Computer-related question - multi-drive enclosure suggestions?

[fiddlefye]

At Christmas I finally retired my old 2008 MacPro tower and ended up with a 24" iMac, partly due to the changeover of chip tech it utilizes. Over the past decades I've always run with a top-of-the-line Mac tower a few years old and the ploy has always worked out really nicely. Now the well I've been drawing fropm has run pretty dry so I somewhat regretfully went the all-in-one iMac route. It works fine, but leaves me with the problem of having a bunch of extra drives that have no longer have a home. The old tower had four of them mounted internally and of course the all-in-ones don't have that possibility. I really, really do not want a pile of separate boxes laying about with separate connections etc. I also really need a DVD drive/burner as it seems there is no easy way to mount the one from the old computer in a new drive box.

I'll leave my old boot drive in the previous computer in case I want to use it for something at some point, but need an enclosure that can take multiple drives, both so-called 3.5" SATA (they're really 4", right?) and the smaller SSD type for the others and another bigger-yet back-up. I've looked at a bunch of possibilities online, but really have no idea which are good and which are not. Suggestions from those who've used them would be very welcome before I go shopping. The computer has two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and two USB 3 ports so can take USB-C connections.

Thanks!

 

[Thermionics]

Have you considered a NAS device in lieu of directly-attached storage?

 

[MikeyFresh]

leaves me with the problem of having a bunch of extra drives that have no longer have a home.

Are these orphaned drives going to be used as each a fully separate disk/volume of it's own, or can you temporarily backup their data to someplace (perhaps to the iMac itself), then reformat the currently orphaned drives to be used as one big RAID array or SPAN volume?

Various enclosures allow orphaned drives to be used in a number of ways, for example as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Discs) where the drives are treated independently, the first scenario I described above and likely how you had used them in the Mac Pro, or as a RAID array, or even a SPAN which takes more than one drive and combines it into a single larger volume.

I've used OWC multi-drive enclosures like this one for years in the SPAN mode, two SSDs combined to make one large disk as seen by the computer. But that was using two identical 2.5" drives.

Most if not all of the makers of such enclosures warn that especially for any RAID type application, or even SPAN, it is only advisable to use drives of the same make and type. I'd also done the same with HDDs, though again only using identical brand/make/capacity drives. That enclosure I linked to also then required 3.5" to 2.5" adapters be purchased as they are sold separately, and the enclosure only mounts 3.5" drives as standard. The 2.5" mounting adapter brackets were also sold by OWC. (Note OWC now calls the JBOD mode IND for "Independent").

I have a different OWC unit that also mounts two drives, but only accepts the 2.5" variety. That too I have in use as a SPAN. The only time I tried this with 2 slightly different drives as a SPAN it worked out just fine, but the drives were largely identical, just two different storage capacities, but of the exact same brand/make.

It's worth noting that hanging on to old/big 3.5" spinning HDDs may not be the best way to go in the long run if space/footprint, noise, heat, and electricity usage are to be considered. Those legacy drives should really at some point be retired unless you know they have precious little wear and tear on them.

The latest versions of this I've done utilized two tiny, low energy consumption, faster than a bat oughta hell mSATA drives in this enclosure, or more recently the still faster yet M.2 "blade" type SSDs, but admittedly neither of those are cheap, and do represent overkill just for backup-type applications. They have a very small footprint though, and produce little/no heat, consume very little electricity, and make no noise/are fanless.

Other enclosure options like this one are meant to be used more sporadically, so the drives are not typically taking up permanent residence mounted in that unit, you just pop and swap various drives in and out as needed, and store them away somewhere safe when not in actual use.

Lastly, I've got several external optical disc drives in play, but the one with the smallest footprint that I use with my MacBook Air to rip CDs is an ASUS like this one, pretty inexpensive and so far reliable too. My main optical drive unit is also an OWC like this one with LG internals, and I've seen what appears to be the identical thing sold under other brands such as Plextor at a considerably higher price, with no doubt the same or very similar LG internals.

