And now... for those of us who demand something a little larger... and then some...

I'll start from lowest to highest in terms of capacity on Multi-Bay Enclosures, to stick to enclosures that have FireWire, yet omit eSATA and SCSI at this point, unless someone wants to see them specifically.

There are also models between models shown here, so I'm just sort of - giving an idea for them who wish to see.

The price differs mostly on flexibility of Interface and noise levels.

Before jumping into Multi-Bay Enclosures, there's one here that I think is pretty spiffy as an interesting hybrid between a Single Enclosure and a Hot-swappable device.

Do you have a bunch of old 3.5" PATA / IDE Hard Drives lying about, with no home to go into? The U6 SOHOTANK is a very sleek option, as well as doubling as an External SATA Drive.


U6 SOHOTANK

The U6 SOHOTANK is a hot swap enclosure which allows one to interchange either a SATA or a PATA HD at will.



The unit comes with either a SATA tray or a PATA tray - or both - an individual hot swappable tray for either type of drive.



Neat huh?
Up to 1TB 3.5" Hard Drive - PATA or SATA.



Specs:

• Chipset: Oxford 912 / CypressOxford 911
• Host Interface: (x2) FireWire 800 / USB 2.0
• Drive Interface: 3.5" PATA 133MHz / SATA
• Hot Swapable: Yep
• Plug'n Play: Yep
• Dimensions: 270 x 147 x 31 mm
• Weight: 1.4Kg

It's interface is: 1x USB 2.0 / 2x FireWire 800:



Q: Hey, this is neat, but my computer doesn't use FireWire 800. I only have FireWire 400.
What do I do, if I want to use this, or any other External Drive which uses FireWire 800 only?

A: Belkin 6' FireWire 800/400 9pin to 6pin Cable - let's you plug a FireWire 400 Adapter into a FireWire 800 Cable, and connect it to a FireWire 400 Port.

Choice of the best Hard Drives for the U6 SOHOTANK Enclosure - SATA II listed here only, as you can whack in any 3.5" PATA Hard Drive also, yet this is the standard recommendation:

• 3.5" SATA II 500GB Western Digital / 7200rpm / 16MB Buffer / 3 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 500GB Western Digital / 7200rpm / 16MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 750GB Western Digital / 7200rpm / 16MB Buffer / 3 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 750GB Western Digital / 7200rpm / 16MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 1TB Western Digital / 7200rpm / 16MB Buffer / 3 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 1TB Western Digital / 7200rpm / 16MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty

• 3.5" SATA II 500GB Seagate / 7200rpm / 32MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 500GB Seagate Enterprise / 7200rpm / 32MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 750GB Seagate / 7200rpm / 32MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 750GB Seagate Enterprise / 7200rpm / 32MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 1 TB Seagate / 7200rpm / 32MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty
• 3.5" SATA II 1 TB Seagate Enterprise / 7200rpm / 32MB Buffer / 5 Year Warranty

Onto Multi Bays...

SATA Xpress Dual Bay Triple

The SATA Xpress Enclosure simply offers raw power and durability, without any fancy frills.
It's a purely utilitarian work horse.



Twin bays inside it can enclose between one or two 500GB to 1 TB SATA II Hard Drives, and one can have just one Hard Drive inside to begin with, in order to add another in the future, as long as they are the same brand and the same capacity.



It's happy enough performing vertically or horizontally, depending on your space.

Specs:

• Chipset: Oxford 924DSB
• Drive Interface: 2 x 3.5" SATA I / SATA II
• Host Interface: 1x USB 2.0 / FireWire 400 / 2x FireWire 800
• RAID Level: RAID 0 (Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring), JBOD (Just Bunch Of Disks)
• Case Material: Aluminum
• Cooling Fan: One
• Dimensions: 19.0cm x11.8cm x 6.0cm

As mentioned before, the SATA Xpress Dual Bay Triple is a totally no frills, entry level RAID External Drive.
It's cheap and reliable, and it doesn't have any automatic or manual fan control, so it's also a tad noisy, but if you're after a robust RAID Drive and can't afford anything else, this is your baby.

Taurus RAID II

Note: The Taurus RAID Enclosure has now been discontinued and replaced with the: Taurus RAID II, which sports JBOD and heat sensors that now adjust the speed of the cooling fan. The whole enclosure has been vastly improved.

Very similar to the SATA Xpress, the Taurus RAID II does have extra frills that make it quieter and easier to manage over the SATA Xpress.


The Taurus RAID is essentially a Dual RAID version of the SATA Xpress, again able to harbour twin 3.5" SATA / SATA II Hard Drives - 500GB to 1TB.



