Storage Enclosure Stragedies

[druber]

I have a G4 Mac Mini, which has practically no useable storage space. So I've bought a couple external hard drives, including a Newertech Ministack. With almost a terabyte of immediately-available space, I'm running out of space again, between a growing iTunes collection (MP3s and ALAC) and EyeTV high-def recordings and need a different approach from adding more external drives to the rack.

Right now I have three external drives, all scattershot with different media. I'd like to organize things to three drives again, but with a better scheme: 1 boot drive (to initially record HD), 1 iTunes drive, and 1 drive to offload HD content and FLACs (i.e. from Dimeadozen). I'll use an existing 250GB external for iTunes. It's the boot/backup drives where I'm not sure what to do (I'm selling the Ministack, which works fine but the hubs don't help enough to keep)

I have 7 internal IDE drives for those two jobs, but I don't need to access them all at once, so I don't want to buy external enclosures for each one or buy a RAID setup. Also, in WAF terms, I'd like to keep the budget to $100 or less and find a solution that's as quiet as possible.

One solution is to buy two firewire enclosures, boot with one, and swap drives in the other. Pros: cost (easy to find solid enclosures for $50/each), easy-to-use firewire chain. Cons: two enclosures = two electrical outlets, two power supplies, etc.; swapping drives would be a bigger hassle.

Another solution is to buy a two-drive firewire enclosure, like AMS's Venus DSR3, use one bay to boot and another for backup. Pros: drives are easy to swap, only one unit to power/cool. Cons: more expensive ($150), don't know how EyeTV will work with JBOD set-up, don't know if drives/fan will sleep with machine and not wake it up.

I really like Wiebetech's Traydock, but the cheapest the off-brand (Sohotank, same thing) is with two trays is $75 (that I've found), and that's USB-only. Not much money left to buy a FW case that's dependable enough to boot from.

Any thoughts on this? I'd like to simplify the setup as much as possible. Any real-life experience with JBOD and EyeTV500s would be a great help. I know the boot drive needs to be in front of the EyeTV500. Does the EyeTV always need to be last in the chain?

[chefklc]

Stragedies

Very appropriate blending of "strategy" and "trajedy" when you're talking storage and backup.

I do worry whether you have realistic expectations, you want something quiet, that can utilize 7 drives, and you're giving yourself the generous budget of $100.

I really like Wiebetech's Traydock, but the cheapest the off-brand (Sohotank, same thing) is with two trays is $75 (that I've found), and that's USB-only. Not much money left to buy a FW case that's dependable enough to boot from.

Here's the Firewire400/USB model for $74:

http://www.cooldrives.com/sota3usb2400.html

Those Traydocks are the best things since sliced bread, silent, sturdy, good bridge boards, and the Sohotank IS exactly what Wiebetech sells. I've had two of the firewire/usb models in constant use for 2+ years--and have repeated that every month or two when we have a big storage discussion thread that I fear I'm becoming too much of a broken rercord. Great for backing up, archiving to a safe place or merely moving stuff around the house without having to plug and unplug cables (which is a good thing because many problems with firewire drives and losing data are due to electrical glitches and improper mounting/dismounting.) I have 5 trays--a 300GB drive in each--and after the first two PATA I went with SATA trays--just so I'd be buying drives I'd probably be able to keep using longer down the road. Don't settle for the USB only versions--find a firewire model if you can (they've been increasingly scarce for 6-12 months now) or pass on them, and consider other options.

Everyone is going SATA externals these days, but low end Macs can't yet take advantage of this.

There's no doubt in my mind that the firewire hot swappable tray "concept" would rock for you--especially if you A) don't need constant access to ALL your media B) are on a budget and C) need to expand, since a $20 tray is a lot less expensive than comparable enclosure costs. There is a trade-off in convenience and accessibility--but with the Sohotank you get a top of the line Oxford chipset and then swap drive trays in and out--rather than daisychain a bunch a bunch of cheap enclosures with nebulous chipsets together. It's the inexpensive/bargain enclosures which tend to wreak havoc. So I concur with your thinking on this--it's just going usb only would be a mistake: on Macs it has very limited value home theater-wise, poor sustained speeds, and your playback and movement of EyeTV recordings will likely be affected by the overhead usb entails, your poor little G4 is going to be stressed enough as it is.

Also, if you think you're already full at about 1 TB, it just gets worse the more omnivorous you become, the more you grow and try to do. For me, those two Sohotanks supplement:

1) a old PowerMac G4 w/ gigabit & FW800 and 4 drives inside (about 1TB) that I keep on the network;
2) a FW800 quad drive enclosure (1.2 TB); and my most recent addition:
3) a SOHORAID SR3610, that's the newer Sohotank eSATA/USB dual drive enclosure that Wiebetech sells as the SilverSATA II. I run that in RAID 1 mode just for my Apple lossless iTunes library, which fits comfortably on a 300GB drive. With this device dedicated to music, I always have a backup on a hot swappable back-up tray ready to slide in in case anything ever happened to the first. I found that cheap about a year ago when I was searching the net for more Sohotanks, just before Wiebetech started selling them and other online sources dried up.

