I am thinking about a thecus N3200, with 3 1Tb 7200r hard disk, raid 5; so the total capacity would be 2Tb. Now I use raid 0 of 2 250gb hard disk, and have to burn lots of dvds because of the small hard disk capacity. and moreover you can imagine everyday I feel unsafe.
I have not used a thecus or any kind of external raid disk. raid 5 is safe enough for me , I just want to make sure it will be fast, and yes I don't expect it to be the same speed of my onboard raid 0.
What kind of data storage method do you use? welcome any kind of response.
Thanks in advance.

regards,
Dustblue

Of note, recently drobo finally included a fire wire version of their unit.

I've been using a Thecus 5200 with great satisfaction since autumn 2006, with 5 500GB disks, totalling a 2TB NET storage.
However as I have never had a HD fail, I can't really comment on the rebuilding of the Raid 5.
All test reports I have been reading indicate though, that the Thecus is a very reliable and fast product.
On my Gigabit Ethernet, I get transfer speeds of about 50MB/Sec, compared to the 135MB/Sec from the internal Raid 0, that is on Vista (32 and 64bit).
Setting up the Thecus was easy, all the firmware updates since the last one and a half years functioned without any problems.

The Drobo is supposed to be relatively slow in an Ethernet surrounding, according to all tests I've been reading. You can google for that.

As a backup method, I use syncronization software, which keeps my folders safe.

Hope that helps

Jost:
I think 50mb/s is enough for data backup. I didn't want to go N5200 because the capacity/price of 5200 and 3200 is about the same, so I think I better use a 3200 first and buy another 3200 or 5200 when needed.
Thanks a lot! Great info for me:)

bryan:
Thanks! I'll google that.

Dustblue

I use the Lacie Raid 5's. Have 10 of the 2 terabytes and two more on order of the 4 terbytes.

The early ones came with fw 400, fw 800 and the new ones are fw 800 and esta.

I use them for storage on line, and in studio shoot directly to one and haven't noticed any kind of slowdown.

The first 6 are nearly two years old and the none have come close to failing (god I hate writing that part).

JR

OK, I've got to get this off my chest: Thecus is an awful name!

Wiebetech makes some good and professional, if pricey drives. I've used one of their early models for a few years now and am now looking to go Sata outside of my Macpro.

I am really interested in getting a "backplane" unit, where you just slide the drive in without any tray whatsoever, like a giant floppy. Wiebe has one but it isn't cheap. There are a few models out there but it hasn't been out long enough to be standard.

The Gdrives are very nice, but perhaps more for the video crowd. The drobo is not made for swapping out drives, just as a dumb but safe unit (not a bad thing).

Barefeats.com is a good source for info on drive speeds and raid cards.

Thanks James, I appreciate your help. Anyway the LaCie is a little too expensive for me compared to drobe and thecus.

I remeber that you said you spend 3000dollar a month for hard drives, this is somehow too much and I dont know why don't you just delete most of the original files of those already finished cases, and just keep the chosen best ones? Coz here in Beijing, I always do that, for my kind of work, once the editorials got published, or the ads got to the clients hands and they signed the check, I don't have responsbility for keeping the originals anymore. I don't know if your hi-end works differs a lot.

Great info, thanks a lot! I'll check barefeats.com.

I have been using a Wiebetech RTX-600, 6TB SCSI320 unit in Raid 5. Disks are Seagate NS2 1TB.

Much faster than a NAS, works great, but a bit too noisy for my taste.

Cheers,
Bernard

Hey James,

Would you open one of the drawers when the 4TB unit arrives?
I'd like to know what brand/model hard drives are being used.

Thanks in advance,
Billy

Sure Billy,

They're on backorder right now.

JR

Dustblue,
A vote for Wiebetech from my side; I did intensive research 6 months ago and this was my conclusion in terms of my mass storage system. I run a RTX 4-bay unit and a 2-bay unit for a total of 6 TB.

I have also have a Lacie drive (1TB unit); the power supply failed very quickly (they did replace it). What I don't like about the Lacie is that the drive gets very very hot from what you can feel on the outside.

In comparison, the RTX-400 stays very cool; even over the last days where it had 32 Celsius in my room (New Jersey, no air condition).

I also like about it:
- You can slide in nacked SATA drived (like a CD, so to speak) without mounting any frames or holders
- It uses a steelvine adapter, which is a single e-sata connection to your computer, that multiplexes all 4 drives (you see 4 drive icons on a Mac desktop).

I use Hitachi deskstart 1TB drives in each of the slots.

I think the other quality option is G-Technologies, but they did not have a sata solution that worked with my PowerMac-G5 (requires an Intel Mac).

cheers,
Peter

Peter and Bernard:

Thanks for sharing. I try hard to find a wiebetech dealer in mainland China, but I failed. Maybe later when I go to HongKong I can try it, or else I can only just buy a thecus(drobo doesn't sell in China either..).

Anyway thanks again for all you guys' help, I really appreciate that.

regards,
Dustblue