The image above is somewhat out of date, as the two tiny red dip-switches round the back, on the left, have been replaced with a tiny round dial that enables the User to switch from JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1 and Non-RAID.

For more information on how these settings work, if new to RAID, click here for a simple explanation.

• Chipset: Oxford 924DSB
• RAID Level: RAID 0 (Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring), JBOD (Just Bunch Of Disks)
• Drive Interface: 2 x 3.5" SATA I / SATA II
• Host Interface: FireWire 400 / (x2) FireWire 800 / USB 2.0
• Case Material: Aluminum
• Cooling Fan: One[/size]
• Featuring: 18-Kbyte cache for USB or Firewire data maximizes performance by double-buffering 4-Kbyte packets
• Dimensions: 24.5cm x14.0cm x 8.3cm

And there is also a second version which uses LAN and USB 2.0: the Taurus LAN - and it's specs are:

• Chipset: Storlink SL3516
• RAID Level: RAID 0 (Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring)
• Drive Interface: 2 x 3.5" SATA I / SATA II
• Host Interface: 10/100/1000 Base-T LAN / USB 2.0
• Case Material: Aluminum
• Cooling Fan: One
• Featuring: 18-Kbyte cache for USB or Firewire data maximizes performance by double-buffering 4-Kbyte packets
• Dimensions: 24.5 cm x14.0 cm x 8.3 cm

(Good for backing up a couple of machines through a Switcher, but more on this model later).


SOHOTANK ST3620-2S-WABC

The SOHOTANK Series begins hitting a level of beautiful design, silence, yet all the robust features of a storage work-horse.



One now has the ease of adding SATA Drives into slide-in caddies.



Specs:

• Chipset: Oxford 924DSB
• RAID level compatibility: Hardware RAID 0 (striped) JBOD
• Host interface: FireWire 400 / (x2) FireWire 800 / USB 2.0
• Drive Interface: 2 x 3.5" SATA I / SATA II
• Cooling fan: 4cm Ball Bearing Fan
• Construction: Aluminium Casing
• Microprocessor: OXFW-924DS
• Dimensions: W122 mm x L203 mm x H102 mm
• Weight: 1.67 kg

Like the Taurus LAN, the SOHOTANK ST3620, has a LAN version - the SOHOTANK SL3620-2S-S2, and its specs are as follows:

• RAID Level(s): 0,1
• Drive Interface: 2 x 3.5" SATA HD
• Host Interface: 1 x Gigabit LAN Port
• Expansion Interface: USB 2.0
• Cooling fan: (x1) 3cm Fan + (x1) 4 cm Smart Fan
• Construction: Aluminium casing[/size][/size]
• Dimensions: W122 mm x L203 mm x H102 mm
• Weight: 1.67 kg
• IP Configuration: Dynamic IP, Static IP, DHCP
• Protocol: CIFS/SMB, NFS, FTP
• Management: Web GUI
• System Log: Samba, FTP, DHCP, System, Administration

SOHORAID SR3610-S2-WBC



For those of us who need the added security of RAID without an astronomical price tag, the SOHORAID SR3610, is a cost effective storage solution.

It is, I suppose, what one might call the next entry level RAID solution which not only looks sexy yet has solid performance with inbuilt heat sinks, inbuilt fan, hot-swap drive bays and auto configure - ie: if one drive fails then the auto alarm will alert the User to hot-swap a failing caddy and insert a new one, and auto-configure will automatically rebuild your backup.

Specs:

• Host interface: USB 2.0 / FireWire 800
• RAID level compatibility: Hardware RAID 0 (striped) / Hardware RAID 1 (mirroring) / Auto rebuilding
• Drive interface: 3.5" SATA I / SATA II HDD
• Support Auto Rebuilding: Yes
• Support Hot-Swap: 2 Hot-Swap drive trays
• Status monitoring: HD Status, Temperature, Fan fail detector, and Onboard alarm
• Display: Blue light LCD Display Panel for setup and configuration
• Cooling fan: 4cm Ball Bearing Fan
• Power supply: 100-240V, 70 Watts
• Construction: Aluminium casing
• Sizes: Configurations of 160GB to 1 Terabyte
• Microprocessor: 8032 Microprocessor RAID ASIC
• Dimensions: W122 mm x L203 mm x H102 mm
• Weight: 1.67 kg

On to bigger things...

I did have other RAID externals shown here before, but they were wracks that began stacking between 5 and 24 Hot-Swap Drive Bays, and I now really doubt anyone here would interested in anything like that, yet after I created this Post, there was much talk about NAS Storage or: Network Assisted Storage.

