Question Rack mounted DAS RAID array/enclosures (not NAS)

msr1

Junior Member
Sep 25, 2020
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I'm looking to purchase a 4-bay (or more) drive enclosure which I can configure as RAID5 or similar, preferably rack mounted but I'm really struggling to find anything that's not a NAS. I don't really need NAS features, and would prefer just to have something that's either USB-C or Thunderbolt 2 or 3. It will be used for backing up video files and I was planning on populating it with Seagate IronWolf 8TB drives. Any recommendations?
 

msr1

Junior Member
Sep 25, 2020
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Speed isn't a massive concern as I use a RAID0 Thunderbolt 2 DAS for video editing. This will serve as a backup for that (daily incremental backups) so more speed is preferred but USB3.0 would suffice. Anything beyond that would be nice for future proofing.
 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
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Speed isn't a massive concern as I use a RAID0 Thunderbolt 2 DAS for video editing. This will serve as a backup for that (daily incremental backups) so more speed is preferred but USB3.0 would suffice. Anything beyond that would be nice for future proofing.

Ok, a Rack mount 8+ bay enclosure is going to be a NAS. Future proofing may mean getting one that has a 10Gbit port on it so you can get some more speed out of it later on.
 

msr1

Junior Member
Sep 25, 2020
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Ok, it seems like I might just have to accept NAS as the solution. At least it seems a lot of them have features to turn on/off at scheduled times. I have been looking at this QNAP model which seems good value for money and has a 10 Gbit ethernet port

 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
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It's a well known brand, probably work pretty well. I didn't go thru the site to see how much it costs. Also, check the drive compatibility on the website to make sure you get compatible drives, just means they tested those drives and they didn't cause problems with the controller/backplane. Also, I would pick up a spare drive when you finally make the purchase, it's nice to have one in a box for quick replacement. Raid 5 only allows for one disk to fail before data loss. It's cool that it has USB ports for local backups also, so you can back up the array to a usb attached drive
 

piokos

Senior member
Nov 2, 2018
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I'm looking to purchase a 4-bay (or more) drive enclosure which I can configure as RAID5 or similar, preferably rack mounted but I'm really struggling to find anything that's not a NAS. I don't really need NAS features, and would prefer just to have something that's either USB-C or Thunderbolt 2 or 3. It will be used for backing up video files and I was planning on populating it with Seagate IronWolf 8TB drives. Any recommendations?
DAS rack units exist, but they're usually much larger than you need.
Extending a server (which probably already has 8+ bays) by another 4 just doesn't make much sense.
For example, Dell's DAS lineup - called PowerVault - has units from 12 to 84 drive bays.

That said, this probably what you want:
 
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