MacGuru's Burly vs. G-Tech G-Speed vs. WiebeTech RTX400

[Frez]

Reviews online seem to be in very small number on these units.

I currently have a ReadyNAS NV+ running in RAID 5 mode with my MacBook Pro and it has served me well for 3 years (touch wood).

It is running out of space and I'm going to have to purchase new hard drives, so I thought I'd look at other offerings. Of course the big benefits of these units will be speedier transfers (via eSata) and the ability to swap drives in and out for offsite backup

I plan to use JBOD as Peter has suggested in the book.

I'm also transitioning to a Mac Pro (which will contain the master hard drives for my photo archive).

I just wanted to get people's thoughts on these three units (or others I should be looking at)

Does anyone have any strong opinions about their reliability and upgradeability?

They all use similar technology - has anyone found one to be particularly faster in real world use (assuming the same hard drives)?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

--

Bonus question: what should I do with the ReadyNAS?

[BoglePhoto]

Got a burly and have had no concerns over it. Rock solid, well built, good fans and power supply. I would highly recommend the same. Trays are built like a tank, and make portability or transfer easy without concern for damage to the disk. I use a smaller 2 drive to do daily backups of my working files.

Hope this helps.

Bill Bogle, Jr.

[DrewFulton]

I am also a big Burly fan. I have two of them, a 5 Drive SATA Tower that sits in my office and a 2 bay tower that I take with me on the road for long projects where I need a ton of storage capability.  I love the simplicity of being able to switch back and forth just buy grabbing a couple of drive trays.  I've got no experience with the other brands so can't say anythign about them.

One additional thing, if you are switching to a Mac, Burly and MacGurus are the same folks and can really help you with lots of mac questions (Ram, etc) and there customer service is fantastic.

I had a firmware issue with my SATA host card when I upgraded to Snow Leopard and I had one of their tech support guys emailing with me over a 3 day holiday weekend (Labor Day I think) in between breaks of his search and rescue training.  Its a great group of people that will help you in any way they can.

Drew

[Frez]

Thanks guys .. that's great to hear.

I have had a couple of email conversations with MacGurus and have noticed that they are passionate and very generous with sharing of information.

It seems that out of all of the options, the Burly appears to be the most upgradeable - ie: when a faster buses come out (like SATA III), all it will take is purchasing some parts and swapping them out.

Though, I have to admit, I prefer the look & design of the other options - especially next to a shiny new Mac Pro - but in this case, functionality is of prime importance.

Cheers,
Frez

[barbaramiller]

I have a Burly 2-bay and am just about to buy another 2-bay unit as this seems to be the best way to direct connect (rather than port multiply).  Though Mac Gurus urges me towards a 5 Bay Burly with PM and raid pairing.  I also feel more comfortable having my main archive on JBOD, rather than RAID. 
My only complaint with the 2-bay unit is noise, lots of it.  The white noise tends to lull me to sleep and just be all around unpleasant. They say that the 5 bay Burly is a lot quieter as a bigger fan is quieter but then I think you need to use port multiplication. 

Lloyd Chambers says FirmTek is very quiet  - seems like the older 2 bay has a user controlled 3 speed fan, which supposedly is quiet even on highest setting.  The new FirmTek 2 bay unit claims to be low power usage, low heat, no fan required - not sure that I trust this. Firm Tek also makes a 4 bay unit which supports direct connect and has fans supposedly quiet.

Wiebetech seems to have one 2 bay eSata unit that takes drive trays (but supposedly noticeable fan noise, power supply in enclosure, and USB2 port - so does that mean to access eSata go through bridge board?).

Does anyone else have any experience with any of these other enclosures?
 
I do like the fact that the Burly is so flexible to change. (and that it comes with Mac Gurus support).  I could probably just stay with the existing Burly, get higher capacity drives (go from 1.5 to 2 TB) and get the longest cables I can so I can put the noisy box further from my workspace, (and use my existing drives for expanding bucket back up on hard drives).

Barbara Miller

[BoglePhoto]

Barbara:

I am running my Burly 5 bay as a JBOD. It does not have to be a RAID. I have 5 hard drives for different functions in the box: archives, both derivatives and originals/dngs, back up of archive, and back up of OS that I share over a network.

It is pretty quiet - much quieter than my desktop with three fans.

Bill Bogle, Jr.

[barbaramiller]

Thanks, Bill:

Appreciate the input.  You do connect through port multiplication, right?

Thanks,

Barbara Miller

[BoglePhoto]

Yes, I got a PCIe x1 card with two e-sata slots from Burly which has a port multiplier. It was about $50.00. I use one e-sata connection and run the five drives in the Burly box off that. I can see all five drives on my network with all five computers (two are laptops) either wirelessly or on a gigabit lan. It makes opening the files easy and in one place, and I can dedicate a desktop to photoshop and another for general, but stillbe able to edit and print from other locations, such as an attached printer.

A big thumbs up for Burly.
The box is very robust, well constructed and built to last. I think it has a pretty good power supply in it and the trays protect the drives as well as having individual smaller fans. Some of these drive boxes can be plastic and very thin (and sharp) metal.

Bill Bogle, Jr.

[barbaramiller]

Hi Bill:

Thanks again for response.

I found out a little more info that I'll add to the forum, hoping that most of it is correct now:
It seems that SATA specifications don't approve cables longer than 2 meters.
All Firmtek/Seritek enclosures have fans.
I guess the decline in speed due to PM is more of an issue with RAID, and I intend to use JBOD.

Barbara Miller