Well, last week I replaced the Mac Pro with a 2012 mini - very nice machine (needs more RAM though). It’s certainly capable enough to handle what I throw at it.

I have three HDs from the Mac Pro with data on them. At the moment, I have a USB3 caddy which I can slot the drives into like a cartridge. However,m what I would like to do is put them ion an enclosure. What I would ideally like to do is put them all in one box, which has one power supply and connect that to the Mac. That box would, in essence, give me access to the three drives’ content, preferably as separate volumes so I can remove one if needed and plug them into another machine. Having three separate enclosures means three power supplies (and I am rapidly running out of plugs and sockets in this room), so one box with one plug would be better. So far, all I have seen are boxes that take multiple HDs and RAIDs them together. I do not want this.

Obviously the box would need to be either USB3 or Thunderbolt. Suggestions?

Haven't seen anything that can do anything even vaguely like that with Thunderbolt. The only TBolt multidrive chassis I've seen treat the drives as a RAID Array.

Having said that, do you have one drive you consider sacrificial or one spare? A lot of NAS boxes allow you add drives separately as separate partitions. Get a NAS box, plug sacrificial drive in. Copy data from needed drive A to NAS partition. Install drive A in NAS, make it a partition, copy data from drive B to it. Install drive B, make it a partition, copy data from drive C to it and so on. Most NAS boxes are gigabit ethernet, which isn't as fast as USB or TBolt but is fast enough for most purposes.

Jon

You could buy a custom box from Maplin or RS, then 3 very cheap USB enclosures, rip out the innards, mount inside in the custom box on some sort of rails, put in a fan, and get a custom PSU to supply the full current required for the 3 drives, you'd also have 3 USB leads though, but at least they could go through a hub. Bit heath robinson, but just an idea!

An interesting idea. I would imagine you could make the whole thing self-contained by having the USB hub power inside the case too. As long as it's USB3, I'll be happy. It seems pretty fast (via the caddy I currently have), and so far my tests with videos looks promising.

I'll give this some thought.

You'll need to multiplex the power somehow assuming you're sticking to the 'fewest plug sockets possible' idea. Would be useful to have a surge-protected 4-way or something inside the box too.

Jon

Or just calc the max current draw base on the existing caddies, wire up the devices DC power leads in parallel in the box, output/connector to a PSU brick (available from again Maplin, RS etc) with the right output to match...

Maybe this would suit your needs.

Didge.

Seems to, although this one looks cooler.

Thanks, Didge and Jon - I’ll add these to my wish list. They both look like they’ll do what I want. There are a few things I need to organise with this machine - RAM is likely to be more pressing, but this will be a close second.