Multi-drive SSD bay? What's good?

[Eric Lambert]

Thinking ahead about the MacStudio... I have four or five SSD drives that I use for samples w/ my trashcan MacPro. Currently, two drives are housed together in a single unit, and the others are in their own cases. That's a lot of boxes (and cables) where I really just need one, or perhaps two, bays for everything.

I'm not finding a lot of options for something like a 4-bay enclosure. What do you all use? Ideally, it would be Thunderbolt-4 but I could make a TB-3 work.

[Darryl Ramm]

You talking 2.5" SATA III SSDs? Or M.2 PCIe? I assume the earlier but want to be clear. Hopefully you are after JBOD (yes please) or software RAID not hardware RAID.

And how big are each of these drives? Make/model might even help. Esp. in any scrap/replace advice.

And how much $$$$... the older really nice SATA boxes can get expensive, and I'd personally not want to stick with SATA if it was going to cost a lot more than moving to M.2 PCIe drives... but that can also get expensive and there are not great enclosures available there today.

Edit: It it was 2.5" SATA I'd look at the OWC chassis, and personally just use them JBOD--which I think si what you ARe asking if you just want to use them as is but in a better chassis.). Disclaimer: I don't' owe these OWC chassis, almost all my storage is M.2/PCIe SSD, and I'm often critical of OWC storage products but these look good from a price/feature viewpoint, and a big feature is *not* having hardware RAID. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/thun.../thunderbolt-3 ... but does not have mains power/internal power supply, does not have retention for the power barrel connector, but does have retention for the thunderbolt connector. Hopefully the large Noctura fan is nice and quiet but would be good to hear from others.

[smurfyou]

I have not used that particular Thunderbay mini. The previous generation of that and the "Mercury Elite Pro Dock" did not use Noctua fans. More importantly they are not controlled by a thermostat or fan controller so they run full time at high speed. No big deal if you have a machine room but unusable for audio if not. It seems like they switched to Noctua fans after they had so many returns of the noisy enclosures. Maybe the current models are more tolerable.

[DetroitT]

4 bay rack USB C

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/pro...magicmultidock

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You talking 2.5" SATA III SSDs? Or M.2 PCIe? I assume the earlier but want to be clear. Hopefully you are after JBOD (yes please) or software RAID not hardware RAID.

And how big are each of these drives? Make/model might even help. Esp. in any scrap/replace advice.

And how much $$$$... the older really nice SATA boxes can get expensive, and I'd personally not want to stick with SATA if it was going to cost a lot more than moving to M.2 PCIe drives... but that can also get expensive and there are not great enclosures available there today.

Edit: It it was 2.5" SATA I'd look at the OWC chassis, and personally just use them JBOD--which I think si what you ARe asking if you just want to use them as is but in a better chassis.). Disclaimer: I don't' owe these OWC chassis, almost all my storage is M.2/PCIe SSD, and I'm often critical of OWC storage products but these look good from a price/feature viewpoint, and a big feature is *not* having hardware RAID. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/thun.../thunderbolt-3 ... but does not have mains power/internal power supply, does not have retention for the power barrel connector, but does have retention for the thunderbolt connector. Hopefully the large Noctura fan is nice and quiet but would be good to hear from others.

2.5" SSD. I don't want them to function as a single drive, I want them to function independently, I just need one enclosure to house as many SSDs as possible.

Since I already own these drives, I'd rather continue to use them. "New" drives could be purchased in a different format, but that's further down the road.

As for $$$$, I'd rather keep it $.

And there's that potential issue of having 4 drives powered by a single power supply -- if the PS goes out you lose 4 drives. Not good. So I'm fine spreading these across a couple of enclosures. Maybe 3 drives in 1?

That OWC is pretty close to ideal I suspect.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by smurfyou

I have not used that particular Thunderbay mini. The previous generation of that and the "Mercury Elite Pro Dock" did not use Noctua fans. More importantly they are not controlled by a thermostat or fan controller so they run full time at high speed. No big deal if you have a machine room but unusable for audio if not. It seems like they switched to Noctua fans after they had so many returns of the noisy enclosures. Maybe the current models are more tolerable.

The Mercury Elite 2-bay is what I'm using currently, but it's TB-2, maybe even Firewire

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by DetroitT

4 bay rack USB C

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/pro...magicmultidock

Hoping to avoid hot-swappable, rack-mountable drive stations like that.

[smurfyou]

I'd go for the Thunderbay mini then. They have it listed with and without SoftRAID. It's cheaper without and you won't need it.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by smurfyou

I have not used that particular Thunderbay mini. The previous generation of that and the "Mercury Elite Pro Dock" did not use Noctua fans. More importantly they are not controlled by a thermostat or fan controller so they run full time at high speed. No big deal if you have a machine room but unusable for audio if not. It seems like they switched to Noctua fans after they had so many returns of the noisy enclosures. Maybe the current models are more tolerable.

Yes! that brings back memories of criticism. And a quick Google online only found old comments likely for the previous model and folks replacing the stock fan with a Noctua model, etc.. Would be nice to hear from somebody who is running them now. Or maybe get one and be willing to return it. Doing no fan speed control seems just silly and kind the weird low-end cheap approach OWC takes at times, hopefully they fixed that as well.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by DetroitT

4 bay rack USB C

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/pro...magicmultidock

I have concerns with the chance of bumping around those drives, like I wouldn't put it in many audio racks where cables get moved around a lot. It's a wonderful looking box for video transfer etc. And unless it's in a rack/mount on the desktop or really close Thunderbolt cable length may be a problem to reach a rack/mounting location. Compact chassis designed to just on a desktop may be a lot better... if the fans are quiet enough. The big if for me. (and yes I know the Blackmagic Multidock has no fan noise, has no fan).