That's 4.3 TB for me, with about 900GB of that not available on the network 24/7 from anywhere in the house. But between music, recordings from dual EyeTV500s, dvd backups, and bootable backups and clones of system drives and various other essential partitions, I struggle to keep about 600GB of that 4.3TB as "free" space at any given time.

In your case, your plan is sound in theory: for better performance boot your G4 mini off one of your 3.5" 7200 drives in an external firewire enclosure, relocate your Apple lossless iTunes library to a second drive and store EyeTV recordings on a third. You're right getting everything to play nice is not guaranteed; sleep/wake/spinning down might be issues and usually can't be known for sure until you connect everything. (I can tell you that the Traydocks with Oxford 911's do spin down and wake just fine with a G4 mini & EyeTV500 in 10.4.8)

Any real-life experience with JBOD and EyeTV500s would be a great help. I know the boot drive needs to be in front of the EyeTV500. Does the EyeTV always need to be last in the chain?

It's the opposite, in my experience, I think the 500 likes being as close to the mini as possible, and it has no problem saving to a drive further out in a JBOD daisychain--a mounted volume is a mounted volume. Seamless performance can depend on whether you sleep your mini, the firewire chipset quality and whether you rely on bus power or not. But in one daisychain I have a G4 mini, then two bus-powered EyeTV500s, then two hard drive enclosures. No problemas saving to either volume--I think the 500s "like" being in between powered devices--but I don't try to boot off them. (I have regularly backed up bootable clones of every Mac, but usually just start that mini up off its internal 2.5.)

Do you have any other enclosures besides that Newertech right now that you could draw on? The one 250GB external you mention for iTunes--is that in an enclosure and usb only? I ask because bare drives don't actually like being handled, power and ata cables plugged in and out, and drives screwed in and out, you're greatly increasing your chances of something going wrong due to static, dropping them, humidity changes, etc.

And $100 ain't much to work with.

But, I think you could be happy going G4 mini > external firewire (boot) drive in an enclosure > EyeTV500 > Sohotank (or some comparable device with hot swappable trays.) Keep your video on firewire.

Move your iTunes library--all the cds you imported as Apple lossless--to its own external drive, plug this in via usb. Apple lossless over usb is just fine.

Then buy a bunch of trays to swap your remaining 5 drives in and out of the Sohotank--and remember to back up your iTunes drive to one of these, then remove it and put it away for safe keeping.

That's one basic fw enclosure with an Oxford chipset, an inexpensive but decent Cypress usb-only enclosure, one firewire/usb Sohotank and 5 trays--only problem, that's ballpark $250. Less if you have anything you can repurpose.

It might pay long term for you to consider spending more now--so that you'll get devices which could grow with you as you expand next year, rather than be replaced. For instance, I've seen this WiebeTech SilverSATA I enclosure for as low as $60 online:

http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/wiebetech/silver1/

This could hold your iTunes library (and with an extra tray be your hot-swappable backup drive) right now--and it'll have even more relevance for you in the future when everyone has gone SATA, even if you don't add additional enclosures in this series which take those trays. The problem with the older Sohotanks is they are two generations old, about 3 years old now and long since discontinued. No new devices are coming out which take those trays.

Also, you didn't say how you're getting digital audio out of your G4 mini--because that'll have to go into the firewire chain or take up a usb. Nor did you mention an external firewire burner: both of these can complicate things for that poor single Mini firewire port.

You've posted to those other storage threads, so I know you think about this a lot--it gets even more complicated and expensive when you want several computers to be able to access the media and/or play it back at more than one location. Now you know why many folks here eventually go NAS or network over gigabit and use their mini just as an extender--it's really not designed to be a workhorse. But I do think there are alternatives to expand storage wisely and incrementally.

[druber]

Thanks for the response. My storage expansion needs aren't new, but my marriage is: 6 months. My wife also started grad school this past summer, so we don't live with the bank vault open, though we don't live as paupers either. Though she uses the system and likes how it works (when it works, you antenna you), she's not real interested in the hows, and that's cool. Working out the $$ priorities...takes working out. So with respect to those things, I'd like to keep costs low and get a real workflow going.

