Hey everyone-

My day job might be as a sys admin for 60+ TB of data, but that's all on huge Dell raids, that are a little spendy for a photographer. So i know very little about small 4-5 drive raid systems.

Here is what i am looking for, and what i need backed up:

I have a Mac Pro with about 2tb internal storage, that i expect to grow to 3tb within a year. I could add the esata extention connections to get sata out the back if that helps with speed. But i figure firewire 800 should be fast enough.

What i want/need is a single volume mount point to use as a time machine backup disk, because i want to keep pretty much everything online. So this volume should be i guess about 4-5TB. I think i would prefer time machine so it's well integrated into the OS, but i also could do much more simplistic ways of making copies like rsync or other scripting ideas.

I have heard of the Drobo and the Terastations, but are there any others i should look at. Drobo's sound great because you can mix and match drives, but i probably want all 1tb or 1.5tb drives to start with. But upgrading drives might be easier with the drobo. The terastations look nice, but you have to buy them with all the drives in them, and that gets a little pricey. So i was wondering if there is anything else i should look at.

Off site backups will be done with existing 1TB portable drives.

Thanks up front for the advice. And hopefully this helps other people.

The only other option I can think of is the ReadyNAS from netgear

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage.aspx?for=All

They came out with a new one that has 6 drive bays.

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASPro.aspx

But these are alot more money than the drobo, and if you are looking for Firewire 800 and not network attached, the drobo is probably more cost effective right now.

But, with the 6 bays as opposed to 4, the ready nas is more future proof.

The readynas looks interesting, but i think i would prefer the speed of direct attached. If i need to access something on the drive, i can just share it out through the Mac Pro, so my laptop could see the files if needed.

Actually, if you want this to be raid 0, you can take a look at these:

But, what happens if you lose one of the 4 drives in a raid 0 setup? You lose all the data, right? Probably better to stick to raid 5, but it seems you know about these issues and can make the right decision for your needs.

http://www.transintl.com/store/extdrive.cf...uestTimeOut=500

This one takes a SATA connection:

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cf...uestTimeOut=500

and this one takes firewire:

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2702

And they look great next to the mac pro

Yea, i am thinking raid 5. 4x 1.5 drives should give me about 4 usable TB.

Drobo

Take a look at www.macsales.com they are based in Illinois and they have an extensive line of external storage solutions. Give them a call, ask for David Schachtner in sales and tell him I sent you. He'll be more than happy to help you find a great storage solution.

I personally just bought a Norco DS-500 from macsales.com with 5 1TB drives. The DS-500 is an eSATA RAID-capable solution that is extremely simple to set up and comes with a PCIe eSATA controller card for the mac pro.

If you're going to be serious about storage, make sure and get something that you can expand... as 2TB drives come out I know I'll be able to swap those into the Norco system that I've got if I ever need more than this 5TB (plus the 3TB that I've got internally)

Only a 5-bay? Weak!! ;-)

I like the looks of this beast....
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Habey%20USA/DS1240/

LOL Scott, my electric bill is thanking me right now for only getting a 5-bay. Believe me, if I could populate my server closet with actual rack-mounted storage that would be awesome... just not anytime soon!

Thanks guys. I am going to research all these options. Seems like the "kiss" answer is the drobo. While some of the other options, Norco and readyNAS give more room for expansion.

So many choices, so little money...