External Drive Enclosure Needed!

[bchampion96]

Hi Guys,

 

I know this will hurt your poor hearts to hear, but over the coming summer, I'm making the switch from PC to mac for my main rig. This is entirely music related because, while I can use other DAWs, Logic stole my heart long ago.

 

Anyway

 

I had previously purchased 2 WD 2TB drives and this piece of shit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Icy-Box-IB-3620U3-External-System/dp/B00I4E2FYI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1462992776&sr=8-3&keywords=icy+box to use my 4TB for music project backups, video storage and that kind of thing. It was absolutely awful and worked once with my Windows PC, so I returned it for a refund. I now have those 2 drives and, when I switch over, another 1TB to use. When I'm in 15 inch macbook pro mode, I'd like to have an external bank of (3.5 inch) hard drives in some form, so at my desk I can plug in and access the entire of my music library, all my Logic and Reaper projects, and just store current projects and things to keep the SSD on the macbook pro nice and empty. I'd like this to work in a similar way to when you just attach a single USB storage drive, kinda like those portable backup drives you can get, but ideally with access to all drives separately. 

 

TLDR:

 

I need a mac compatible enclosure for 4x 3.5inch hard drives that'll work as a JBOD system. 

 

I hope all that makes sense, I'm tired right now. Please ask questions if not

 

Thanks

 

bchampion96

[Enderman]

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/612613-windows-alternative-logic-pro-9-a.html

 

or you can build a hackintosh

[ALwin]

Any USB 3 enclosure will work with a Mac.

 

OSX can read from NTFS volumes, but cannot write to NTFS without the proper driver.

 

OSX can read and write to HFS (which is the main format for OSX), Fat and ExFat volumes.

 

As for setting up a bunch of drives, I'd probably set up all the drives as a RAID volume (or something) and use Disk Utility to separate them into partitions.

[bchampion96]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/612613-windows-alternative-logic-pro-9-a.html

 

or you can build a hackintosh

 

I'm well aware that such a thing is possible, however it's not something I want to do. After spending most of a day on tonymacx86, I decided it wasn't worth my time being and unsupported, potentially glitchy hassle that I don't want to deal with.

[bchampion96]

1 minute ago, ALwin said:

Any USB 3 enclosure will work with a Mac.

 

OSX can read from NTFS volumes, but cannot write to NTFS without the proper driver.

 

OSX can read and write to HFS (which is the main format for OSX), Fat and ExFat volumes.

 

Thanks for the deets on the formats! It'll only be read by two macs, so I believe ExFat is the way forwards? Any recommendations on models of enclosures?

[ALwin]

2 minutes ago, bchampion96 said:

 

I'm well aware that such a thing is possible, however it's not something I want to do. After spending most of a day on tonymacx86, I decided it wasn't worth my time being and unsupported, potentially glitchy hassle that I don't want to deal with.

Good for you!  While a hackintosh may seem like a cheap alternative way to get to OSX, it's not for everyone.  Sometimes the extra $$$$ spent on buying a proper Apple machine is worth all the extra headaches and hassles that one might have to spend later on in troubleshooting that cheaper unofficial solution.

 

 

Sorry I'm not sure what enclosures are good or not.   You might want to head over to the Mac/Apple forums to ask.

[bchampion96]

1 minute ago, ALwin said:

Good for you!  While a hackintosh may seem like a cheap alternative way to get to OSX, it's not for everyone.  Sometimes the extra $$$$ spent on buying a proper Apple machine is worth all the extra headaches and hassles that one might have to spend later on in troubleshooting that cheaper unofficial solution.

 

 

Sorry I'm not sure what enclosures are good or not.   You might want to head over to the Mac/Apple forums to ask.

That's pretty much it!  Thanks for your help!

[ALwin]

6 minutes ago, bchampion96 said:

That's pretty much it!  Thanks for your help!

Maybe check some of the models listed here and see which one of them is available where you live.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ns=p_PRICE_2|0&ci=8413&setNs=p_PRICE_2|0&N=4294542361+4294272530+4294272529+4251779878&srtclk=sort&origSearch=hard%20drive%20enclosure