Here's what I've got in there right now:
G4 Mac Mini (1.25Ghz little chugger)
Newertech Ministack w/ 400GB drive (on its way out)
Acomdata FW 160GB drive
Acomdata FW 250GB drive
Acomdata USB 250GB drive (currently in daily use at the office)
EyeTV 500
Pioneer 110D DVD burner in external FW case
LinkPlayer2 for HD playback
Waveterminal U24 (USB>Digital Audio Out)
DAC>Amp>Speakers on the audio end
LCD TV on the video end

The DVD burner rarely gets used, so it's out of the chain right now. I also need FW occasionally for a 3G iPod, but I don't normally keep that cable plugged in.

I could boot from the FW160, iTunes the FW250, and just add a Traydock for the time being. That just makes for a real small boot drive. Though by the same token, it'd be cake to clone it as a backup. I've used both Acomdata drives at one time or another as boot disks, and they're amazingly quiet and were very stable. I'm not against using them. But simplicity is definitely a goal.

If I had SATA drives, I'd be heading straight for an Icy Dock MG559UEA. Same tray concept (either the same company or an affiliate, I believe) but lower cost and better availability. All my drives are IDE. Not a good time to try to make that transition, and since speed isn't that much of an issue, it doesn't seem worth trying to make the switch, sell the old drives or whatever. Do you have a good source for trays for the Traydock? The link you mentioned shows $30 trays....

Besides the Mini, we also have an iBook, which I take to work every day (and probably will continue to unless they buy me some design software--not likely). So we don't have any big network, multiple computers or zones. Just a low-end Roku to stream MP3s to the dining room and kitchen. I've got a little more than a TB in semi-active use and just bought another TB in IDE drives, but I haven't doubled my storage until I can access them drives.

Thanks again for your post.

[druber]

It looks like these Sohotank enclosures are discontinued and on their way out. USB is all that's left, unless you're willing to pony up four times as much for the official Wiebetech version, which I'm not.

Is USB so bad? Anyone playing back HD MPEG files from an external USB drive with success or not-so-great results?

[chefklc]

Yeah, at this point you're better off going with the Sohotank U7 series anyway, which is just slightly larger and takes standard 5.25" mobile racks which can be had readily and inexpensively, rather than the proprietary U6 trays. That's if you want to keep close to your budget, migrate to a hot-swappable system and use up your PATA drives. You could get a single bay model, then when you have some more cash pick up a multi-bay model and all your mobile racks will be interchangeable.

Another option for those just starting down this path should be that Icy Dock MB559 which you mentioned in your previous post, druber. That's because they also have a very sweet multi-bay model, the MB561 with 4 removable hot swap trays--also styled in white and aluminum. A 4 bay hot-swappable SATA enclosure like this for $260 is an incredible bargain that should stay relevant for a long time:

http://www.centralcomputers.com/ccp54979--icy-dock-mb561s-4s-external-4-hot-swap-sata-i-ii-mb561s-4s-drizzzicyb4r.htm

[DaveGee]

Here's a similar / related question....

Given:

- 1 Intel Mac Mini
- 2 SATA 300 GB (bare) drives
- Potential need/desire to add 1 or 2 more drives SATA

What kinda options am I looking at?

Got a super deal on the drives ~$130 for both and now when I look at multi-drive SATA-->USB2 enclosures (no external SATA on the mini) I'm seeing numbers like $300 bucks!?!?! Seems odd that I'm paying more the enclosure than I am for the drive.

Any input would be appreciated.

Dave

[alexm_s]

Here's a similar / related question....


Got a super deal on the drives ~$130 for both and now when I look at multi-drive SATA-->USB2 enclosures (no external SATA on the mini) I'm seeing numbers like $300 bucks!?!?! Seems odd that I'm paying more the enclosure than I am for the drive.

Dave


I got a SATA to USB2 enclosure for ~$40 from newegg.

[Joseph S]

I'm looking at trayless docks as I am no longer purchasing IDE drives. The trays are a significant cost, albeit a bit less now given 750GB drive sizes. I spent way too much on trays for my JBOD system in the past. Will probably do eSata, though I would have prefered eSata + FW800 4 or more drive box.

http://www.cooldrives.com/quswsamorafo.html

[chefklc]

Seems odd that I'm paying more the enclosure than I am for the drive...Any input would be appreciated.

If you think about it, not really, since bigger drives are being released, driving prices down on lower capacity models. 300GB is now in the sweet spot that 250GB drives were in, since 400/500GB drives are increasingly available and affordable. The big storage breakthrough came when Infrant released an affordable 4 SATA disc NAS, it instantly rendered the fixed PATA drive Buffalo models irrelevant, then everyone else had to adjust their enclosure prices downward--and that's benefited us home theater types. I think one of the keys to realize is even if you went NAS, sunk $600 or so into their admittedly great diskless device, you're still going to need more storage than that can accomodate--it's not enough, you still need enclosures and devices with hot swappable trays to supplement that. To a certain degree all of us are in the same boat as you and druber--we have accrued some assemblage of drives and hardware that we'd still like to use now AND we want to move forward as well. How best to integrate all that is an ongoing challenge for all of us.

