32TB Drive Suggestions

[Ty Maier]

Hey guys,

I’m gonna need to invest in a 32TB raid in the next two weeks. I’m on a 5,1 Mac Pro. Can I drop four 8TB drives in it reliably? I’ll probably use it at least another year. Which is about how long I’ll need this drive. I’m guessing my best bet is some sort of USB 3.1 System otherwise. Could spend up to $3k but would love to keep it at $2k. Reliability is priority over money. Also open to something that is more expandable.

Thanks,
Ty Maier

 

[Tanner Wilson]

Not sure if there is anything that big for even $3k... Are you wanting an active usable 32TB? Because then you'd likely need more like 50TB of media, which quality reliable media by itself will probably cost $2-3k without any sort of server to stick it in

 

[Mohammed Almedfa]

I've had good success with the Akitio Thunder2 Quad, which costs under $350 on B&H. Not sure if there's a way to get thunderbolt on a 5.1 Mac Pro. You could put 4 8TB Hard drives in the Thunder2 Quad in RAID-1. HGST 8TB drives are $250 each on B&H.

So could get 2 of these systems for around $1350 each. Total of $2700.

Not bad for 64TB of media.

If you just want RAID 0, of course you can spend half the money. Though of course you'll want 3 copies of your files on different drives regardless, with 1 being geographically diverse (Different building ideally.) to the others.

Just checked and there is also a Thunder3 Quad available now at a similar price, in case that better suits the ports you'd like to be using.


PS. Read some reports of slow performance using RAID-1 due to the lack of a hardware RAID controller. So may not be suitable for this purpose. I've only used this unit in RAID-0 personally, where it performs as one would expect!

 

[Mohammed Almedfa]

10TB Hard drives of the same model also seem to now be available at a similar $/GB to the 8TB, so even higher density could be achieved!

 

[Ty Maier]

32TB should be fine. I’m looking for 24-26TB of useable space.

I do not believe there is any way of including thunderbolt on a 5,1 Mac Pro. I know it’s getting time to upgrade the machine. I feel like it’s gonna be pretty expensive to match the 12 cores I’ve got rocking right now.

 

[Blair Thornton]

Try using 10Tb Enterprise level drives like these https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...41&cm_re=ST10000NM0016-_-22-178-941-_-Product to increase reliability.

Case: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1344720-REG/highpoint_rs6114v_rocketstor_6114v_4_bay_usb.html

BTW, there never will be a way to get Thunderbolt on a MacPro 5,1.

 

[Kyle Jones]

I bought a Promise Pegasus2 r6 for $700 on eBay (had 6 2TB drives in it that I could probably sell). Then I bought 6x 8TB Deskstar NAS drives for a little under $1,500 form B&H. The combo works really well. Good luck!

 

[Remington Chase]

You could put 8gb drives in the four drive bays and then software raid them. Then pull your CD and put in a 500gb SSD for the OS and apps.

 

[Marc Wielage]

BTW, there never will be a way to get Thunderbolt on a MacPro 5,1.

Yeah, Apple really screwed users on that by making it impossible to just use a PCI Thunderbolt card in the cheesegrater Macs. There's a lot of "planned obsolescence" in Apple's history, more so than in quite a few technology companies.

I'm honestly not sure if a USB 3.1 card would work in a 5,1 Mac, but it's a good question. @Jake Blackstone would probably know.

 

[DJ Meyer]

Yeah, Apple really screwed users on that by making it impossible to just use a PCI Thunderbolt card in the cheesegrater Macs. There's a lot of "planned obsolescence" in Apple's history, more so than in quite a few technology companies.

I'm honestly not sure if a USB 3.1 card would work in a 5,1 Mac, but it's a good question. @Jake Blackstone would probably know.

Thunderbolt didn’t exist when the 5,1 Mac was released, and requires a GPIO header that was not put on that board.

USB 3 and 3.1 cards will work. Just not thunderbolt.

 

[Remington Chase]

We have a 3.1 USB C $35 card in ours and it works great.