letfeardomring Posted November 8, 2008 Share Posted November 8, 2008 I did some searching on the forum but did not come up with much, so... I recently built a system with the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P board (huge thanks to PCWiz for his guide which I wish I had found sooner than I did) and am running Kalyway 10.5.2 upgraded to 10.5.4. I've got all 8 SATA ports working, purple JMicron and Intel orange ICH9. The backup drive will be connected to an eSATA port which is connected to the purple JMicron inside the box. Life has been good and now I need to handle the backup solution. My plan (which may or may not be crackpot): Start with 1-2 drives in a 4-5 bay enclosure so there's room to add drives as I fill the drives on my system. I also plan to get 2 enclosures and 2 sets of drives and leave one off site, rotating every week or so. I figured I would just set up the drives in JBOD and schedule things with SuperDuper!, as I do not need the extra security of RAID 0, 5, 6, etc. since I am doing one off site -- and managing a RAID is a little intimidating. Off site will protect me from things which RAID would not (e.g. theft, human error, disaster, etc.). But maybe I'd consider doing RAID 5 or something on the 2 externals at some point if someone convinces me it is worth it. These are my current drives (set up with video editing in mind to avoid bottle necks): 1. osx - 640 GB 2. scratch and temporary renders - 640 GB 4. current projects -> 2x640 GB ... which I want to set to RAID 0 with software RAID, so ~1 TB 5. data and past projects - 1.5 TB All the reviews on newegg.com for multibay external enclosures seem mixed when it comes to Mac -- if anyone even mentions it. Does anyone have opinions about or experience with any of these enclosures? Here are the options within my budget (<$350): SANS DIGITAL TR5M1 5 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD Enclosure - Retail - $230 SANS DIGITAL TR4M 4 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD Enclosure - Retail - $250 SANS DIGITAL MS4UM 4 Bay SATA to USB / eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD Enclosure - Retail - $370 openbox of the above for $254 Rosewill RSV-S5 SATA 3G 3.5" HDD 5-Bay RAID 0/1/5/10/JBOD Storage Enclosure System with 120mm cooling fan/ Port Multiplier/ PCIe card included/ Tray design - Retail - $240 One reviewer said: "Be aware, another machine in my care had a 2-lane port multiplier card that NEVER worked with that particular Mac Pro's motherboard but worked flawlessly in a Hackintosh. There is a real interaction challenge between Leopard, the hardware, sharing the RAID over a network, the port multiplier card, the RAID drivers, and maybe the RAID tower itself!" Athena Power BP-ESATA350SESR Multi Ports SATA External Back Plane Unit - Retail - $220 AMS DS-2350S Aluminum Black eSATA 5 bay SATA Enclosure - Retail - $218 Silicon Image Sil4726 Steel Vine RAID Storage Processor. mixed Mac reviews... a couple praise it and a couple bash it AMS DS-2340SES eSATA VENUS T4S External Enclosure - Retail - $180 ...also in 4bay version... same RAID processor I assume (not sure why the 2 above are in the external enclosures section and the rest are in raid server subsystem section, but whatever) I am leaning towards either the Rosewill or the Sans Digital 5 bay (I think this is the SAME PRODUCT, just compare newegg.com photos of the 2), but I am a little bit worried by this: "Warning: RSV-S5 Must work With Silicon Image Multilane compatible host (like RC-213/ RC-214/RC-220, which included in box). If you connect RSV-S5 to a host without Port multiplier function, the system might only catch one HDD instead of all." Which is what it says about the Rosewill on newegg.com and on Rosewill's site. and worried by this: "(Please note that the host adapter card is based on Silicon Image chipset, which currently only support up to MAC OS 10.5.1 by Silicon Image.)" which comes from the Sans Digital site However, the 4bay MS4UM seems pretty nice with the lights on the front and the option to connect via USB to a Macbook if needed. Just wish it were 5 bay... But which drives to use? Since the 1.5 TB drives seem pretty unreliable at this point, I will probably just go with 1 TB backup drives. Though they are more expensive the Caviar Black seems to have a lower fail rate than any of the other 1 TB drives: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $140 Thoughts? Am I going about this all wrong or is it pretty on point? Any insight would be greatly appreciated! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/135269-please-help-which-4-or-5-bay-external-enclosure/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
letfeardomring Posted November 13, 2008 Author Share Posted November 13, 2008 anyone? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/135269-please-help-which-4-or-5-bay-external-enclosure/#findComment-964738 Share on other sites More sharing options...