The myth right now is that an Infrant ReadyNAS is the home theater panacea; it's not, it's just not enough space, and its external USB storage isn't as reliable or functional as firewire would be to us. The first thing a new ReadyNAS owner realizes, who has just filled it with four 500GB drives, is that he needs a entire second device!

Let's not forget the value of an old G4 PowerMac in this equation either: it's essentially a smart ready-made networked gigabit "enclosure" that holds 4 IDE/PATA drives easily, 6 if you use the optical bays, easily expands to accomodate any number of externals via firewire, it can even handle plenty of SATA drives internally or externally. Even a "windtunnel" can be stuck in the basement or a closet somewhere as long as you can run Cat5e to it--that's why in home theater terms we were pretty stoked that Apple bumped the Intel mini up to gigabit: in media extender mode, that means the mini can mount and pull high def content from any drive, anywhere on your network, even from very old equipment.

Dave, in your case, there are other factors you have to consider before you can just decide how to deal with your 2-but-soon-to-be-4 SATA drives--like how you use your mini, where it is and where this device will be, what kind of home network you currently have and how many other Macs are in your household, will you want to watch content on another display besides your main one, then there's budget, fan, noise, sleep, wake and power supply issues, and on and on, but those are the biggest points and they've been repeatedly discussed in threads here. How each of us would tackle it would be different because our environment and parameters would be different. But if you give us a better idea of your situation, we might be able to help a bit better.

Even if you just have a mini right now, your system will expand eventually, so you won't always need to have your external storage directly connected to that mini. The smart move, I think, is to start thinking eSATA like Joseph suggested, because that is the future--a future that also happens to be here and now. We just have to wait a bit for Apple and other manufacturers to catch up a bit--our challenge is getting drives and devices which can function now and have relevance later, since that will be money well spent.

The "trend" with these multi-drive enclosures, separate frrom NAS since NAS is really a different animal, is to make them more adaptable and more flexible--years ago it seemed these were ALL aimed at the video and graphics professionals--as FW800 add-ons which ran RAID1 and/or RAID0 only. In home theater terms, neither of these are really helpful or important: there's little benefit and a lot of waste with RAID1, and RAID0 is ALWAYS a mistake and un-necessary. Like Joseph suggested JBOD (just a bunch of discs) is actually more flexible, functional and helpful as long as speeds were at least FW400 connected directly or passed over gigabit. SATA is faster than all of this, and eSATA connections more convenient--eventually with port multipliers we'll all have multi-drive hot swappable enclosures with just one eSATA cable running to our Mac, that's it. That's also why the newer bridge with eSATA and firewire that's shown up has a lot of appeal.

Until then, we make the best bed we can with intermediate choices, then lie in it.

[stevegt87]

What do you guys think about the quad drive usb enclosure at cool drives?

[chefklc]

Link or item name, please, so we don't waste our time.

In general, USB-only enclosures are a very poor choice, regardless of the price.

[stevegt87]

I tried. It seems, I can't post URLs until I have a few posts under my belt. Sorry.

[DaveGee]

I tried. It seems, I can't post URLs until I have a few posts under my belt. Sorry.

Do you mean this one?

http://www.cooldrives.com/qubaysatousb.html

D

[stevegt87]

No this one is cheaper (CGS-2TB-RAIDUpad). I can see that there is a lot of activity in this area. Is it the conclusion of the local gurus that usb RAIDs don't work well enough for HTPC?
Steve

[chefklc]

Which Mac do you have, what kind of media do you store and what's your home network like? And how are you planning to configure your RAID--software, hardware?

[druber]

FWIW, I'm not having any better luck finding a U7 Sohotank than I had with a U6 Sohotank.

Next best candidate I've found is the AMS Venus DS3R (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817332001) (2320DBK). Firewire, hard drives go on inexpensive trays, accepts two drives at a time as RAID or JBOD. Some reviews say it's pretty noisy, and some don't. Sure I'd prefer it to be silent, but it won't be on all the time. Just long enough to offload the 13GB file of Finding Nemo in HD (looks spectacular, but the LP2 sure didn't like some of EyeTV's edits) and let me keep taping. Sure I wish it was $30 cheaper, but I don't see anything else that looks like a better fit.

[greguva]

Next best candidate I've found is the AMS Venus DS3R (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817332001) (2320DBK). Firewire, hard drives go on inexpensive trays, accepts two drives at a time as RAID or JBOD.
Any idea where you get extra trays for this? Thanks.

