[Glorious1]

I'm the market for a 4- to 5-bay enclosure for media to attach to my Mac mini. I'm not really interested in NAS since the mini does everything I need it to do in that regard. I'm not really needing RAID either, though it's not a problem as long as it has a JBOD mode.

The problem is I have read of many many problems between recent Mac OS versions and almost every brand of enclosure and almost every type of connection. That includes USB3, Thunderbolt, and Firewire (not USB2 I guess). The problems are in two categories: (1) the drive disconnects abruptly at random times, or when the mac sleeps, or when the drives spin down, and; (2) the drives never do spin down, even when the Mac sleeps, or sometimes when it is shut down.

I've talked to several manufacturers and it sounds like they can't assure me I won't have such problems. There are some work-arounds for some problems, such as a little program to prevent the drives from spinning down so they don't disconnect. But I want the drives to spin down when they are not being used, and automatically spin up again when needed. That's how things worked back in the days of wine and roses.

I know this isn't directly an XBMC question, but I'm sure a lot of Mac users here have such enclosures, and I've just about run out of ideas on how to find one that is going to work right. If you have an enclosure, please let us know the brand and model, how it is connected, and what your experience has been in this regard. Thank you!

[lsakowski]

I have been using a Drobo for the last 4+ years, at first for my iTunes library, now for XBMC and iTunes. I have never had the issues you mentioned with MacOSX, but did with Linux. I have it connected with firewire.

My MacMini is an older model, around 2007/2008.

The nice things about the Drobo:
You can start with just 2 drives and add more as you need them, it takes care of everything itself.
If you loose a drive, all your information is backed up automatically. When you replace the drive the unit replaces the information automatically.

Unfortunately they are a little expensive. My first one died after about 3 years. I have a new one that is about 6 months old. I have lost about 5 drives (WD) during the 4 years (2Gb have been pretty solid, 3Gb have been less reliable), but have never lost any of my data.

[wgstarks]

I have been using a Drobo for the last 4+ years, at first for my iTunes library, now for XBMC and iTunes. I have never had the issues you mentioned with MacOSX, but did with Linux. I have it connected with firewire.

My MacMini is an older model, around 2007/2008.

The nice things about the Drobo:
You can start with just 2 drives and add more as you need them, it takes care of everything itself.
If you loose a drive, all your information is backed up automatically. When you replace the drive the unit replaces the information automatically.

Unfortunately they are a little expensive. My first one died after about 3 years. I have a new one that is about 6 months old. I have lost about 5 drives (WD) during the 4 years (2Gb have been pretty solid, 3Gb have been less reliable), but have never lost any of my data.

I was also going to suggest Drobo but I notice they don't list Mavericks as being a supported OS. Also might be a little over kill if you just want JBOD.

[Glorious1]

Yes, I actually have a Drobo 2 (with 4 2-TB WD Green drives). I'm considering selling it and going straight JBOD and putting 3-TB drives in (probably just a few to start). I wouldn't say often, but occasionally there are mysterious foulups where things won't mount or unmount. Once or twice the data appeared to be gone, but I was able to get it back with Disk Utility and DiskWarrior. I'm not keen on Drobo Dashboard getting between me and my data. With a JBOD, if there are problems you can take an individual drive out and work with it on another system if necessary. And it seems very slow (USB2 and Firewire 800). On the good side, it hasn't actually lost my data.

Isakowski, it sounds like you are burning through drives unusually fast. Is it running too hot or are you using cheap drives?

[N.O.W.A.L.L]

You may say I am a fool, or too old school, but I dislike NAS/Raid/Drobo etc... but I have a different approach.

What I've done since the early days of XBMC and my first Mini, as Minis have a lot of USB/FW ports, is to use regular desktop big hard disks.

Then, every 2 or 3 years, I buy a new bunch of HDs because after this time every HD becomes tired. I don't wait them to have problems, it's preventive.
I keep the old ones as backups. and I gift the older old ones to family/friends...

Simple hard disks are cheap. For example this winter I just bought 4x Lacie Porsche 4To, for 800 CHF (about 870 $, so about 55$ per To) to replace the old ones.
Sure it makes a lot of cables, but at least every 2 or 3 years I have brand new hardware, generally with bigger free space

[Glorious1]

Thanks for the input Nowall. That's more or less what I want to do, but I just want to keep them in a single enclosure to reduce the clutter and wires.
My idea for backup is to just back up within the enclosure. Two disks will have active media, two for backups. Ideally a 5th for backing up the computers in the house.

