DROBO 5D, DATOptic, or Areca? Best RAID Enclosure?

[FrenchQuarter]

Best RAID Enclosure?

Any opinions on the quality/stability of these enclosures?

DROBO 5D?
DATOptic?
Areca?

Other brand?

 

[FireWire2]

Each of these box are good for some but not good for some
DROBO - Drive indiscriminate but slow
DATOptic - Fast but big - due to each drive has 2x fans to cool
ARECA - Fast but no support - Taiwan company

I use DATOptic, I don't have problem with it run 3yrs +

 

[FrenchQuarter]

FireWire2,
For DATOptic, do you recommend:

http://www.datoptic.com/hardware-raid-jbod-enclosure-with-thunderbolt-usb3-0-esata-five-drives.html

OR

http://www.datoptic.com/usb3-esata-firewire-quad-plus1-penta-raid5-enclosure.html

I heard some people think USB 3 is plenty fast and thunderbolt isn't needed. Your opinion?

I have:
MacBook Air 11" 2.0 GHz Thunderbolt/USB 3
and
MacBook Pro 13" 2.4 GHz Firewire 800/USB 2

Can the DATOptic boot from thunderbolt or just boot USB 3? (I heard the DROBO 5D only boots from USB 3.)

 

[FireWire2]

Darn! there is no common port in both MAC 🙂

I would go for Five SATA tray-less hardware RAID5/JBOD enclosure with USB3.0/USB2.0/eSATA/FireWire400/800

Or TB/eSATA/USB3.0/FW800
http://www.datoptic.com/ec/thunderbolt-esata-usb3-firewire-hardware-raid-jbod-desktop-raid-for-mac-windows-linux.html
So I can use USB3.0 5Gb/s in MBAir and FW800 in MBP

I think it will be the BEST for both systems

and one more thing about DATOptic enclosure, they are build as modular, if I'm not mistaken - you can later on upgrade to TB if you ever want to

Then you would have a box with TB/eSATA/FW400/800/USB3.0/2.0


Edit: update link