[druber]

Newegg has them for $16 a pop. Likewise at Directron. The trays don't completely enclose the hard drive, which I dunno might be good to keep dust out and such. I wouldn't keep them in the open. $16 sounds like a fair price for adding a drive--not too high a tax for adding extra drives.

[Ryan1]

This may be a little more, but considering the cost of the drives it seemed a decent value at just under $900: I got the Terrastation 2TB NAS recently (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=149&categoryid=19). Verry quiet, decent looking (I hide it in a cabinet, but still,) and it runs cool. Disassembly looks like a pain, but hopefully will not deal with this issue a lot:-) RAID 5 gets you about 1.4 TB, with reasonable back up protection. Pretty happy so far.

[druber]

I can beat it on price, but not with Raid 5. 4 500GB drives on sale for $150 each, etc. If it were 14TB I'd say ah, I'm really set for a while now. But 1.4TB is just getting started.

I really do wish EyeTV had more precise editing tools. I'd keep my G4 chugging constantly on re-encoding to H.264 if the results were up to snuff (and cleanly playable).

RE storage, I guess I'm also trying to wait and see if a new Mac Mini is released that has an S-ATA port on it. I have zero desire to see them remove Firewire. If S-ATA is the future, as I so often hear, I'd be glad to see it made more accessible. Not that I think I could afford Apple's 802.11n NAS, if they were to release any such thing. I'd be glad to see even more recognition that mass storage is becoming a need for more and more consumers.

[Ryan1]

I can beat it on price, but not with Raid 5. 4 500GB drives on sale for $150 each, etc. If it were 14TB I'd say ah, I'm really set for a while now. But 1.4TB is just getting started....


Man, I wish 14TB:-)

But, for about $250 more here you get RAID 5 and a nice box....

I had been using a bunch of USB/Firewire drives, but too often some would fail to mount. Then I have to play "reboot again, and again...." Plus, many of the enclosures I bought would overheat the drives (particularly the fan-less, "heat dissipating" aluminum ones, and I ended up with too many fried drives:-( This one seems to run cool, so my comfort level is higher.

As to the 1.4TB, that's what's left of the 2TB after the RAID 5, so in effect it offers reasonable back-up protection without actually having me to double up the drives. I just paired down some of the movies I know I'll never really watch (and if I do, I'll just go in my closet and rummage through old boxes:-) By the time I am ready for a second one, those things will be up to 6TB:-)

[defense4212]

Been reading this very informative thread for a couple of weeks and have appreciated the many insightful comments. Can anyone offer advice on the setup I'm considering?

I need to put together a 2TB hard drive for movies ripped from my DVD collection, with room to grow when movie downloads become more feasible. I have a Mac Mirror Door G4 and I would like to use an external USB or Firewire multi-bay enclosure consisting of 4 500GB SATA hard drives, resulting in 2TB - either JBOD or RAID 0. I'm not worried about drive failure and resulting loss of data - I'm going for maximum size at minimum cost.

I've seen USB and Firewire SATA enclosures online for around $180 - $200. As I understand it, they connect via a single USB or Fireware cable. I would start with two 500GB drives (already purchased and awaiting installation) and add two more drives later. My preference would be for the whole 4-drive array to be seen by the Mac as a single drive, thus I am favoring a RAID setup. Probably software RAID, to save cost on the external enclosure.

I'm using the EyeHome device as my media server.

Thoughts on whether it would be better to go USB vs. Firewire? I'm not looking for super performance - thus not planning on configuring the system as a straight SATA connection but instead planning on connecting to my Mac via USB or Firewire - but I'm open to any cautions or warnings about performance problems I might encounter.

I will be much obliged for your thoughts.

[wildrock]

Well, I don't really know why anyone would want to hook up a 2TB RAID or array to a G4 via USB. Firewire is the preferred alternative here, and it won't really cost much more (maybe $25). And the usb in the MDD is only 1.1, so it would crawl unless you put in a usb 2.0 card. And with firewire, you can always daisy chain in more drive enclosures. The firewire enclosures should only use one cable, and the MDD is only Firewire 400, so make sure you get an enclosure that supports that.

[defense4212]

Thanks Wildrock. I have obtained a USB 2.0 card and plan on installing it, hopefully no sleep problems. Since have USB 2.0 capability, would you still recommend Firewire? Is daisychaining the main reason (I assume from your comments that you can't daisychain with USB)? Or is speed the real advantage to Firewire and, if so, how so?

I'm still on the fence about USB v. Firewire but if I go Firewire I'll make sure that the enclosure supports FW400.

