External HDD Enclosure

[may-yuhan]

Hi,

I have 5 HDD's that I want to externally place in an enclosure. I read something about RAID enclosures, I purchased one from Orico. But I had issues with it. I'm searching for a RAID that:

- Supports up to 50 TB.
- Supports MacOS & Windows
- Can go to sleep after a extended period of time AND also turn off the cooling system while it is asleep.
- I want it to SAFELY eject the drives if I press the power-off button, OR I want the option to eject the disks with software or such. On my previous one, I couldn't eject the disks on Windows. Only worked on Mac.

Does anyone know such an HDD enclosure? Or the proper name?

 

[WyomingKnott]

Are all of the HDDs the same size and model? If they're not the same size, RAID will waste a lot of space.
My personal opinion is that RAID should only be used for two reasons
1) You need one of the advantages of RAID (storage keeps going if one drive dies, for example), or
2) You just want to play with it to see what it does.

RAID, as opposed to keeping them as separate drives, introduces a lot of complication, expense, and risk.

 

[may-yuhan]

Are all of the HDDs the same size and model? If they're not the same size, RAID will waste a lot of space.
My personal opinion is that RAID should only be used for two reasons
1) You need one of the advantages of RAID (storage keeps going if one drive dies, for example), or
2) You just want to play with it to see what it does.

RAID, as opposed to keeping them as separate drives, introduces a lot of complication, expense, and risk.

Hi,

I read somewhere that a RAID is basically a lot of drives put into one enclosure. And then there is also NAS, which is also a RAID but with internet capabilities. That's why my answer might be confusing.

I only have 3.5'' drives. They are not the same model. But all the same size. The reason I want my drives externally is because I want to make my PC as small as possible. While also be able to connect the drives with an USB cable to my laptop(s). I purchased the ORICO NS500C3
It worked fine but it was too unstable. I was also considering something like: Seagate Backup plus external drives.
But the maximum capacity is low, and I'd have to buy new drives.

Do you have any suggestions to my previous question?

 

[WyomingKnott]

Let me clarify:

By the same size, I meant capacity. Number of GB.

You have been sorely misinformed about RAID. See here for details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID . RAID is a set of ways of combining multiple identical drives into a single volume, with data spread across multiple disks for speed and / or redundant copies for survival in case one drive dies. It's complicated, it's fun to play with, it's a disaster for recovery if your data goes bad or if your RAID unit dies, since the drives almost certainly won't run in another RAID unit. They're not standard.

NAS is Network Attached Storage. A NAS unit can support RAID volumes or not, only supporting drives as single volumes. The two features are actually independent.

The ORICO looks like a decent unit. It can present the drives to you as JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) without doing any RAID voodoo on them. In fact, I don't see support for RAID. So it should do what you want, but apparently it doesn't.

The questions I'd ask to figure out what to get are
- What's unstable about that unit and will their support help you? If that works it's fine for your needs and you already have it.
- Do you want all of these drives available at the same time, or one at a time is fine? This tells us whether you need a single unit that can hold five drives (expensive) or not.
- How large (in GB) are the drives? If you have five small drives it's going to be easier to replace them with a new large one, and cheaper than buying an external five-drive unit.
- How elegant must the solution be?
- - Personally, my computer has a hot-swap dock from Kingwin. I keep my 3.5" drives in a rather fancy anti-static case, and just plug one in to the computer when I need it. It's attached at full SATA speeds. This is my favorite, but not good for making your PC small.
- - There are cases with docks built into the top. There are external docks that sit on your desk and you can connect any drive to USB 3.0 on any computer, such as my Kingwin True Dock that I use for my Mac ( http://www.kingwin.com/storage/docking-stations/docking-station-td-2535u3/ )
- - If you won't be attaching them for long, and you don't mind ugly, there are SATA to USB cables for cheap-cheap-cheap. Such as https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812329640&cm_re=SATA_to_usb-_-12-329-640-_-Product , no endorsement.

In short, there are a lot of variables to pin down. Main are how many you need to use at once, is the use temporary or long-time, aesthetic and cost solutions. I'm willing to discuss it in detail if you wish, otherwise I would suggest an external desktop dock if you only need one at a time. If you need them all, I'd first see if the total combined size will fit on one new disk and then use that with a desktop dock. Last choice, because it's expensive, is a unit like you bought, preferably a JBOD one (less expensive than RAID and why waste money).

 

[WyomingKnott]

Boy, I sure get wordy.

 

[may-yuhan]

Let me clarify:

By the same size, I meant capacity. Number of GB.

