommendations for such a product (external bay for SSD NVME drives, from 8 to 16TB)?
Thanks.
Mat

[SD2]

Oups, sorry, found this thread that's pretty much about the same thing...
But it's kinda "old", don't hesitate if you have further recommendations....

[uptheoctave]

The OWC Thunderblade is fanless but it is very expensive, you can't buy it without drives, you have to buy theirs. It also only gets the speeds they claim (2600 MB/s) in RAID 0, otherwise it is around 700 MB/s.

I haven't found anything I'd be happy to have in the control room, which is why these things go in the machine room.
I'm using a pair of Sonnet 3 bay expansion chassis in a rackmount with OWC Accelsior 4M2's and a Highpoint SSD7505 RAID card.
I get circa 2500MB/s from these as JBOD's.

If you need to put them in separate rooms then the Corning optical TB cables are great, but expensive.

[SD2]

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, 1500 bucks is way too expensive, I'm looking into less expensive solutions (will post the results).
For that price, getting optical thunderbolt cables could indeed be a better solution...

[uptheoctave]

Originally Posted by SD2

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, 1500 bucks is way too expensive, I'm looking into less expensive solutions (will post the results).
For that price, getting optical thunderbolt cables could indeed be a better solution...

I put the Macs and the drives in the machine room.
If you do that then you could use any external hard drive you like.

I still have a few of the optical TB cables, but that is because putting a TB Dock (per machine) in the studio is the best and most reliable way to distribute USB and video from the machine room.

My main issue is finding a reliable, high refresh rate KVM.
I've been through 4 of them now and they just, quite frankly, suck.

But having *all the things with fans* in the machine room and not in the studio is really worth it.

[Darryl Ramm]

I think remote optical Thunderbolt 3 is a great option.

OTOH if you are just doing M.2 SSD then the Sonnet Echo Express SE IIIe work nicely for me for use on the desktop. They have nice Noctura fan and for me with multiple M.2 drives in them are effectively silent except when starting up.

[uptheoctave]

Was just on the Sonnet site and saw this:

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/e.../overview.html

Might be an option.
Not fanless but Sonnet are pretty good for that.

[SD2]

Hi Darryl,

Thanks for the lead.
Regarding the Sonnet, I'm a little bit lost. Will it take SSD NVME hard drives?
It's supposed to take PCIe cards but I'm a little bit confused regarding those formats....
Is a SSD drive considered as a PCIe card?
(sorry for the dumb question but it has been 10 years since I last changed my setup, so.......)

[uptheoctave]

Originally Posted by SD2

Hi Darryl,

Thanks for the lead.
Regarding the Sonnet, I'm a little bit lost. Will it take SSD NVME hard drives?
It's supposed to take PCIe cards but I'm a little bit confused regarding those formats....
Is a SSD drive considered as a PCIe card?
(sorry for the dumb question but it has been 10 years since I last changed my setup, so.......)

If you mean the Sonnet that he linked to then you'd use a PCIE NVME card like the OWC Accelsior 4M2: https://www.owc.com/solutions/accelsior-4m2

The one I linked to you can put 2 NVME's in it with no PCIE card required.

[SD2]

OK James, thanks, I'll look into that.

Also, am I right in assuming that SSD NVME drive don't go above 4GB? I can't find 8GB models...