 

[fiddlefye]

Have you considered a NAS device in lieu of directly-attached storage?

Nope, not at this point.

Are these orphaned drives going to be used as each a fully separate disk/volume of it's own, or can you temporarily backup their data to someplace (perhaps to the iMac itself), then reformat the currently orphaned drives to be used as one big RAID array or SPAN volume?

Various enclosures allow orphaned drives to be used in a number of ways, for example as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Discs) where the drives are treated independently, the first scenario I described above and likely how you had used them in the Mac Pro, or as a RAID array, or even a SPAN which takes more than one drive and combines it into a single larger volume.

I've used OWC multi-drive enclosures like this one for years in the SPAN mode, two SSDs combined to make one large disk as seen by the computer. But that was using two identical 2.5" drives.

Most if not all of the makers of such enclosures warn that especially for any RAID type application, or even SPAN, it is only advisable to use drives of the same make and type. I'd also done the same with HDDs, though again only using identical brand/make/capacity drives. That enclosure I linked to also then required 3.5" to 2.5" adapters be purchased as they are sold separately, and the enclosure only mounts 3.5" drives as standard. The 2.5" mounting adapter brackets were also sold by OWC. (Note OWC now calls the JBOD mode IND for "Independent").

I have a different OWC unit that also mounts two drives, but only accepts the 2.5" variety. That too I have in use as a SPAN. The only time I tried this with 2 slightly different drives as a SPAN it worked out just fine, but the drives were largely identical, just two different storage capacities, but of the exact same brand/make.

It's worth noting that hanging on to old/big 3.5" spinning HDDs may not be the best way to go in the long run if space/footprint, noise, heat, and electricity usage are to be considered. Those legacy drives should really at some point be retired unless you know they have precious little wear and tear on them.

The latest versions of this I've done utilized two tiny, low energy consumption, faster than a bat oughta hell mSATA drives in this enclosure, or more recently the still faster yet M.2 "blade" type SSDs, but admittedly neither of those are cheap, and do represent overkill just for backup-type applications. They have a very small footprint though, and produce little/no heat, consume very little electricity, and make no noise/are fanless.

Other enclosure options like this one are meant to be used more sporadically, so the drives are not typically taking up permanent residence mounted in that unit, you just pop and swap various drives in and out as needed, and store them away somewhere safe when not in actual use.

Lastly, I've got several external optical disc drives in play, but the one with the smallest footprint that I use with my MacBook Air to rip CDs is an ASUS like this one, pretty inexpensive and so far reliable too. My main optical drive unit is also an OWC like this one with LG internals, and I've seen what appears to be the identical thing sold under other brands such as Plextor at a considerably higher price, with no doubt the same or very similar LG internals.

The drives are use for different purposes so JOBD (like the acronym!). One is where images reside, another for music files, documents and sheet music scans. A third is a big back-up drive for the others. The fourth drive in the old Mac was the boot SSD and I'll just leave it in place as I've already transferred what I needed off it. As time goes by the older drives will be replaced, though none of them are ancient at this point - four years at oldest.

The OWC was the one I was giving most consideration to thus far.

 

[fiddlefye]

NB - I'm one of those odd sorts - I've been using computers (almost exclusively Apple) for the better part of four decades now, but only really think about them every half decade or so when I find I have to. In the meantime the entire world has changed and I learn half of everything all over again...

 

[HepcatWilly]

QNAP TR-004 works flawlessly for me.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K4RC7X9

I can have a bunch of drives thrown in there as individual drives. Easy access and quick change makes it fast to swap drives as needed.
Highly recommended.

I also have a NAS (Synology) and I don't like it nearly as much as this 4 bay enclosure. The Synology doesn't allow direct connection, only ethernet, and most of the setup is done via a web interface.

This Qnap setup allows you more flexibility because you can configure as RAID or JBOD (just a bunch of disks) that can be hot-swapped at will. I use RAID for my backups and JBOD for a loose collection of old disks that I may randomly access sometimes. All are Mac formatted (APFS) but I can plug it to a Linux machine no problem. And, like @MikeyFresh mentioned, you can throw some newer SSD drives and copy from the 3.5 platter to the newer solid state pretty smoothly.