You have been sorely misinformed about RAID. See here for details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID . RAID is a set of ways of combining multiple identical drives into a single volume, with data spread across multiple disks for speed and / or redundant copies for survival in case one drive dies. It's complicated, it's fun to play with, it's a disaster for recovery if your data goes bad or if your RAID unit dies, since the drives almost certainly won't run in another RAID unit. They're not standard.

NAS is Network Attached Storage. A NAS unit can support RAID volumes or not, only supporting drives as single volumes. The two features are actually independent.

The ORICO looks like a decent unit. It can present the drives to you as JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) without doing any RAID voodoo on them. In fact, I don't see support for RAID. So it should do what you want, but apparently it doesn't.

The questions I'd ask to figure out what to get are
- What's unstable about that unit and will their support help you? If that works it's fine for your needs and you already have it.
- Do you want all of these drives available at the same time, or one at a time is fine? This tells us whether you need a single unit that can hold five drives (expensive) or not.
- How large (in GB) are the drives? If you have five small drives it's going to be easier to replace them with a new large one, and cheaper than buying an external five-drive unit.
- How elegant must the solution be?
- - Personally, my computer has a hot-swap dock from Kingwin. I keep my 3.5" drives in a rather fancy anti-static case, and just plug one in to the computer when I need it. It's attached at full SATA speeds. This is my favorite, but not good for making your PC small.
- - There are cases with docks built into the top. There are external docks that sit on your desk and you can connect any drive to USB 3.0 on any computer, such as my Kingwin True Dock that I use for my Mac ( http://www.kingwin.com/storage/docking-stations/docking-station-td-2535u3/ )
- - If you won't be attaching them for long, and you don't mind ugly, there are SATA to USB cables for cheap-cheap-cheap. Such as https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812329640&cm_re=SATA_to_usb-_-12-329-640-_-Product , no endorsement.

In short, there are a lot of variables to pin down. Main are how many you need to use at once, is the use temporary or long-time, aesthetic and cost solutions. I'm willing to discuss it in detail if you wish, otherwise I would suggest an external desktop dock if you only need one at a time. If you need them all, I'd first see if the total combined size will fit on one new disk and then use that with a desktop dock. Last choice, because it's expensive, is a unit like you bought, preferably a JBOD one (less expensive than RAID and why waste money).

Hi,

that was a pretty good, I don't mind the details.

Yeah, I just need a JBOD from what you wrote, I want all disks to be available to me at the same time. Also I want it to be in something, not with swapping. The disks are not the same capacity, I have one of 4 TB one of 2 TB 1 TB and 750 GB. I have a bunch more but these ones are the priority for now. I want something with 5 slots. Like the ORICO one.

The ORICO one is bad because I had it for 4 weeks and 3 slots got defect. Also, I tried hot-swapping just out of curiosity and the LED of the device tripped. It didn't recognize that I removed the HDD out of the station. (It does support hot-swapping) After the thing was defect I opened it to see if I actually inserted the disks properly, and I did. Also the internal hardware is so light and doesn't really look like it was worth my money. The housing of it was 8 times the weight of the actual hardware lol.
Disks didn't go to hibernation/sleep mode either on Windows, only on Mac. Which is really annoying for me.
Pressing the power button of the device immediately shuts down all the disks which can cause corruption, I can't eject the disks either in Windows as it is recognized as an actual internal HDD.

as for appearance, I like it to be nice like the ORICO one, but I don't really care, if it works, it works.
the enclosure can be big, as long as it is separated from my PC.

Basically to put it short; I want an enclosure that can hold up to 4-5 HDD's.
I want it to function as if it were inside my computer. I want it to be safe. So that when I turn it off, the disks will be ejected properly and not shut off as if the power has been cut off.
I want it to go into sleep mode as how Windows does it after a period of time. My ORICO one did only on mac, BUT the fan inside kept on spinning....
I want all the drives to be available and be usable. I want something that is stationary on my desk. Not something with swapping. Good answer though, learned me a lot. And gave me a better insight of the options out there.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Dang, now that's clear. For hot-swap under Windows you must use the "Safely Remove Hardware and Media" first. In fact, on Mac you must dismount the volume first. Did you do that - my Windows can, as you wrote, eject my internal drives.

OK, now that we've got the details of what's needed out of the way, can anyone recommend
An external 5-disk enclosure
JBOD is fine, not RAID
USB 3.2 type C connectivity
Supports Windows and Mac drive hibernation

Not sure you're going to find one that automatically ejects all drives from the OS when powered down. That may be asking a bit much. Shut down the computer first and then power it off, it may work.