[wildrock]

Thanks Wildrock. I have obtained a USB 2.0 card and plan on installing it, hopefully no sleep problems. Since have USB 2.0 capability, would you still recommend Firewire? Is daisychaining the main reason (I assume from your comments that you can't daisychain with USB)? Or is speed the real advantage to Firewire and, if so, how so?

I'm still on the fence about USB v. Firewire but if I go Firewire I'll make sure that the enclosure supports FW400.usb 2.0 is slower than firewire 400. The 500 gb drives you want to get almost demand to have a firewire 800 or eSATA interface, Otherwise you're just bogging them down. But usb 2.0 will work. It's just not the most optimal solution if you're willing to spend the $800 or so for 4 drives and an enclosure. Add in a $50 fw800 card, and you'll have more than double the speed of the usb. Your choice.

[chefklc]

A few questions--how are you using the eyehome, what kind of network do you have, do you stream wirelessly and what other computers or devices do you have on the network? How much other storage is inside the MDD right now--and do you plan to draw on that as well?

I realize there's an advantage to seeing and mounting one volume--versus JBOD--but you do realize that when you have two 500GB drives striped--in software or hardware--and there's any sort of problem or glitch--something electrical, a problem mounting or dismounting, a sudden shutdown, a drive failure--you could lose the whole 1TB of files, right? Some drive recovery and repair programs that can work wonders on single drives often don't work on RAID 0 volumes. Even if you have the original disc of every movie you've loaded onto those 2 drives in safe keeping--why would you willingly roll the dice with RAID 0 and risk having to re-rip 1 TB worth of movies--let alone 2TB of movies if you striped 2 separate RAID 0 pairs? Realize that by doing so you risk borking 2TB in a split second--and the time it took to rip, say, 350 movies, for the "convenience" of seeing one big volume on your desktop? I say convenience because you gain nothing that you'd ever notice by implementing RAID 0 for your task.

Very very few people ever gain anything by RAID 0--and those who do are in the content creation biz, they're graphics, video and film professionals like wildrock. Not us, the home theater type--for us it's almost always completely and utterly foolish to use RAID 0.

The firewire enclosures should only use one cable, and the MDD is only Firewire 400, so make sure you get an enclosure that supports that.

Well, the January 2003 MDDs gained BT, Airport Extreme and FW800--my MDD is this vintage, and having FW800 built-in is very sweet: I have 4 big drives inside and 4 drives in a single FW800 enclosure outside. (I have a single bay firewire 400 enclosure with hot swappable drive trays sharing the bus here as well, and everywhere else I have a Mac. I can transfer over gigabit or move a tray.) The dual 1.42 MDD with firewire 800 and 2MB Level 3 cache per CPU in this group is a GREAT machine, by the way. (I don't have that one, but I'm keeping an eye on used prices.)

The 500 gb drives you want to get almost demand to have a firewire 800 or eSATA interface, Otherwise you're just bogging them down

For you that would be true, given what tasks you might perform professionally, wildrock, but for home server/streaming tasks with ripped dvds over gigabit, don't you think plain old firewire 400 will be perfect moving files around from those drives--and if there is a problem, at least in my experience it likely wouldn't be due to the drive or the firewire bus itself--instead, it might be a poorly chosen chipset, maybe, or a problem further down the network stream. The question can get a little more complicated if one eventually plans to archive high def recordings on those drives as well as VIDEO_TS, but firewire 400 and gigabit seems even to handle those well.

That's something you'll want to keep in mind, defense, the time will come (soon) when you'll likely dump the Eyehome, and go high def. Most of us already have, which is why we couldn't consider the Eyehome in the first place.

I'm not looking for super performance - thus not planning on configuring the system as a straight SATA connection but instead planning on connecting to my Mac via USB or Firewire

But in a very short time you may want better performance. None of us chooses USB over firewire. Yes, firewire daisychains, it's also great for bootable backups.

That said, internal SATA add-on cards are cheap--SATA is the future both internally and externally--might as well not rule out an external SATA device hooked up via SATA. Why? Usually, SATA externals can be had much less expensively than externals which take SATA drives but connect via firewire/USB--why not futureproof yourself a little bit if it is also LESS expensive to do so? Sure, devices started showing up last year with firewire, USB and eSATA connections--but you usually pay a premium for those.

The problem with many of the available multi-drive firewire enclosures going back 2-3 years is that they are RAID 0 or RAID 1 only--in hardware--neither of which is really worth it in a home theater context. And it can be tricky to flash firmware. (Another reason why some folks turned to NAS.) Recently, you've seen some other options show up, like JBOD. Something to consider--nice, safe, fast enough, easy to swap out a single drive.

If your needs are fairly well-defined--plugging an enclosure into your MDD and storing video_ts on it--why not consider an SATA solution and futureproof yourself especially if it is less expensive to do so?

