Looking for fastest USB3 external raid 5 enclosure

[lupodwdm]

I have run out of room on my win 7 box (Revo 2 for boot drive, 2x Vertex 2;s in a raid 0, and 2x WD 10K drives in a Raid 0).

I need to look into getting an external USB3 raid 5 enclosure but I want something that has it's own built in controller (I know that can really be a bottleneck.) I am about to head out to the store tomorrow afternoon so any suggestions you can give me would be greatly appreciated.) I also may move this setup from one system to another eventually but being external with it's own controller I think this would not be a problem.

I'll probably populate the enclosure with 4 or 5 WD 10K sata drives; they are currently on sale. However, do you think it would make a difference if I'm using Raid 5 if I went with 2TB 7200 RPM drives? Would I notice any real speed difference going from 10K to 7200K?

Sorry for the short notice but I only have tomorrow off to shop and I figured I would come here and ask the REAL experts. What do you all suggest? I don't need NAS capability since it will be directly attached via USB3.

Thanks in advance.

 

[lupodwdm]

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[00Roush]

I am not sure how stuck you are on going with USB 3.0 but it might be hard to find a good external enclosure with RAID capabilities and USB 3.0. This is mostly due to USB 3.0 being fairly new and that most companies have been just using eSATA 6.0Gbps instead. You might take a look at the Sans Digital TowerRAID TR5UT-BP though.

Now for your 7200 RPM drives vs the 10k drives... it all depends on your performance goal. If you will be putting these drives in an external enclosure the 2 TB drives will most likely perform the same as the 10K drives for file transfers. In my opinion the only time you would really notice a difference between the drives is if you will be doing a lot of small operations per second. Like copying tons of small files or serving a database. But like I said it does depend on your performance goal.

00Roush

 

[lupodwdm]

On my rampage II extreme I had to disable my 6Gb/s controller and stick with 3Gb/s. (It's a known problem with raid). Therefore I;m not sure that the esata port in the back will work.

The one you suggested, does it have it's own raid controller chip built in? I tried the Dlink one months ago in raid 5 and the performance was HORRIBLE. Their suggestion was to run it as JOBD!!!

I really need to stick with an external enclosure that has it's own built in controller that will work with USB3.

Thanks again!

 

[claykin]

I'm in no way promoting them but have you looked at www.addonics.com?

 

[00Roush]

On my rampage II extreme I had to disable my 6Gb/s controller and stick with 3Gb/s. (It's a known problem with raid). Therefore I;m not sure that the esata port in the back will work.

The one you suggested, does it have it's own raid controller chip built in? I tried the Dlink one months ago in raid 5 and the performance was HORRIBLE. Their suggestion was to run it as JOBD!!!

I really need to stick with an external enclosure that has it's own built in controller that will work with USB3.

Thanks again!

I believe the one I recommended does have a built in raid controller chip so it could work with your onboard eSATA port. Also it comes with its own 6Gb/s controller card. You can also use USB 3.0. I will say that I have never really used Sans Digital but generally have heard they make decent products. So my recommendation was just as something to fit your requirements. If you are interested here is a bit more on the Sans Digital stuff.

00Roush

 

[lupodwdm]

I am not sure how stuck you are on going with USB 3.0 but it might be hard to find a good external enclosure with RAID capabilities and USB 3.0. This is mostly due to USB 3.0 being fairly new and that most companies have been just using eSATA 6.0Gbps instead. You might take a look at the Sans Digital TowerRAID TR5UT-BP though.

Now for your 7200 RPM drives vs the 10k drives... it all depends on your performance goal. If you will be putting these drives in an external enclosure the 2 TB drives will most likely perform the same as the 10K drives for file transfers. In my opinion the only time you would really notice a difference between the drives is if you will be doing a lot of small operations per second. Like copying tons of small files or serving a database. But like I said it does depend on your performance goal.

00Roush

This may be an obvious question, but does this unit come with drives pre- installed? Also, how do you configure the raid 5? Software or webGUI? Also, if I am copying large audio files would the 7200 be better?