4 bay External Hard Drives

[Grayfox]

Has anyone used any of these?

One of my 2TB externals is dieing and will be getting it replaced soon.

Was thinking of getting a Hotway 4 bay RAID Enclosure(HFR2-SU3S2)
It can support 4x4TB drives in Most common RAID setups.
But it is $300 with no HDD and adding 4 4TB it will cost $1200-$1500

Or is there a cheaper 4 bay RAID storage system?

 

[Ibonibo]

I think the price is fair. Don't think you gonna find them a lot cheaper. When I look at my retailer, prices are similar....
Didn't know the one you posted, looks interesting.

 

[DQuaN]

Do you need that much redundancy? What about a mirrored 2-bay drive?

 

[BobK]

@DQuaN, did you mean redundancy or storage space? A 4-bay box makes 75% of the total space available for use, a mirrored 2-bay only makes 50% available.

@Grayfox, I've been using a Synology DS411 4-drive box for a couple years now, and I'm very happy with it.

 

[Grayfox]

Do you need that much redundancy? What about a mirrored 2-bay drive?

But with a 4 bay i can have striped mirror for more space. which is what i am mainly after

 

[acascianelli]

But with a 4 bay i can have striped mirror for more space. which is what i am mainly after

With 4 drives you could do RAID 5 with no hot spare and get more space than RAID 0+1, or RAID 5 with a hot spare and have the same space as RAID 0+1. RAID 0+1 will give you slightly better read and significantly better write speeds over RAID 5 though.

I have a 2 bay Synology DS212j.

 

[Grayfox]

Will look into RAID type when I get the drives.

 

[acascianelli]

Will look into RAID type when I get the drives.

There is alot to consider, are you looking mainly for performance or security. Also, what type of connection are you going to be using? 1gbit, 2x1gbit, eSATA, etc. Don't know if you're going to be using this as a NAS, SAN, or DAS.

 

[Pako]

I picked up a Seagate NAS box that put 4x4TB drives in for 16TB NAS for media and files. It's web based interface is ok, but is packed with features. At the end of the day, I've been pretty happy with it. For home use it's about perfect though would like a few more business grade features like a more stable and quicker interface. Something Linux based would have been nice.

Seagate STBP100 16TB (4 x 4TB) 4-Bay NAS Server Kit with Hard Drives

 

[Grayfox]

There is alot to consider, are you looking mainly for performance or security. Also, what type of connection are you going to be using? 1gbit, 2x1gbit, eSATA, etc. Don't know if you're going to be using this as a NAS, SAN, or DAS.

The connection the hotway one has is USB 3 and e-SATA