In my last post I reviewed external thunderbolt storage devices for our Imac capture station, none of which worked correctly. I came across this Areca 8 bay box on the OWC website. This looked more “promising” than the Pegasus R6 :) sorry Promise Tech…had to do it. Costs around $1500/free shipping. Price is very close to the Pegasus R6 when you take into account 8 bays vs 6 bays. Its empty which is how I would prefer it anyway. Lets me use my existing drives. Here are some quick specs from Areca’s website:
- The ARC-8050 incorporated on-board high performance dual core 800Mhz ROC storage processor and with 1GB DDR3-1333 SDRAM memory on-board to deliver true high performance hardware RAID.
- Bootable
- RAID level 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60, Single Disk or JBOD (just a bunch of disks aka passthru)
Check out their website, they have it all spelled out. Some of the other manufacturers don’t have real detailed spec sheets showing whether they are bootable, JBOD capable, etc. Areca’s was pretty clear. The drive trays have mounting holes for 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives. Seems like a nice piece of hardware.
There were a couple of hiccups to get it going, which ended up being a default being set incorrectly. But from the first time it started up, there was a noticeable difference in operation and a feeling of reliability. The Pegasus box was just the opposite.
We’ve had it running for about two months and haven’t had any issues. In the first bay we placed a 90 GB 6G SSD OCZ Vertex 3 to run the OS (running around 400 MB/sec read & write). The next bay has a HST 4 TB Time Machine SATA drive. Next bay is empty (may use for hot spare or add another drive to the RAID 5 array). Then we have 5 2TB Hitachi SATA HD’s in a RAID 5 setup (these will be used for working still and video files, running around 415 MB / sec read & write).
I still don’t trust the RAID 5 as a single solution for storage and backup. You still need at least two other copies of all data you don’t want to lose, one of which off site at all times.
Here is the iMac machine specs we are using:
Our first attempt at RAID 5 with factory defaults and using their Quick Function > Quick Create option was not successful. The ARC – 8050 would start to initialize for an hour or so then freeze at exactly 5.6%. The box would freeze and crash the iMac. Fun. Now this product just started shipping so they will get cut some slack. The problem was also resolved quickly. See below.
Long story short, after emailing Areca’s tech support over then next couple of days and running some more tests we found a fix. Under System Configurations > Disk Write Cache Mode needs to be set to Disabled, not set to SAS and SATA (which is the default). After changing that it initialized properly the first time and haven’t had any problems since.
If you are looking for a fast external thunderbolt enclosure with all of the bells and whistles…this appears to be the ticket…for now at least.
Jordan
June 2013
June 17th, 2013 on 5:41 am
Cool! I think I’m going to get one
July 3rd, 2013 on 3:16 pm
Hi, just read your review, really good thanks for writing it. Just wondered how you are getting on with it still as I’m thinking of buying one.
July 3rd, 2013 on 6:06 pm
Still working just fine. Good luck.
July 8th, 2013 on 10:22 am
Have you tried this with Hitachi Deskstar 4TB and/or WD 4TB Black drives? Any 4TB drives you would recommend over others? I am thinking of buying this empty and filling it with cheap desktop drives in R5 or R6 mode (I can’t afford enterprise drives) but still want it to be reliable for the amount it costs! I intend to use for video editing.
Thanks
July 8th, 2013 on 11:53 pm
Hi Alex – We currently have one of the HGST 4TB 7200rpm SATA 6.0 Gb/s, running as pass thru. Using it for time machine backups. They are fast and so far reliable. Have a few other 4TB drives around the studio, all fine so far. Should be fine in RAID 5 or 6. Just make sure that your Raid box isn’t the only spot you backup your files to :)
July 10th, 2013 on 5:40 pm
Thanks Jordan. I ordered the Areca and hitachi 7k40004TB drives last night. Looking forward to trying it out!
August 6th, 2013 on 10:57 am
@JORDON,.. Thanks for sharing your experience. I am becoming convinced that this may be my ‘goto’ solution.
Have you tried, or heard of, using MacZFS with this?
I am thinking to attach this is the fileServer to a macMiniServer (users are all NetworkHomeDirectory users and some PortableHomeDirectory users). I would Raid5 3x4TB with HFS+ (total 8Tb) with the internal controller, and ChronoSync that to a 2x4TB macZFS from 2x4TB passthrough bays that I could ‘take offsite’ with me as backup. DOES THIS SOUND REASONABLE to you or am I living on another planet?
August 6th, 2013 on 8:22 pm
Hi Shawn. Have not used MacZFS. Your config should work in the ARC-8050. Make sure to use the “Validate” option when using Chronosync. This will compare the data transferred to make sure it is all there. It adds time, but then there is no question it transferred. Good luck, let me know how it goes. Also looks like there is new firmware for the box now, I haven’t updated yet though. – Jordan
August 25th, 2013 on 12:30 am
Hi Jordan,
Thanks. I like your style. This is the first encouraging review I have seen about a Thunderbolt RAID enclosure. I have several Hitachi 4 TB SATA III drives and Crucial SSDs in Firmtek eSATA enclosures that need to be accessed from the new Mac Pro once it is available. Is there more information publicly available about the Mac SW to set up the Areca ARC-8050?
Thanks again, Karl-Heinz.
August 26th, 2013 on 10:57 pm
Hi Karl-Heinz,
Haven’t seen any other info. If you go to the manuf page http://www.areca.us/products/thunderbolt.htm there is a 112 page manual that was updated last June. Pretty extensive and detailed. Good luck. – Jordan
January 9th, 2014 on 3:03 pm
Has anyone heard if this is going to get an upgrade to Thunderbolt 2 ?
I’m looking for any and all alternatives to the Pegasus2 TB2 solution as I’ve seen enough forum threads that say ‘Pegasus no way” to make me wary.
January 13th, 2014 on 11:34 pm
Hi Shawn
I have not heard anything about Thunderbolt 2, I am guessing it might be a while. Let me know if you hear otherwise.
Thanks
Jordan
January 20th, 2014 on 7:28 am
I spoke with Areca recently, and they currently have no plans to upgrade this model to Thunderbolt 2
February 18th, 2014 on 10:31 pm
Areca ARC-8050T2 shipping late February is a Thnderbolt 2 version of this unit.