What is the best Thunderbolt RAID?

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lifilmmaker

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There are several brands to choose from – Pegasus, WD, G-Raid, LaCie and Drobo. When editing with a new iMac what is the best Thunderbolt RAID brand to use and why?

Which Raid provides the best data back-up safety in the event one of the hard drives dies?

Thanks!
 
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We just got a Pegasus R6. I really like the RAID interface. It's very easy to set up everything. You can identify the drive from the software by having the front LED flash. This is a feature I wish the G-Speeds had. The physical drive chassis is solid and well made. I really think the R4 or R6 is the way to go.
 
Not trying to pick on you, but I'm always leery about threads titled "What is the best?" When in reality there are qualifiers the original poster left out such as RAID size, configurability and budget for example. At this point I am seriously considering something along the lines of a ARECA ARC-8050, but in the mean time I have installed a very low tech & low budget solution to get me by. I'm using 3 3TB Seagate backup plus desktop drives with Thunderbolt interfaces as a RAID 0 9TB edit drive. I then use similar 3TB Seagate drives to backup the 9TB raid to. Once I get my large 32TB RAID put together I will use these drives for backup as well.

Here is a speed test from my low cost 3 drive Thunderbolt raid.
 

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...I still don't understand why nobody is selling Thunderbolt RAID enclosures where you get to buy and install your own drives?

This RAID box from OWC is one of the best bargains around for a complete stand-alone hardware based RAID enclosure that is extremely well made and very low cost.

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2 RAID Enclosure : $259

Add four 2 TB drives for less than $500, and you've got a high performance 8TB RAID 0 drive or a 6TB RAID 5 drive for a total cost of $750.

OWC would sell a million of these if they added Thunderbolt support for another $100 - $200 to the cost of the empty enclosure.
 
TheDingo said:
OWC would sell a million of these if they added Thunderbolt support for another $100 - $200 to the cost of the empty enclosure.
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I don't think there's even close enough to a million Thunderbolt users at this point. Most enclosures are Thunderbolt only meaning it only hooks up to MacBooks and iMacs. If you're on a Mac Pro, still a viable system, your SOL on using it.
 
Gary Huff said:
Most enclosures are Thunderbolt only meaning it only hooks up to MacBooks and iMacs
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This is about to change as Thunderbolt for Windows / PCs is about to arrive very soon. Apple doesn't have an exclusive on the technology, though I suspect that they had a deal with Intel to allow them to be the first platform to support Thunderbolt for x number of years.

AnandTech May 2012 : A First Look at Thunderbolt on Windows with MSI's Z77A-GD80

PCWorld Aug 2012 : Windows Laptops with Thunderbolt Ports

ArsTechnica Jan 2013 : With Licensing and Cost Issues, Can Thunderbolt Break Out of its Niche?


...And Thunderbolt optical fiber hasn't been produced yet, we are only playing with Thunderbolt built on wire connections, where the optical fiber version could be more than 10x faster.
 
TheDingo said:
This is about to change as Thunderbolt for Windows / PCs is about to arrive very soon.
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It's already out. The motherboard I'm look at upgrading my desktop PC to has 2 ports. Still doesn't change the fact that a lot of people are using systems that don't have Thunderbolt, so there isn't a good interim solution when your Thunderbolt RAID is only Thunderbolt.
 
Gary Huff said:
Still doesn't change the fact that a lot of people are using systems that don't have Thunderbolt
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This is true of any new tech.

Firewire didn't really catch on with PC users because the PC manufacturers didn't want to pay the small licensing cost to Apple to add Firewire to their motherboards.

I hope this isn't the same case with Thunderbolt. ( Windows users need good solutions too )
 
TheDingo said:
...I still don't understand why nobody is selling Thunderbolt RAID enclosures where you get to buy and install your own drives?
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Because while no one is offering it, they can all make money on the drives they install. It's that simple.
 
First, I want to thank everyone for responding to my post. I appreciate the feedback. I'll be using a new iMac and FCP X. My work will consist of web videos, shorts, documentaries, and green screen projects. At this point I'm just learning about Raids and haven't established a budget. I'm doing research to see if I would be better off with a Raid or two external drives. I'm open to all suggestions and advice.

Can someone explain what is meant by "Raid redundancy?"

What are the benefits of a Raid over two external Thunderbolt drives daisy chained?

Thanks!
 
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. There are various levels of RAID, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 0+1. Each one provides different benefits and risks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

RAID 0: Provides no data redundancy. If one drive fails, you lose everything. The data is written across all drives simultaneously, so it is very fast.
RAID 1: Provides an exact copy of the data on the second drive. No speed benefit, but if one drive fails, you lose nothing.
RAID 5: Write parity (data integrity check) bits across all drives. Good balance of speed and data redundancy.
RAID 10: Two or more RAID 1 (mirrors) combined in a RAID 0.

The difference between RAID and two drives is that the members of a RAID act as one volume. Say you have 8 physical disks in one chassis (like the Pegasus R8) and they are combined with RAID 5. There will only be one icon on the desktop, and the chassis will figure our how to write the data across the drives on the fly. If one drive dies, you can swap it and not lose any data. The chassis will take care of the data rebuild.
 
kolak said:
it also has USB 3 connecttion, but only 2x cheaper
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Looks exactly like what I was after, but it's almost triple the price of the OCW RAID box.

I just don't get why Thunderbolt solutions have to be so expensive compared to eSATA/USB 3/Etc...
 
lifilmmaker said:
There are several brands to choose from – Pegasus, WD, G-Raid, LaCie and Drobo. When editing with a new iMac what is the best Thunderbolt RAID brand to use and why?

Which Raid provides the best data back-up safety in the event one of the hard drives dies?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

RAID isn't for backup. RAID offers data protection, and the benefits of speed, but it isn't meant for backup. If you want actual backup, get an LTO5/6/7 (whatever version they are on now) tape drive.

I mean, you can build say a RAID5 or RAID6 array of 8 4TB drives, and in RAID5 1 drive can fail, 2 for RAID6. But the amount of time it takes to recover those failed drives is redonkulous.

Here is a good article on surprising facts about RAID arrays that most people might not know or realize. http://augmentedtrader.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/10-things-raid/

Also remember that Thunderbolt 2 has been released, so devices for that should be coming out soon, early next year. Also surprisingly, MacWorld has an article about USB3 vs Thunderbolt, and USB3 came out on top using non-SSD drives. Even with the SSDs, the Thunderbolt devices only beat out USB3 by about 12MBps maximum.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2039427/how-fast-is-usb-3-0-really-.html
 
I just got this one…as an empty enclosure and added four drives from my old MacPro.

I set up my four 2TB drives as two separate RAID 0 - one for media and one for storage. Each RAID is backed up via USB 3 external drives like the ones David mentions above. I wasn't familiar with the DataTale name, but the US distributor is Oyen Digital which I did have good past experience with. So far it's working great.

I never thought of using multiple external USB3 drives as a RAID - those external Seagates are great bang for the buck, and BestBuy puts them on sale fairly often :-)
 
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