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Drive Tower Suggestions?
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l008com
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Jan 4, 2015, 05:28 AM
 
I just picked up a $420 Mac mini refurb from apple It's going to replace my old 2009 Mac mini server, that has a super-frankenstiened drive tower that is a PC case stacked with several firewire bridge boards and one usb2 bridge board. Now that I'm going to have a shinny new Mac (with Firewire 800, USB3 and Thunderbolt), I want to replace the terrible drive tower with something better. Also I'm a cheap bastard so I'm thinking a USB tower. I need 8 bays, so I'm thinking this guy:
Mediasonic H82-SU3S2 3.5" Black SATA I/II/III USB3.0 & eSATA ProBox 8 Bay External Hard Drive Enclosure - Newegg.com

But I'm very much open to other suggestions.
There are lots of 4 bay options out there, but I like the ultimate clean-ness of a single tower. Although I guess in theory, I could get double the potential bandwidth by having my data split on two independent usb busses. Then again, speed isn't really a big deal here, it is a home server, not a production server. Anyway, my point is that a pair of 4 bay enclosures aren't out of the question either. All the multi-drive towers seem to be no-name brands, which is a bummer.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jan 4, 2015, 06:48 AM
 
The name brand boxes aren't a whole lot better tbh.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
ShortcutToMoncton
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Jan 4, 2015, 10:50 AM
 
Try DatOptic. I have one of their Thunderbolt JBOD arrays for my Mac Mini. It's worked perfectly for the past 18 months or so. Their customer service guy (Sam?) was also very responsive when I had some follow-up questions.

Not going to win any best-looking awards, but I actually store mine in a top cabinet in the floor below (basement) and ran the longest Thunderbolt cable I could from the Mini downstairs inside the wall - no need to pay extra for pretty casing if not on display. Towers are always loud, so best placed in a nearby room if possible.
Mankind's only chance is to harness the power of stupid.
     
Mike Wuerthele
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Jan 4, 2015, 12:55 PM
 
Gotta say, I like your style with the frankensteined PC tower.
     
l008com  (op)
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Aug 2, 2015, 07:27 AM
 
FYI I went with the Mediasonic USB3 tower. 8 bays, currently all 8 are filled, but 1 is temporary and will eventually be empty again and available for future expansion. This setup had been running for months and months now, and it's been perfect. Highly recommended!
     
ShortcutToMoncton
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Aug 2, 2015, 01:46 PM
 
Looks great. I assume you haven't had an issues with drives dismounting or saturating the USB3 bus? Mavericks initially had some USB3 external drive issues which is why I switched to Thunderbolt, but apparently it was quietly fixed during one of the updates.
Mankind's only chance is to harness the power of stupid.
     
   
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