How are your Lacie's connected to the mini? Do they sleep when not accessed, or only when the mini sleeps, or what?

Regarding the Drobo and most RAID systems, it gives you instant recovery if a disk fails, but it's not really a backup. If you accidentally delete a bunch of files, there's nowhere to go to get them back. And if the filesystem on the RAID gets corrupted, having a redundant drive doesn't help.

[N.O.W.A.L.L]

Yes the 4 Lacie use the 4 USB ports of the mini
My last HD were Iomega chained in FireWire 800, but I didnt notice any problem in USB2, I can read without framedropping any big 15Go 1080p mkv (but I'm still on Snow Leopard, the best version for XBMC, maybe with Lion/MLion/Mavericks it's different).
Indeed I had sometimes your problem of disk ejecting themselves when they were chained in Firewire (3 on a chain), but never on USB2.

About HD sleeping, in OSX energy saver panel, I just enabled "put disks on sleep when not used", and that's actually what they do, when the Mini is ON and idle for some time.
For example if I am watching a movie on HD1, HDs 2, 3 and 4 get asleep after a while, but don't get ejected, they just sleep (no effect on movie reading).
After the movie if I want to start a movie on HD2, it wakes up (maybe 1 or 2 seconds of latency until it gets ready again)

When the Mini is OFF or sleeping, any external HD connected to it "usually" stops spinning. But I guess it depends of the model (I remember an old 500Gb Freecom HD who didnt sleep after shutdown)
But then the HD is still under electrical tension, sometimes still with its LED on (depending of the brand, model), so I took the habit to manually switch my HDS off when the mini is not used I use it exclusively for XBMC), it's just a matter of seconds to do. It's safer, as the weak point of desktop hard disks is often the eletrical transfo.

I agree with you about Raid/Drobo.
I prefer to have several separate HDs, to avoid problems of heating (I always choose brands in aluminium for thermal dissipation) and vibrations (I keep reasonable space between them, and put them on a thin foam "carpet"). This way I can choose silent HDs.

About enclosing your HDS in one box, well I guess it's OK, but be sure to buy a very good one of a known brand, not a cheap one.
Be conscious that your enclosure, with 4 or 5 HD in it, will need strong fan(s), and therefore will be noisy.

To summerize, I am not sure you need very expensive storage, ultra mirrored RAID, when it's used only for XBMC, because you store mainly static and big files on it (not millions of little system files like on a disk hosting an OS), there are not so much copy/paste/delete/move accesses, almost no fragmentation, so poor risks to get bad sectors corruption.

[Glorious1]

Yes, sounds like those LaCie's are working well for you. Too bad LaCie won't sell diskless enclosures. They charge "big" money for the disks in the 4big and 5big

[N.O.W.A.L.L]

Sure. well there was a bargain when I bought them (110$ less on each, so I spared 440$ in total)

About the LaCieXBig series, well, I had 2 of them (for work). They were early 1To models with Ethernet ports.
Both fried after 1 year (electrical alimentation) and same thing with same model with friends.
Electrical port was a proprietary format, so impossible to buy electrical alimentation separately

I'm sure they have solved the problem now but well, it so pissed me off that I won't but a LaCieBig ever!

Just for the fun, look at this beauty, it's only 2HD, expensive, but supports JBOD and seems rock-solid: Sonnet Fusion

[wgstarks]

Here is another enclosure that can be purchased driveless. I haven't actually used this model but I have used other owc enclosures without any problems.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-driv...top/#price

[Glorious1]

Here is another enclosure that can be purchased driveless. I haven't actually used this model but I have used other owc enclosures without any problems.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-driv...top/#price

Thanks, yes that's a good candidate at a decent price. Unfortunately JBOD ("independent") mode is not available on USB3 for some reason, only Firewire (and eSATA).

[Glorious1]

I ended up ordering direct from DatOptic their 5-bay, trayless sBox-eSUJ for $300. It has eSata (which I can't use) and USB3. They seem to be well built and somewhat mac-oriented and people say they have good customer support, although it is concerning that there are very few reviews of their many products online. I ordered 4 3TB WD Greens to go in it for now. They should work fine since it is not RAID, may save power, and they have a better chance of sleeping when not being used than WD Reds. Also cheaper. I'll let you know how it goes.

[N.O.W.A.L.L]

Sure.

I'd be curious to know about the fan noise and ability to sleep when unused of your new setup

[Glorious1]

I posted a review of the DatOptic enclosure:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=186550

[N.O.W.A.L.L]

thanks for the review, very interesting.