 

[MikeyFresh]

All are Mac formatted (APFS) but I can plug it to a Linux machine no problem.

I didn't know there was Linux support for APFS formatted discs. Which Linux distro are you using and does it require the Paragon driver?

 

[HepcatWilly]

Oh, sorry, I didn't write that well. I use Mac, Linux and sometimes Windows. I meant that I can unplug the Qnap, swap out a set of disks and plug them into the Linux workstation.

I'm running ClearLinux on a Lenovo Thinkstation P20 tower, and those drives are formatted as Ext4. If I need files from one to the other, I use NFS or an external SSD.

 

[HepcatWilly]

Have you tried the Paragon driver @MikeyFresh ? I was looking at it not that long ago.

 

[MikeyFresh]

This allows you more flexibility because you can configure as RAID or JBOD (just a bunch of disks) that can be hot-swapped at will.

In watching the QNAP product video, I am a bit confused by the description of JBOD mode as separate from IND, where JBOD treats the discs as a combined capacity as with my SPAN drives. They then have a separate mode for IND which treats the discs fully separate of each other.

My OWC units are older and don't have any IND mode, but I had aways thought the OWC units when set for JBOD were not combined. Maybe I've been wrong about that all along because I'd never actually tried it? Moot I guess in that IND mode on the current production OWC units does the trick in allowing for having fully separate discs anyway.

Have you tried the Paragon driver @MikeyFresh ? I was looking at it not that long ago.

Not yet, but I have their NTFS driver on my Mac and that works flawlessly, so I'd much expect the same from the Linux APFS version if my previous Paragon experience is any indication.

 

[HepcatWilly]

Hmm. I see what you mean. I suspect that JBOD and IND are the same if you have pre-formatted disks, but I've never run JBOD and had a combined, single drive. If I set JBOD and formatted the disks using the Qnap, maybe it would work.

I'm starting to face limitations with ClearLinux. It's a highly optimized OS and many simple things aren't readily available. I may switch to something else, but, man does it fly!

 

[MikeyFresh]

I'm starting to face limitations with ClearLinux. It's a highly optimized OS and many simple things aren't readily available. I may switch to something else, but, man does it fly!

I love both Linux Mint, and Ubuntu too, but haven't tried much else besides Raspbian.

I've also seen this with regard to APFS formatted drives and Linux, but you have to compile it yourself and it's read only access:

How to mount macOS APFS disk volumes in Linux​

 

[HepcatWilly]

Interesting, will try compiling! I may just install a more mainstream OS and gladly fork over the cost of Paragon's driver.
It's kind of a bummer, I've been on Mac since the Mac SE/30, but their latest OS updates (after Mojave) just suck. Linux is awesome, but there's no access to the great Mac-only programs like Devonthink and Eastgate Tinderbox.

 

[MikeyFresh]

Interesting, will try compiling! I may just install a more mainstream OS and gladly fork over the cost of Paragon's driver.
It's kind of a bummer, I've been on Mac since the Mac SE/30, but their latest OS updates (after Mojave) just suck. Linux is awesome, but there's no access to the great Mac-only programs like Devonthink and Eastgate Tinderbox.

I know what you mean and have soured a little on the last few macOS versions, and to bring this back on topic just a bit, there is also the relatively high cost of the Mac hardware replacement every 5 or so years as alluded to by @fiddlefye .

While I've loved using Macs for many years now, I too am beyond impressed with Linux, and the bonus there is you then lose the high cost of hardware replacement as Linux doesn't require any extra special and ongoing hardware upgrades. Possible roadblocks do exist in the software domain though as you said, which is also true of divorcing Windows of course, not always possible.

 

[HepcatWilly]

Yes, my current setup is a Mac Pro trashcan (soon to be downgraded to Mojave), a work-issued Macbook Air M1 (I loathe this machine) and the Thinkstation. I'm typing this on a 2013 MacbookAir, which remains wonderful.