hackaroni Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 Well this is ironic. I came here to find out if I could get a 2-port multiplier I got with one of these towers to work on a hackintosh and not only do I have experience with two of these models, but I was the reviewer you quoted from newegg. Ironic, further, that there I'm claiming to have had no problem getting a 2-port card to work with a Hacky but now it just don't work. Course, I may have a different one than the one I mentioned. Anyway, so here's what I've learned about these things so far: I originally got the SANS DIGITAL TR4M 4 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD Enclosure for a client and could not get the enclosed 2-port card to work at all although I hadn't fully expected to. So I ordered a 50$ 2-port Port Multiplier from MacGurus which seemed to work. I had 3x500 gig drives in the tower in a concatenated softRAID. It worked for a month (at least) as a backup that no one else accessed over the network. But once I got a second one of these towers and connected it for use over the network, all hell broke loose. A lot of mysterious failures and crashes that took down multiple computers -- so random that you almost thought it wouldn't happen again. Eventually I thought it was just the new tower and returned it to Newegg....but the replacement tower did the same thing. Actually, let me spare you the long story. Here's the deal: 1) I got two SANS DIGITAL TR4M 4 Bay JBOD Enclosures for one client and two Rosewill RSV-S5 SATA 3G 3.5" HDD 5-Bay RAID 0/1/5/10/JBOD Storage Enclosure Systems for another. They both have Mac Pros but one has Leopard installed and the latter has Tiger. 2) The port multiplier card included with the Sans Digital didn't work in a Mac Pro but I don't know if it would work in a hacky. Not sure about the one with the Rosewill. I know one of them doesn't work because I'm trying it right now in a hacky and it ain't working. When I can sort out which is which, I'll report back. [HOLD IT: after I wrote this entire response I went back to fiddle with the 2-port card I'd received with one of the Rosewill or SansDigital towers...I removed the SiliconImage driver I'd just tried and, on a lark, tried the RAID5 driver from SiliconImage for PCIe 2-port cards. IT APPEARS TO BE WORKING with a single drive enclosure! This may contradict step 4. We'll see if I get a kernel panic after some copying....] 3) I got a 50$ 2-port port-multiplier from MacGurus for the Leo Mac Pro, gray Sans Digital (client Alpha) ... 3 x 500 gig drives at first in concatenated softRAID. I got a 200$ 8-lane 4-port multiplier for the Tiger Mac Pro, black Rosewill (client Gamma).... 3 drives forming a 1.5 TB concat RAID and 2 drives forming a 1TB striped RAID. 4) Disaster. Alpha was crashing on the SansDigitals. Gamma had flat-out kernel panics when accessing the Rosewill drives. After back-and-forth with MacGurus I learned that you mustn't use the RAID5 drivers from Silicon Image and that if you install them, you have to remove them manually and install the nonRAID5 drivers. Apparently there's to be no RAID5 for us as the current drivers are rubbish. This fixed the kernel panics on Gamma (4-port card, black Rosewill, Tiger Mac Pro.) [i just read the reviews of the other enclosures you posted and it sounded as though some people had luck with RAID5 using other cards!] 5) The Leo Mac Pro, Sans Digital, 2-port worked for more than a month as long as the gray SansDigital was accessed locally. Once we added a second RAID tower and accessed it over the network, total breakage. At least once a day the connected computers would all hard crash each other in trying to access that SansDigital network share. Tried a million things including upgrading all the computers to 10.5.5 which was supposed to fix some of the RAID problems introduced by Leopard (or so I'd read... networking breakage too in Leo ... I just couldn't tell if it was relevant to me) and ultimately installing everything (2 port card and 2 gray towers) on a Core2Quad hackintosh. This worked for a week before that client changed offices while I was out-of-state and things went to {censored} again. Somehow they got their network working again and here it is unclear if they were still having crashes with the hacky as the new file server or if they were just not wanting to bother me with reporting every crash. At any rate, it wasn't working after I got back. 6) Problem with Leopard? Networking to a RAID/JBOD tower? Was it the MacGurus 2 port mulitplier card and driver? Was it the SansDigital towers? Was it the DHCP addressing system? The routers? Bonjour? etc... 7) In the end, since I'd had such success with Gamma (4-port card, Rosewill, Tiger Mac Pro), I ordered Alpha a 4-port card and the black Rosewill towers, installed them back on the Leo Mac Pro, installed the correct non-raid5 driver, and things were working flawlessly over the network for a few weeks. I was even able to add a drive to the concatenated RAID pool using Disk Utility (I had had to use some backdoor Terminal route of diskutil to do it before under 10.5.4) without starting over. I had realized how easy it would be to start with a smaller cluster of drives and expand to more as necessary. At least with the concatenation and 10.5.5 it was easy, not sure about striped. 