Does anyone make high quality 4 bay externals?

jordan12

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I have tried a lot of them and they all seem to be quirky. Is there any companies that make a high quality 4 or 8 bay external?
 
i always hear good thing about syncology or whatever. Have you tried them? They are super pricey though.

QNAP is usually also highly talked about but no experience with them.
 
You probably need to be more specific, do you want SAS, SATA multiplier or what?
 
Really depends what you want to do.

Just as a storage or backup device?
Small SQL server?
Personal cloud?
ITunes?
Small web server?
Some can have ERP software running straight from it.

Tried a sweet high performance Thunderbolt enclosure a little while ago, really liked it.

Synology, QNAP, Drobo...etc.. all make good enclosures for different uses.
 
Really depends what you want to do.

Just as a storage or backup device?
Small SQL server?
Personal cloud?
ITunes?
Small web server?
Some can have ERP software running straight from it.

Tried a sweet high performance Thunderbolt enclosure a little while ago, really liked it.

Synology, QNAP, Drobo...etc.. all make good enclosures for different uses.

wow didnt realize you could do that many things these days with NAS...or whaetever you want to call them :D

I guess small is the keyword...as in small amount of requests?
I know some of these have very limited CPUs but some have come with some beefy ones. Saw one of those companies release a 8/10 bay 10Gb E one and it was pretty beefy for a stand alone NAS.
 
Sorry guys.

Yeah, what I want is to just take a bunch of drives and combine them. Like use drivepool or something. Would be storage only.
 
I've had great experiences with both Synology and QNAP - they are very similar. You can get them with varying CPUs, ranging from adequate ARM CPUS that are very power efficient to a full blown Intel Core CPU. They are really just pre-built Linux boxes with a web-based admin portal. On almost all of them you can SSH in and do Linux stuff directly if you prefer, and they come with a lot of pre-assembled packages for just about any type of server stuff you'd want to do.

If your just wanting backup and storage, the CPU & RAM won't make a lot of difference. It really kicks in if you are using the NAS for additional services, or have a lot of users hammering it at the same time.
 
I've had great experiences with both Synology and QNAP - they are very similar. You can get them with varying CPUs, ranging from adequate ARM CPUS that are very power efficient to a full blown Intel Core CPU. They are really just pre-built Linux boxes with a web-based admin portal. On almost all of them you can SSH in and do Linux stuff directly if you prefer, and they come with a lot of pre-assembled packages for just about any type of server stuff you'd want to do.

If your just wanting backup and storage, the CPU & RAM won't make a lot of difference. It really kicks in if you are using the NAS for additional services, or have a lot of users hammering it at the same time.

CPU would be meaningful if you are using SSDs but otherwise yes a "decent" CPU will work.
 
As far as price/performance goes I'd have a look at Asustor (subsidary of Asus) since they usually offer quite the bang for the buck compared to Netgear, QNAP and Synology.
 
He wants a DAS not a NAS.

The ones I have from Icy Dock are eSATA/USB and are only compatible with a Marvell chip provided in the form of a PCIe card, and even then I've stopped using the eSATA feature as sometimes when powering one unit it would crash my computer. So my faith in eSATA is gone and nowadays I would go for a USB3 unit.
 
He wants a DAS not a NAS.

The ones I have from Icy Dock are eSATA/USB and are only compatible with a Marvell chip provided in the form of a PCIe card, and even then I've stopped using the eSATA feature as sometimes when powering one unit it would crash my computer. So my faith in eSATA is gone and nowadays I would go for a USB3 unit.

never heard of that. Get a new MOBO. Silly to blame SATA or reinstall OS if it isn't MOBO. I have used eSATA a lot and so much better then USB. Lower latency, true SMART support and more.
 
It's not just eSATA it's eSATA + port multiplier. I actually changed mobo without improvement. The onboard controllers (Intel and something else I don't remember ATM) only see one drive, with the Marvell cards it works until it doesn't.
 
Yeah, what I want is to just take a bunch of drives and combine them. Like use drivepool or something. Would be storage only.

OK, so you want an external 4-bay enclosure that attaches to your computer (NOT ethernet), and you want to combine all the storage?

IMO you'd be served best with a USB 3.0 enclosure. Avoid the ones with port multipliers or "built-in" RAID. Check reviews and make sure it adequately cools the drives. You can combine the drives using Drivepool.
 
It's not just eSATA it's eSATA + port multiplier. I actually changed mobo without improvement. The onboard controllers (Intel and something else I don't remember ATM) only see one drive, with the Marvell cards it works until it doesn't.

i'll take your word for it. I never used eSATA DAS so maybe its different.
 
i'll take your word for it. I never used eSATA DAS so maybe its different.

Well, SATA is a point-to-point link, so the only way for a multiple-disk eSATA DAS is to use a port multiplier in between. Port multipliers are not supported by Intel ICH5-ICH10, except for the ICH9R(AID) and ICH10R(AID) versions; support has apparently been added since the P55 (i7-920 days).

The problem is port multiplication support was an optional part of the SATA specification, so it was often implement missing or half-assed.
 
Well, SATA is a point-to-point link, so the only way for a multiple-disk eSATA DAS is to use a port multiplier in between. Port multipliers are not supported by Intel ICH5-ICH10, except for the ICH9R(AID) and ICH10R(AID) versions; support has apparently been added since the P55 (i7-920 days).

The problem is port multiplication support was an optional part of the SATA specification, so it was often implement missing or half-assed.

oh I only used 720QM920xm to HW eSATA so that was before i ever used it. (also never used multipliers so yea. Thats sucks.
 
wtf is this?

RAID 0,1,JBOD, & Single Disc

10 disk raid0?
10 disk raid1?

that's the ONLY choices they list,..


edit: Support for RAID 0,1,5,6,10 and hard drive hot swapping is listed on the manuf. site.. much better options!
 
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