Advice about external enclosure setup with eSata or USB 3.0
Hey all,
So I have a bunch of external drives, and am looking to transfer all my information to a single enclosure, and use the other drives as backups. I was originally considering RAID, but I'm not sure if I actually need it now. It would be a storage device, but I would be constantly accessing it to watch movies, edit videos, play music, etc. Since I would be transferring a lot with my OS disk, I wanted to have a fast transfer interface. I have a drive with FW800 and I love it. I know that eSata is a lot faster (sustained real transfer speeds of 200Mb/s as opposed to FW800's 80Mb/s) which would make transferring GB's of data much quicker. I was thinking of getting an eSata adapter for my MBP's ExpressCard/34 slot, but now I'm thinking of buying an enclosure with USB 3.0 that I can use as USB2.0 until I upgrade to a Mac with USB3.0.
So I had two questions:
1) If I have a non-RAID (JBOD or BIG) setup in a 2-bay external enclosure and I use eSata or USB 3.0, will I get those 200Mb/s transfer speed? Cause I've heard about you needing RAID to get those speeds.
2) Can someone point me in the direction of a cheap 2-bay enclosure with USB 3.0 or a similar enclosure with eSata (that doesn't necessarily have RAID capability, as that always pushes the price way up).
Note: I was planning to use two 2TB drives in the enclosure, so I need one that doesn't have a 2TB max capacity limit.
Thanks in advance.
So I have a bunch of external drives, and am looking to transfer all my information to a single enclosure, and use the other drives as backups. I was originally considering RAID, but I'm not sure if I actually need it now. It would be a storage device, but I would be constantly accessing it to watch movies, edit videos, play music, etc. Since I would be transferring a lot with my OS disk, I wanted to have a fast transfer interface. I have a drive with FW800 and I love it. I know that eSata is a lot faster (sustained real transfer speeds of 200Mb/s as opposed to FW800's 80Mb/s) which would make transferring GB's of data much quicker. I was thinking of getting an eSata adapter for my MBP's ExpressCard/34 slot, but now I'm thinking of buying an enclosure with USB 3.0 that I can use as USB2.0 until I upgrade to a Mac with USB3.0.
So I had two questions:
1) If I have a non-RAID (JBOD or BIG) setup in a 2-bay external enclosure and I use eSata or USB 3.0, will I get those 200Mb/s transfer speed? Cause I've heard about you needing RAID to get those speeds.
2) Can someone point me in the direction of a cheap 2-bay enclosure with USB 3.0 or a similar enclosure with eSata (that doesn't necessarily have RAID capability, as that always pushes the price way up).
Note: I was planning to use two 2TB drives in the enclosure, so I need one that doesn't have a 2TB max capacity limit.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
If you use RAID, likely a RAID 0 for speed, be sure to have a single spindle drive copy of it updated nearly all the time.
RAID 0 going down can be quite painful as the data path is split amongst all the drives.
Also your wanting performance from a MBP, when really you should have a Mac Pro, no heat issues to slow the cores like a MBP. Also a larger monitor with better graphics card, no heat issues there neither.
With the MacPro, you'll get all the fast internal interfaces.
I realize a MacPro gives me expandability and all, but I want the portability of a MBP.
I can update to eSata with a ExpressCard/34 adapter, and I can use USB 3.0 after it is realized in Macs and I upgrade.
Any idea on my question about not getting the speeds I quoted unless my enclosure is a RAID setup?