Storage forum: urgent recommendation for external port multiplier enclosure

Why I ask is I'm going to drop any old ideas or solutions. My experience with eSATA is that it's fine for backup drives but for day to day work, I put the drive internal.

Again, use the prior discussions.
Bob

Hey Bob,

Thanks for the reply.

All internal bays are currently in use already. I have a backup system in place that works well at the moment so I'd like to just keep it that way as opposed to buying new drives and having to copy and reconfigure everything.
I can't afford downtime so I'm looking for the simplest option. As I say, the Firmtek enclosure is robust and is used by more than a few of my colleagues. I just can't foot the $500+ bill for it right now.

Cheers.

-A

I've seen such fail as the users unplug and the contents scramble. Or the cable falls out.

Internal bays should accomodate a few of the nice 3TB drives so are you writing that 12TB of storage is not enough?

Maybe you need to ask more of your employee to foot the bill for this big data work?

-> I've run into a few Mac Pro users over the years and many are off in some unsupportable area. That is they have a flaky selection of gear. At the office we don't allow such because we can't afford the down time.
Bob

My data system is fine and dandy thanks.

It would cost way more for me to go out and buy 3tb drives then spend all the time copying and backing up the new drives etc etc.

A working port multiplier enclosure will do the trick perfectly so that's what I'm trying to find.

Thanks for your input though.

-A

There are working port multipliers HOWEVER your issue is more basic. You need someone to dive in and figure out what happened to what you had. Something went wrong and the folk you are dealing with failed you or they are simply vendors and support is not there or "extra charge."

I can't offer you a direct answer other than I see such work but we move the folk back to internals because of the failures folk bring us.

My view is skewed I know because folk only bring us the failures. So we have a way to fix it in a solid fashion.

-> Your comment about drive costs seems out of date. That is, unless you are outside the USA.
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY is now under 140 buck. And even 4 of those is cheaper than your 500 buck enclosure after you add any drives.

Besides you can change them one by one as needed.

--> It's always nice to read what folk are doing out there. You never revealed what's up with your system. or it's application.
Bob