My preference would be for the whole 4-drive array to be seen by the Mac as a single drive, thus I am favoring a RAID setup. Probably software RAID, to save cost on the external enclosure

Well, realize that if you're starting with 2 drives--which you've initially striped either via software or the hardware RAID bridegboard in an enclosure--so they "show up" as one volume on the desktop--there's no way that I know of to just add two more drives later without having to reformat ALL the drives (which would destroy all the data on those first two drives.) I have a 4 drive enclosure with 2 independent RAID 0 firewire 800 bridges, and I've played around with various configurations, risked changing chipset firmware myself, etc, and I never came across a way to do it without moving data off first. This is one of the biggest advantages of the ReadyNAS system--start with 2 drives initially to save money, then add in a third, then a fourth, it'll just rebuild and expand. It's also an advantage of something external with hotswappable drive trays or JBOD.

Also, as an aside, however much space you have, you'll quickly outgrow it. Those two 500GB drives seem like a lot now. It isn't. Soon you'll double that, and then you'll wish you had even more. So think about something with hot-swappable drive trays as you do your research. The port multiplier thing is still evolving, so look into that as well: 4 or 5 drives in an enclosure, a single cable connecting it to your Mac, various RAID options and/or one volume showing up on the desktop. Nice. Keep us informed as you proceed.

[defense4212]

Wildrock and chefklc, you guys are truly great. Much to think about - especially the dire warnings about RAID O. I'm going to chew on it for a couple of days and post again with some other questions and comments. Again, thanks - it's amazing that such knowledgeable people can be this generous with their time and expertise.

[wildrock]

Very very few people ever gain anything by RAID 0--and those who do are in the content creation biz, they're graphics, video and film professionals like wildrock. Not us, the home theater type--for us it's almost always completely and utterly foolish to use RAID 0.For one outfit I work with, we use fw800 because we haven't wanted to invest in fiber channel all the way around yet, yet our Media100 systems aren't compatible with internal/external SATA cards on the G5 (don't know about the Mac Pro, as Media100 hasn't released software for them yet. So we use striped RAIDs for any non-HD projects we have. This is just a brdige-gap solution until we see the new Intel-spec Media100 software later this year. But the 4-drive, 3TB internal SATA RAID in the Mac Pro is sweet. Near 300MBs read and write!! An HD production dream machine on a budget.

Well, the January 2003 MDDs gained BT, Airport Extreme and FW800--my MDD is this vintage, and having FW800 built-in is very sweet: ... (I don't have that one, but I'm keeping an eye on used prices.)Got me on that one. The MDD's that I've worked with must have been the earlier models. I did a quick spec check, but missed the update. But this config sounds like good one for a few aging G4 gigabit and DA machines that are getting old. Basically, once you've run them 18 hours a day, stuffed full of drives and PCI cards (Media 100, SATA, extra video, etc.) for 3-4 years, the logic boards tend to start showing errors. But the Media 100 cards in them are still very useful, though aren't supported in G5 configs. So do you see any other red flags with the MDD? I've heard some anecdotal problems, but haven't really needed to look at them till now, and am about ready to look for a few used ones to upgrade the old G4's.

For you that would be true, given what tasks you might perform professionally, wildrock, but for home server/streaming tasks with ripped dvds over gigabit, don't you think plain old firewire 400 will be perfect moving files around from those drives--and if there is a problem, at least in my experience it likely wouldn't be due to the drive or the firewire bus itself--instead, it might be a poorly chosen chipset, maybe, or a problem further down the network stream. The question can get a little more complicated if one eventually plans to archive high def recordings on those drives as well as VIDEO_TS, but firewire 400 and gigabit seems even to handle those well.The speed for streaming or moving data at fw400 is fine for SD. What i was referring to is if you can increase your speed by a factor of 2+ by moving to fw800 for not mouch more money, why not? And definitely one needs to make sure they have good chipsets in their enclosures. For fw800, I use Oxford. If you move to HD, you'll want a minimun of fw800. I wish that Apple had decided to implement fw1600, but it's a no-show I fear.

That said, internal SATA add-on cards are cheap--SATA is the future both internally and externally--might as well not rule out an external SATA device hooked up via SATA. Why? Usually, SATA externals can be had much less expensively than externals which take SATA drives but connect via firewire/USB--why not futureproof yourself a little bit if it is also LESS expensive to do so?The enclosures that use eSATA pass-through connectors are a great value. Basically, there's no electronics in the interface. It's just like hooking your drive into the logic board (or internal/external SATA card).

