Doh! It would have helped if I'd bothered to read the full product description instead of being distracted by the shiny shiny price
Still, with the price of hard disks these days that a damn good deal.

Edit:

Although ti appears to be a bit naff if you try to use 1.5GB drives in it - clickey

Thanks for that link.
I'm planning on getting two 2TB drives for a spanned 4TB volume, I'll report back with my findings.

Mark

If you're looking at that Gmax, I'd be very careful about checking the spec before you buy.

I'm surprised it says it can't be run with a single drive - that bodes very badly for reliability. If one drive fails, you lose the data from both! The whole point of spanning drives rather than using RAID 0 is that it's more secure, all be it slower.

Additionally it looks like it may be limited to 1TB max per bay so 2TB drives might not work as expected.

I can't see anything about it at all on the Gmax website, which leads me to think it might be a discontinued product with no support. I wouldn't buy a product if the manufacturer didn't support it; but maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place?

Well, I haven't bought it yet and I wasn't going to do until I'd read a few reviews about it.
I'll still check it out but from the sounds of it I may be getting a different enclosure, but I'll still check out any recent reviews on it if I can find 'em.

Mark

Further research seems to indicate that unless I'm willing to re-mortgage the house getting an enclosure that will RAID 0 two 2TB drives in to a 4TB volume is out of the question.
So maybe I should be looking at single drive enclosures that work with 2TB drives …

Mark

Personally I'd never Raid 0 that much data. Too much risk.

What's your budget? A readynas or similar would be better & you could fit 4x 2TB drives in it (in RAID 5 so you get 6TB & redundancy)

Where's the risk if you're backing it up?Not a lot. This is just for personal use, but photography is taking more and more drive space so I need something to cope with it all for a while.
I'm moving from desktop to laptop so I can't stick any more internal storage in the Mac.
I'm now thinking that a couple of separate 2TB drives would be the best solution.
Personal backup with not much of a budget is proving rather difficult.

Mark

It's always an issue (especially as 2TB drives are overpriced). Couldn't you get a few 1TB externals on USB for £65 each if they're just for backup.

The problem with TB+ over usb is time to back up .. you may as well go on holiday for a week while it makes the copy.

The original request was FW800 which is sensible when you are looking at TBs of data.

How about something like this:

http://www.expansys-usa.com/p.aspx?i=177662

<<edit .. uk supplier ... http://www.thebookyard.com/product.php?products_id=3179 >>

FW800 / esata / fw400 + USB2 and you can just throw sata drives into it .. (one at a time but even so ...)

didge

I was looking at a USB only one of those last night. I'm not sure why but I couldn't find a FW800 supported one.
I think I'm going to do just what you suggest and get one of these docking stations and a couple of drives to start with.

Mark

So much the better.

Thanks everyone for the help.

Mark

Clicky

Not FW800 but a third of the price

roll your own ..

IDE

http://www.span.com/product_info.php?products_id=8127

SATA

http://www.span.com/product_info.php?products_id=26220

Didge

so Mark, which did you finally choose and is it any good?

didge

I haven't yet bought, but I will be doing in the next week, so you must be reading my mind … I'm going for that FW800 drive dock and a couple of big SATA drives.
I'll be sure to post back with how I find the system.

Mark