Looking for an enclosure for 4 drives to run as JBOD. Stumbled across this which was cheaper and is also 5-bay capacity. Only around £8 for shipping to the UK. Much cheaper than eBay etc.
ORICO seems to be a good brand. I had a 2x bay one some years ago that was absolutely fine so I'm chuffed with this!!
18 comments
OrribleHarry
30 Sep 17#1
Is this just a multi drive USB 3 enclosure basically?
Edit, yes did some research would be ideal next to my server as a backup.
djonesuk
30 Sep 17#2
Yes, but it has RAID 0/1/5/10 functionality.
dragon2611 to djonesuk
30 Sep 17#3
I'd rather it just present the drives as JBOD and have my OS handle the raid, even if it does mean less performance, least then if the enclosure goes bang there's a greater chance of recovering some/all the data
robodan918
1 Oct 17#4
good unit for the price worried though that buying it through gearbest=no warranty
looking for a 5bay nas at the moment - might end up just building a diy nas in an itx case I have laying around heat
CampGareth
1 Oct 17#5
You could pay less and get a second-hand HP Microserver:
Pros: Cheaper More flexible Standalone
Cons: Only gigabit by default, USB3 can be faster Power consumption Complexity
powerbrick
1 Oct 17#6
what about customs and handling chaeges? In before they 'never charge me', blah, blah, blah.
Isnt compatible with 220V. The RAID version can be run in 'Clear RAID' mode which is exactly what I intend on doing, then just using Backblaze to have a copy in the cloud
matdey
1 Oct 17#8
Would love something like this for my XBox especially as I now have ~3.5TB on the 5TB drive. I wish there was a way of backing it up (other than just copying each game manually to a spare disk periodically, which soooo painful and slow).
mogsog
1 Oct 17#9
You could pay 46 quid less and get a £67 orico 4 bay top loader. Cons are exposed drives and less throughput but if you just want a cheap back-up system it's a lot less.
To make sense of this as a backup device, you`d need to find/if/how well your USB3 port supported UASP, also how the external drives would appear (ideally as a contiguous empty space). Not a fan of traditional backup :smile:
bytemaster to jasee
6 Oct 17#16
A VERY bad idea to have all drives presented as a contiguous space by a proprietary controller. A single disk failure could lose all of your data. If you want a large synthetic drive then it is worth considering something like Drivepool, preferably with duplication for any important data.
jasee to bytemaster
7 Oct 17#17
Agreed. However the controller problem would exist anyway, particularly if the drives were over 2TBytes. And, as I said, I`m not a fan of traditional backup where a number of disk partitions etc are backed up to a single file with with incrementional additions
mogsog to bytemaster
7 Oct 17#18
I use it with refs storage spaces on a three way mirror , I can move the drives to a internal sata connected environment and the drive pool shows the same. The device contains a jmicron sata to USB bridge. Fairly common no more proprietary than anything else similar. Link to the USB to sata bridge specs: jmicron.com/PDF…Eab
bytemaster
1 Oct 17#11
I would strongly advise against using this type of enclosure with USB. I have a number of 4-bay enclosures from several manufacturers and all suffer problems when using USB. Most of the time they work fine, but when stressed with large files, or a transfer of many smaller files they can fall over. When they fall over they do so badly and I have always found data to be all but impossible to recover. The problem lies with the USB<-> SATA bridge chips.
I run all my enclosures using E-SATA and they never miss a beat, just as reliable as an internal drive. YMMV, but I have been running 4-bay enclosures for more than 8 years now, and have a current fleet of 10.
The Orico units do look well constructed, but I can't see any ESATA ones on Gearbest.
jimbb to bytemaster
2 Oct 17#12
Agree, I got a few 5 bay enclosure with USB and they tend to disconnect from time to time when transferring file and I have to unplug and replug just to get it work. Definitely something wrong with either the enclosure or the USB 3.0 chip set but even I update to the latest driver it does not do any help.
Switched to e-sata and never had a problem ever since. Definitely e-sata going forward.
mogsog to bytemaster
2 Oct 17#14
The 4 bay I posted above has e-sata if anybody is interested.
![Fresh Breakfast Meat Box (Using code) @ Campbells Meat [Haggis / Lorne Sausage / Bacon / Black Pudding & More]](/images/topics/208684_1.jpg)
![[Xbox One] Q. u. b. e: Director's Cut on Deals with Gold](/images/topics/208716_1.jpg)
Opening post
ORICO seems to be a good brand. I had a 2x bay one some years ago that was absolutely fine so I'm chuffed with this!!
18 comments
Edit, yes did some research would be ideal next to my server as a backup.
worried though that buying it through gearbest=no warranty
looking for a 5bay nas at the moment - might end up just building a diy nas in an itx case I have laying around
heat
Pros:
Cheaper
More flexible
Standalone
Cons:
Only gigabit by default, USB3 can be faster
Power consumption
Complexity
gearbest.com/oth…tml
Note: US Plug.
link: ORICO 6648US3-C USB 3.0 2.5
s.aliexpress.com/nEv…vYZ
(from AliExpress Android)
Not a fan of traditional backup :smile:
However the controller problem would exist anyway, particularly if the drives were over 2TBytes.
And, as I said, I`m not a fan of traditional backup where a number of disk partitions etc are backed up to a single file with with incrementional additions
jmicron.com/PDF…Eab
I run all my enclosures using E-SATA and they never miss a beat, just as reliable as an internal drive. YMMV, but I have been running 4-bay enclosures for more than 8 years now, and have a current fleet of 10.
The Orico units do look well constructed, but I can't see any ESATA ones on Gearbest.
Switched to e-sata and never had a problem ever since. Definitely e-sata going forward.