EDIT: Something from Areca, perhaps, though not as expensive as this: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/areca-arc-8050t3-thunderbolt-3-das,5376-2.html

 

[USAFRet]

I have a 4 bay MediaSonic.
https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4
Almost 2 yrs old, no issues.

USB 3.0 or eSATA.

 

[may-yuhan]

Dang, now that's clear. For hot-swap under Windows you must use the "Safely Remove Hardware and Media" first. In fact, on Mac you must dismount the volume first. Did you do that - my Windows can, as you wrote, eject my internal drives.

OK, now that we've got the details of what's needed out of the way, can anyone recommend
An external 5-disk enclosure
JBOD is fine, not RAID
USB 3.2 type C connectivity
Supports Windows and Mac drive hibernation

Not sure you're going to find one that automatically ejects all drives from the OS when powered down. That may be asking a bit much. Shut down the computer first and then power it off, it may work.

EDIT: Something from Areca, perhaps, though not as expensive as this: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/areca-arc-8050t3-thunderbolt-3-das,5376-2.html

Oh dang that's expensive haha. Yeah, I know you can eject internal hard drives, but I meant in an ''USB'' kind of way.
Mac is so much easier with this but still, thank you for your time and help! I appreciate it. (Sorry if I'm unclear, it's hard to express myself, not my native language.)

 

[may-yuhan]

I have a 4 bay MediaSonic.
https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4
Almost 2 yrs old, no issues.

USB 3.0 or eSATA.

Hi,

Looks very promising! Does it go into hibernation/sleep when you don't use it? (On Windows) - If so, does the cooling keep on spinning when the drives are in sleep mode?

Can I just randomly press the power-off button? Or do I have to eject them first with this one? Probably yes, as I would suspect. Since you have it, might as well get your personal experiences. It might actually be the one I'm going to purchase since it can support up to 12 TB per HDD.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, you can just hit the power button.

The one thing I don't like is the brightness of the blue LED's.
Very bright, and a lot of flashing with disk activity.

 

[may-yuhan]

Yes, you can just hit the power button.

The one thing I don't like is the brightness of the blue LED's.
Very bright, and a lot of flashing with disk activity.

What about disk-hibernation? Works? Does the cooling keep on spinning when the drives are hibernated?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, you can just hit the power button.

The one thing I don't like is the brightness of the blue LED's.
Very bright, and a lot of flashing with disk activity.

What about disk-hibernation? Works? Does the cooling keep on spinning when the drives are hibernated?

I don't know.
I've never used it like that.
Currently, it is USB connected to me NAS box, as the holder for the several backup drives.

But either Windows or Linux..each drive is seen as a regular individual USB drive.

 

[may-yuhan]

Yes, you can just hit the power button.

The one thing I don't like is the brightness of the blue LED's.
Very bright, and a lot of flashing with disk activity.

What about disk-hibernation? Works? Does the cooling keep on spinning when the drives are hibernated?

I don't know.
I've never used it like that.
Currently, it is USB connected to me NAS box, as the holder for the several backup drives.

But either Windows or Linux..each drive is seen as a regular individual USB drive.

All right, I might buy it and try it out myself. It it doesn't meet my expectations I'll just return it. It's 60% cheaper than the one I bought so I'm interested in it. Thank you both! I really appreciated the help and patience.

 

[WyomingKnott]

That's why we're here. For my personal interest, could you come back to this and tell me if it did what you want?

 

[may-yuhan]

That's why we're here. For my personal interest, could you come back to this and tell me if it did what you want?

Hi, yes I will definitely, if I can purchase it. I need to wait for the refund money of my ORICO purchase first, then find a website which sells the item to Europe (The Netherlands). Then wait for shipping etc, so might be next month. But I'll keep you updated whenever I know more myself.

 

[may-yuhan]

That's why we're here. For my personal interest, could you come back to this and tell me if it did what you want?

Hi, I was going to give you an update on the HDD situation. I have learnt a couple of things which made me not decide to buy it. No matter what kind of JBOD & Raid & HDD Hub I would buy. Almost all of them wont be able to put the drives to idle. The reason for this is because the power supply is separated from the PC. The OS can't adjust the power of the drive because the adapter is separated and will always push all the wattage that it can give. Therefore always making it spin. Now 2.5'' HDD enclosures can be put to idle because the power supply is directly connected to the PC (USB = power supply), so the PC can decide how much power goes to it. That's why I decided not to buy it after all. I can't confirm it but I'm 90% sure of it.