The problem with many of the available multi-drive firewire enclosures going back 2-3 years is that they are RAID 0 or RAID 1 only--in hardware--neither of which is really worth it in a home theater context. And it can be tricky to flash firmware.Flashing is fun, isn't it? :D Ever get firewire addressing conflicts on external interfaces? Bought some Oxford 924 interfaces to build some enclosures and they all had the same address. We were one of the first to complain to Oxford, and they had to update their flashing utility to handle it after the boards were publically released in the spring.

Recently, you've seen some other options show up, like JBOD. Something to consider--nice, safe, fast enough, easy to swap out a single drive.Are you lumping JBOD up here with spanning? Some use JBOD to refer to drives in an enclosure each showing up individually. But with eSATA, I'm seeing a move (like with my Pace Tahoe pvr) where you can plug an external eSATA in, and it gets "stitched" in via spanning I believe, where the two drives look like one, but it is a linear array, not a striped or mirrored RAID. I'm definitely interested in looking at spanning enclosures as we move up the drive chain (250->500->750 GB) and have bunches of drives laying around needing repurposing. Basically, I've been building up 4 drive enclosures and using them for stock footage. And that need grows continually.

If your needs are fairly well-defined--plugging an enclosure into your MDD and storing video_ts on it--why not consider an SATA solution and futureproof yourself especially if it is less expensive to do so?Good advice.

Well, realize that if you're starting with 2 drives--which you've initially striped either via software or the hardware RAID bridegboard in an enclosure--so they "show up" as one volume on the desktop--there's no way that I know of to just add two more drives later without having to reformat ALL the drives (which would destroy all the data on those first two drives.)We usually just run a two drive fw800 RAID off of a dual drive interface.

I have a 4 drive enclosure with 2 independent RAID 0 firewire 800 bridges, and I've played around with various configurations, risked changing chipset firmware myself, etc, and I never came across a way to do it without moving data off first.Mucho data slamming. We regularly slam whole drives' (250-750 GB) worth of data around every week. Speed is esential here.

Also, as an aside, however much space you have, you'll quickly outgrow it. Those two 500GB drives seem like a lot now. It isn't. Soon you'll double that, and then you'll wish you had even more.The inevitable nature of compounding data. Always need more bigger faster cheaper drive space!

[defense4212]

chefklc and wildrock, I've decided (tentatively) to abandon my previous plan and go with some of your suggestions. My wife is the Mac guru in this house, and she has patiently explained to me that I have no need for a RAID array - I can just go with JBOD because ultimately, all I am going to do with the Eyehome is link to the movie files via aliases (which is what I'm doing now, to an internal 250GB drive) - so no need (as I had erroneously thought) to have a "single" drive, for the particlar purposes I have.

In an effort to get a little future-proofing, I'm now planning on buying the Icy Dock MB561-4S Quad Bay SATA enclosure. I'll put the two 500GB drives that I have in the Icy Dock now, and add two more drives once drive prices drop some more. Still haven't decided what I'm going to do about backup - but I am taking your comments, chefklc, very seriously.

Recall that I have (well, my wife has) the MDD, which has dual 1.0 Ghz processors. I believe I will need to install a 4-port PCI eSATA controller card in the MDD. Any thoughts as to a card, hopefully inexpensive (less than $100, ideally)?

[chefklc]

This FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 has been getting a lot of love:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1EVE4/

I'd dig around for some user reviews of that new quad Icy Dock before you just jump right in--especially the noise issue and its sleep/wake compatibility when left mounted on your wife's MDD. If she relies on the MDD, you don't want to interrupt her workflow. I'd also be a little concerned about the way that fan seems clamped on the outside of that enclosure, almost as an afterthought...

[goldenbear]

It sounds like you've got a good solution that meets your needs.

For those who are looking for a good RAID-5 solution, I highly recommend this:
http://www.firewiredirect.com/product/19/

I've been using it for almost 2 years, with no problems... well, the fan's annoyingly loud (keep in mind that I'm used to absolutely zero fan noise). Now, if only the price on the 750GB drives would drop to $100 :p

[Joseph S]

Supports up to four port multipliers for 20 drives:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/

:D

Now all I need is for the new Mac Pros to come out this week. Will likely get one of these cards, 5x1 multiplier bridge board and 5 hot swap/trayless SATA mechanisms.

May end up doing something similar for 2-3 drive unit via a SATA/FW1 bridgeboard if there aren't Mini changes to include SATA PM or FW2. My remote HDPVR uses a ministack for FW hub/storage, but they only use ATA drives. It's a pain to manually take apart the miniStack and then eventually offload the 750GB ATA drive content to a SATA drive so I don't have to keep wasting money on old ATA technology.

[Joseph S]

What bridgeboard is in this?

http://www.sonnettech.com/news/macworldexpo/index.html#fusionr400q
Outputs to:
SataPM/SATAII
FW800
FW400
USB2