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by Brian Stirling on Sun Dec 12, 2021 7:28 pm
Brian Stirling
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I think I mentioned before that I'll be replacing my nearly 7 year old laptop and 6 year old desktop, both Windows boxes, with a new MacBook Pro (M1 Max 160 inch) but I have three internal HD's (WD Black) of 6TB each containing the main copies of my images and video and if I decommission the older PC's I'll need some way to connect them to the MacBook. Since I have 3 HD's a 4 drive enclosure would seem most appropriate but the interface thing appears to be somewhat jumbled.  That is, the new MacBooks are at Thunderbolt 4 but most of the external HD cages are some variant of USB3 or T3 -- T4 I guess is still too new to see many vendors with T4 offerings.  Now T4 speeds are not needed for these legacy HD's as they top out about 200MB/s, but if and when I upgrade to SSD then being able to run at the full T4 speeds would be desirable.  So, what are the best choices for external drive cages when money IS and object?

Having a dock for the MacBook to connect external monitors etc is a separate issue, or is it?


Brian
 

by Mark L on Sun Dec 12, 2021 10:36 pm
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I am in a similar situation; my 14" M1 Max is on order and I am switching to it from a PC.  My feeling is that a dock is required to connect a large monitor, a mechanical keyboard, external drives, etc using a single cable between the dock and laptop.  

Regarding the storage drives, I have been using a NAS on my home network (connected to the network by ethernet at the wireless router).  Depending on how you have the WD drives formatted you may have an issue connecting to the Mac so that you can read and write to them. 

Good luck and I look forward to seeing responses regarding external cases and to hearing how you do with the transitiion.
 

by Brian Stirling on Tue Dec 14, 2021 11:00 pm
Brian Stirling
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Thanks Mark.

Yeah, a dock is desirable to limit the number of cables needed to be plugged into the MacBook but there are not a lot of Thunderbolt 3 or 4 docks out there that make full use of the 40Gb/sec speed -- most docks are USB3.1 (C) but limited to 10Gb/sec. For legacy HD's that isn't a problem, but if you want to connect a modern SSD that is capable of 2GB/sec or faster then you pretty much need a T3 or T4 dock. From what I've seen the range of units available appear to be pretty spotty as far as connection to external monitors is concerned and maybe that's correctable with an update by Apple but I'm not so sure it's all on Apple.

As far a a NAS is concerned I'm not 100% sold on the idea of an always on drive setup -- I had a NAS a few years ago but when I had a power failure while travelling I found that all my drives were dead (mechanically) -- not being around to power the unit back on right away appears to have resulted in dead HD's.


Brian
 

by Mark L on Wed Dec 15, 2021 9:23 am
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At the present time most of the T4 docks are backordered/out of stock, but that will change.  If you want/need to move your laptop regularly having some sort of dock to centralize/simplify connection to the external monitor and other devices is crucial.  

There are risks with NAS systems, but most of those apply to any storage that you have powered up all the time.  In fact, I don't leave my NAS powered up all the time.

Good luck with your new setup and I expect that you will like the M1 Max.
 

by Brian Stirling on Tue May 10, 2022 11:45 pm
Brian Stirling
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Location: Salt Lake City, UT USA
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A follow up to a thread I started in December...

I ordered a Thunderbolt 4 Dock, for $299 from OWC, should handle the interface requirements but I still have an issue with my older image and video HD's that are still installed in my now 6 year old desktop. I have three of these 6TB drives that hold my image and video data and I'd like to get an external cage that can handle at least three but preferably four or five SATA HD's. I'm not looking for a RAID setup, just a means to access the data on my MacBook. The max data rate from the HD's is around 200MB/sec so I guess it doesn't need to be a full on T4 box. Any recommendations?


Brian
 

by Mark L on Wed May 11, 2022 8:06 am
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I hear what you are looking for, but have no knowledge or suggestions for you.  Personally I would configure a RAID array for the added safety that they provide in case of disk failure.  
 

by ChrisRoss on Wed Jun 01, 2022 10:52 pm
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Mark L wrote:I hear what you are looking for, but have no knowledge or suggestions for you.  Personally I would configure a RAID array for the added safety that they provide in case of disk failure.  
RAID does not actually add to data security as it will replicate any errors across the array - it is really just a means to get back online quickly while the array is re-built.  So a mirrored RAID, with only 1 disk failing you have the other disc or one disc in a RAID5 array goes out, you can still read the data while the system re-builds the array.  But lots of things can take out all the discs at once.  So while you reduce the danger from disk failures you add the danger of raid controller failures.  There is even a website dedicated to this concept:  https://www.raidisnotabackup.com/  and a bunch of other sites with similar messages. 
Chris Ross
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Australia
http://www.aus-natural.com   Instagram: @ausnaturalimages  Now offering Fine Art printing Services
 

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