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Please recommend an external 3.5 HDD enclosure for sample lib. backup

nas

Senior Member
I'm looking for a solid and reliable enclosure for use with a 4TB WD Red HDD to back up my sample library.

I don't need to mount multiple drives or a RAID system, just a single capacity HDD enclosure is fine.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
 
I don't need to mount multiple drives or a RAID system,

Maybe you do, if you want to keep an off-site backup (that's what I do, in my safe deposit box). I've had success with a Terramaster 4-bay enclosure. Bay one for PCs, bay three for Mac (different formatting, obviously) and a mirror on bay 2 of bay 1, and on bay 4 a mirror of bay 3.

But of course you might not want to bother with all that.

Good luck,

John
 
Maybe you do, if you want to keep an off-site backup (that's what I do, in my safe deposit box). I've had success with a Terramaster 4-bay enclosure. Bay one for PCs, bay three for Mac (different formatting, obviously) and a mirror on bay 2 of bay 1, and on bay 4 a mirror of bay 3.

But of course you might not want to bother with all that.

Good luck,

John

Thanks for your feedback. I actually finished reading the thread you started some time ago about backup/archiving and I agree that using drives is more practical for sample library backups rather than a cloud service (although I do use Backblaze for projects and other data).

I do have other HD's that I'm using to backup data on my PC and Mac (including the sample libraries) so combined with the cloud services i'm using, I really just need to add one additional HD and enclosure as an extra backup. I'll then rotate and update them with one going off site.
 
I'm looking for a solid and reliable enclosure for use with a 4TB WD Red HDD to back up my sample library.

I don't need to mount multiple drives or a RAID system, just a single capacity HDD enclosure is fine.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

How are you wanting to connect to the drive?

If you need USB 3 you could get a Rosewill enclosure. The Rosewill RX304 one has good ventilation:
https://amzn.to/2Hwtwf6

Or you could just use an open-air model like a docking station: https://amzn.to/2Jozbpd

If you are looking for a networked drive, which should work great with WD Red, I like Synology brand personally: https://amzn.to/2OhqGej
 
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How are you wanting to connect to the drive?

If you need USB 3 you could get a Rosewill enclosure. The Rosewill RX304 one has good ventilation:
https://amzn.to/2Hwtwf6

Or you could just use an open-air model like a docking station: https://amzn.to/2Jozbpd

If you are looking for a networked drive, which should work great with WD Red, I like Synology brand personally: https://amzn.to/2OhqGej

Thanks for the links! Yes, I think either the first USB 3 option or the network drive option will fit the bill.

Cheers.
 
Cheap enclosures are fine even if you keep them online all the time. And you're just using it for a backup and disconnecting it, so it only has to work occasionally.

But network drives are very slow. The only reason I have one of my Time Machine backups connected to my Apple router (which makes it a network drive) is that I also have my traveling laptop back up to it over Wi-Fi.
 
I use a drive dock. I have plenty of left over HDDS from upgrading to a larger one or SSDs. Drives are much easier to store than enclosures.
 
Cheap enclosures are fine even if you keep them online all the time. And you're just using it for a backup and disconnecting it, so it only has to work occasionally.

But network drives are very slow. The only reason I have one of my Time Machine backups connected to my Apple router (which makes it a network drive) is that I also have my traveling laptop back up to it over Wi-Fi.

Yes a network drive does make sense in this scenario and seeing that I have a mobile rig as well I think it's a good way of doing things.


I use a drive dock. I have plenty of left over HDDS from upgrading to a larger one or SSDs. Drives are much easier to store than enclosures.


BTW How are you storing your drives? Do you wrap them in one of those anti-static pouches?
 
Yes a network drive does make sense in this scenario and seeing that I have a mobile rig as well I think it's a good way of doing things.

Just be aware that Time Machine stores a different kind of backup image from the kind on local drives, so it's going to take a very long time to recover from it if you ever need to.

(I forget whether the Sparse image is the local or network one, but that's the term for one of them.)
 
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Yes a network drive does make sense in this scenario and seeing that I have a mobile rig as well I think it's a good way of doing things.





BTW How are you storing your drives? Do you wrap them in one of those anti-static pouches?

Yep. I don't think drives suffer from static. I also have the pouches and usually those bubble wrap things they use only for shipping drives. I have so many 320-500GB HDDs I might as well use them for archiving.
 
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Yep. I don't think drives suffer from static. I also have the pouches and usually those bubble wrap things they use only for shipping drives. I have so many 320-500GB HDDs I might as well use them for archiving.

Yes same here. As my system and libraries have expanded over time and I'm streaming everything off SSD's, I find myself with extra HDD's that I've moved over for backup and archiving. I think I will eventually just consolidate everything onto 4 drives or so... similar to what @JohnG mentioned, but for the time being I think I can make do with an additional enclosure or dock and an extra 4 TB HDD.
 
I don’t have the part link, but a while ago I bought a SATA to USB 3 cable/connector, which allowed me to use my old HDS as backup with no case required. It was cheap.
 
I don’t have the part link, but a while ago I bought a SATA to USB 3 cable/connector, which allowed me to use my old HDS as backup with no case required. It was cheap.

https://amzn.to/2JKKFDH

I haven’t used one, but I don’t see why it would be any different than a dock. It’ll save a couple bucks anyway. Only $19
 
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