 

[MikeyFresh]

NB - I'm one of those odd sorts - I've been using computers (almost exclusively Apple) for the better part of four decades now, but only really think about them every half decade or so when I find I have to. In the meantime the entire world has changed and I learn half of everything all over again...

I think thats not odd at all and likely many if not most people do the same, change only when forced to and then face a re-learning curve of sorts.

Unfortunately the big tech companies need to keep selling us new stuff to maintain their unfathomable profits, and so they make it increasingly difficult to ignore changes and upgrades even on a 5-year basis.

Linux is probably the only partial answer to that merry-go-round, assuming suitable software exists for the various tasks and applications one has in mind for their computers.

 

[MikeyFresh]

I'm typing this on a 2013 MacbookAir, which remains wonderful.

I'm typing this on a 2014 MacBook Air, I know what you mean!

I also have a 2012 mini, and even a fully functioning 2006 mini that runs the first 64-bit macOS, 10.6 Snow Leopard. I'm pretty stubborn about ditching still perfectly functioning hardware, even if the OS and software are considered "obsolete".

 

[HepcatWilly]

So @fiddlefye, we share your pain!

 

[fiddlefye]

I'm typing this on a 2014 MacBook Air, I know what you mean!

I also have a 2012 mini, and even a fully functioning 2006 mini that runs the first 64-bit macOS, 10.6 Snow Leopard. I'm pretty stubborn about ditching still perfectly functioning hardware, even if the OS and software are considered "obsolete".

Until just before Christmas I was running the 2008 Mac Pro double quad and was completely happy with it. It still runs faster than my wife's two year old absolutely top-of-the-line HP laptop. The problem was the lack of OS updates and various places starting to shut me out, one by one.

I love both Linux Mint, and Ubuntu too, but haven't tried much else besides Raspbian.

I've also seen this with regard to APFS formatted drives and Linux, but you have to compile it yourself and it's read only access:

How to mount macOS APFS disk volumes in Linux​

A decade ago or so I ran Ubuntu on an old HP commercial laptop and it was fine until my ex decided to kill it. I'm thinking of doing something similar with the 2008 once I'm done with the drive swaps and all that. The thing looks like it plans on running forever. Of course there will be another reminding/learning curve yet again as I've not dealt with Linux of any flavour for a decade or so.

 

[fiddlefye]

Yes, my current setup is a Mac Pro trashcan (soon to be downgraded to Mojave), a work-issued Macbook Air M1 (I loathe this machine) and the Thinkstation. I'm typing this on a 2013 MacbookAir, which remains wonderful.

Until this point in time I've never spent more than $400 on a computer for myself (my wife is another story) and usually got a good half decade out of each which I then sold and recouped most of my initial investment.There were some lovely machines along the line - a couple of models of G4 and a G5. A Trashcan would have been my next computer had I followed the highly successful game plan of the past couple of decades. When I went looking they were just too expensive and thin on the ground to entice me - a decent one wasn't so far off the price of the latest model iMac. I like the iMac ok, though it doesn't do anything I do faster than the old computer - a large RAW file opening instantly doesn't get more "instant" even though I'm sure there is some irrelevant measurable difference. What annoys me is having an adapter dangling off the back of the screen because nothing I own can directly plug into any of the ports and then a USB hub running off that because that adapter doesn't have enough USB ports. Then I'm going to need another box to hold the drives (which should at least use one of those fancy new ports) and a separate DVD/CD burner (which won't) because I use one frequently. Suddenly that tidy all-in-one solution becomes a pile of crap littering the desk. Ah well - progress, right?

I also run a little Windows 10 HP 2560p i7 laptop that I've had for a decade now. I put a SSD in it a few years ago and it runs ok to take along to work to check email. On the topic of "loathing" - Windows 10 makes me want to tear my hair out. At least it isn't as flakey as it once was, though having bits of hardware quit working as result of updates got old long ago.

So, to return to my initial topic - recommendations for a multi-dive enclosure...