To my way of thinking, if one wants a NAS External Drive, or a NAS External RAID, the design of the device should really be pure NAS and nothing but NAS, thus models and brands that do sell NAS along with FireWire External Drives have been skipped here, as many NAS solutions out there simply can't cut the mustard, where speed and multiple machines are concerned.

Here's a short list.

Taurus LAN:

The Taurus LAN - a two bay Network Attached Storage (10/100/1000) / USB Backup.
It's a basic solid and affordable work horse, that can take a max of two 1 TB HDDs:



Specs:

• Chipset: Storlink SL3516
• RAID Level: RAID 0 (Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring)
• Drive Interface: 2 x 3.5" SATA I / SATA II (2x1TB)
• Host Interface: LAN: 10/100/1000Mbps and USB 2.0
• Case Material: Aluminum
• Windows Requirements: Windows 98/SE/ME/XP/2000/Vista
• Mac OS Requirements: Mac OS 9.1 or higher / Mac OS 10.0 and higher.

However, I must stress, though the Taurus LAN is a cheap and affordable NAS RAID solution, it's not going to provide high speed back up to over 2 computers.

For true NAS genius, this next job really is the madman - way more advanced, and it totally rocks!

Synology Disk Station DS207+

The Synology Disk Station DS207+ is a High-speed 2 Bay SATA II NAS Server with Advanced Data Protection.



Specs:

Hardware:

• CPU Clock Rate: 266 MHz
• RAM Size: 64MB
• Internal HDD: 3.5” SATA II x 2
• External HDD Interface: USB 2.0 port x3
• LAN: Gigabit x1
• Fan: x1 (60 mm x 60 mm)
• Power Recovery
• Max Capacity (Internal HDD): 2 TB
• Max Supported IP Camera: 2
• Operating Temperature: 10 to 35°C
• Storage Temperature: -10 to 70°C
• Relative Humidity: 5% to 95% RH

Networking Protocols: CIFS, AFP, FTP

File Sharing:

• Max User Accounts: 128
• Max Groups: 64
• Max Shared Folder: 100
• Max Concurrent Connections: 32

UPnP Multimedia Service Support:

• Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox360 (See All Supported DMA)
• Audio Format: AAC, M4A, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMA, WMA VBR, WMA PRO, WMA Lossless
• Video Format: ASF, AVI, DAT, DivX, MP4, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, VOB, WMV, XviD
• Image Format: BMP, JPG (jpe, jpeg), GIF, ICO, PNG, PSD, TIF (tiff), UFO
• Playlist Format: WPL, M3U

iTunes Server Support:

• Audio Format: MP3, M4A, M4P
• Playlist Format: M3U, WPL

Audio Station Support:

• Audio Format: AAC, M4A, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WMA VBR
• Playlist Format: M3U, WPL
• Internet Radio: SHOUTcast, Radioio

Photo Station 3 Support:

• Video Format: ASF, AVI, MPEG1, MPEG4, WMV, XviD, DivX, DAT(2), MP4(2), MPEG2(2), RM(2), RMVB(2), VOB(2)
• Image Format: BMP, JPG (jpe, jpeg), GIF

Management:

• AJAX-based Management UI
• Download Station Bandwidth control
• Download Station Port Range Setup
• Editable HTTP Error Page
• Email Alert Message
• Email Notification for New User
• External HDD Hibernation (USB)
• Scheduled Power Off
• Firmware Upgrade
• FTP passive port range
• Hide-able Shared Folder
• Internal HDD Hibernation
• Movable Shared Folder
• Port range for BitTorrent
• Removable Default Shared Folder
• System Temperature
• Ez-Internet
• PPPoE
  
• UPS Management (Over USB 2.0)
• User Quota
• Web-based Download Station

RAID Management:

• Volume Type: Basic, RAID 0, RAID 1
• Upgrade from Basic to RAID 1
• Expand RAID 1 with Larger Hard Drives
• Volume Auto-rebuild after abnormal power failure

Backup Solutions:

• Network Backup
• Local Backup
• Desktop Backup (using Synology Data Replicator 3)
• USB Copy

Supported Clients: Windows 2000 onward / Mac OS X 10.3 onward

Printer Support:

Max Printers: 1 (on Mac - PostScript USB printers only)

Supported Protocols: LPR, CIFS, AppleTalk

Beyond the Synology Disk Station DS207+, and without such extreme Spec detail, we have the:

Synology Disk Station DS508



- which is an ultra-high speed 5 Terabyte NAS SERVER for Small Businesses and Corporations, with an 800MHz CPU, 512MB RAM, x2 Gigabit Ethernet, Power Recovery, Encrypted Network Backup, can network with 128 other computers... and costs around the same as a new iMac 24" Apple Mac.

Hope this updated information helps all of you out there in MacTalk Land.

cheers,

ClockWorkOren