8) Then I needed to add drives into the Mac Pro itself. When I turned the computer back on and then the drives, there was a drive missing from the RAID towers. I tried a few things before finally shutting down and physically removing the drive that wouldn't post. I foolishly thought that if I booted the machine without the drive, it would shake things up so that I could replace the drive after a couple reboots and all would be well again -- I think I thought I'd done this with another RAID. At any rate, NOPE. I killed the RAID tower for good (MAYbe the drive was bad -- haven't been able to tell yet -- but I blame myself). I couldn't repair it or mount it in Disk Utility no matter what I tried. Thank god I'd fixed a daily backup a few days prior. Recopying one 1.8 TB Rosewill (4 x 500 gig concatenated) to another 1.8 TB Rosewill took 12-24 hours -- felt much faster than other major migrations I've done even though it couldn't be done sooner as far as I was concerned! At the last minute I think I figured it out... THE TOWERS MUST BE ON BEFORE YOU TURN ON THE COMPUTER. If you turn them on after the computer is on, the drives will post as fast as they can but they don't seem to post together -- so the RAID sorta breaks and drives go missing. But if the RAID towers are already running when you power on the machine, they post together properly. Crazy. The nice thing about the Rosewills is that their power button locks on or off...so it can always be on (like if your power goes out and comes back on, your drives will come back on first) .. don't recall regarding the SansDigitals. 9) Totally weird that the Rosewill looks the same as the Sans Digital TRM5M1 5-bay version ... very very weird. 10) I really think it was the 2-port card/motherboard combo with Leo networking that was the real problem and maybe the 2-port card itself. I want the gray SansDigitals to still be good but I've been skittish to try them -- eventually I'll load 'em up and give them a go. Again, I really think that for me it was getting that 4-port card. But I can see MacGurus point that every motherboard is different and they've had good luck for customers... I just don't know about fellow hackies. 11) So if you want hassle-free, you're looking at the 200$ 4-port card. MacGurus are very cool and you could try the 50$ 2-port card and send it back if it doesn't work out...course for you, you may never need to access your drives over a network... everything seemed to be worry free as long as the drives were accessed locally so you may be peachy... it may also be that there was something funky about our network configuration (Linksys WRT54GL with DD-WRT; a couple gigabit switches; Leo Mac Pro, 2 Core2Duo iMacs, G5 iMac, Mac Mini) [HOLD IT: according to those enclosure reviews, a few users were able to use the AMS 2-port cards in their Macs. AND it looks like others had good success with a much cheaper (80$) Norco card from NewEgg and maybe an Addonics too? Definitely worth looking into because those 200$ Lycoms are pricey! Fascinating...course the Lycom is an 8 lane card that pumps 300MB/sec to each port...not sure about the others] 12) Forget about RAID5. Concatenating works great as long as you have the towers on before you start your computer. Striping seems to work well but I haven't done comparisons. Roswell is great. I bet Sans Digital would work but the Rosewills were a better buy with 5 slots, full RAID potential (lost on us)... I like the Rosewill usability -- easy to open the doors and swap drives. Actually VERY easy, very useable... the Sans Digital you have screw/unscrew. [HOLD IT: sounds like a couple reviewers were able to get RAID5 working with different cards!] 13) I'm paranoid about 1TB drives and only recently started using a few 750GB drives...these drives grow so fast -- which is good -- but the big sizes feel ambitious. But the review you found was very good and actually comparable/better fail-rates than reviews for some of the 750GB drives I was looking at. I don't know if there is a total size limit for the enclosures -- I thought there was. Oh, just a 2TB partition max. OK. 14) I use Chronosync for backing up ... I like the scheduling, mounting, ease-of-use, file verification, synchronizing updated files, archiving past copies of files for x number of days and y number of copies. I've used SuperDuper for cloning drives but not for backing up but it sounds like people really dig it for backing up too. We got so paranoid at one point that we thought Chronosync might be the crashing culprit but that was a long shot. 15) Your drive rotation sounds reasonable and your proposed RAID concatenations sound good. Not sure if you can simply add drives to a striped set yet. WHEW! must sleep ~roni Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/135269-please-help-which-4-or-5-bay-external-enclosure/#findComment-993699 Share on other sites More sharing options...
letfeardomring Posted December 13, 2008 Author Share Posted December 13, 2008 wow, thank you for the generous reply! i guess the internet is a small world after all. i guess i will give the rosewill a try -- keeping in mind your hard learned tips -- and let folks know how it goes on the hack. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/135269-please-help-which-4-or-5-bay-external-enclosure/#findComment-997073 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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