QNAP's JTB-400: A BYOD 4-bay Thunderbolt Enclosure
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 7, 2012 6:29 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- Storage
- Thunderbolt
- QNAP
- Computex 2012
Ahh, finally what I've been asking for: a 4-bay Thunderbolt enclosure that allows you to bring your own disks. I'm reserving excitement until I see just how much QNAP's JTB-400 is going to be, but for now I'm cautiously optimistic. The drive bays are hot swappable and can accommodate both 2.5" and 3.5" form factors. The chassis doesn't feature any hardware RAID controllers (Marvell is on SATA duty internally) so you'd have to rely on software RAID but it should be cheaper than Promise's Pegasus R4. The JTB-400's release is set for sometime in the next quarter.
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nephrostar - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
I totally agree with tanclearas.its way over hyped gadget.
with mechnical drives , we will never be able to fully saturate and ssd's are still not cheap to plonk 4 ssd's in this enclosure.
repoman27 - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
There seems to be some reading comprehension issues here.Not if you own a 2011 Mac.
Even if you were just using 4 3TB WD Caviar Green drives in RAID 0, average sequential reads or writes would exceed 350 MB/s, which is beyond the capability of any single USB 3.0 device currently available
A single 120GB OCZ Agility 3 ($89.99 after rebate on Newegg) would have trouble stretching its legs over USB 3.0. If you used 4 in RAID 0, forget about it.
A typical use case for these devices is for video pros, who would fill 2 of them with 4TB drives and daisy-chain them in a RAID 0+1 configuration. The performance would be demonstrably better than USB 2.0 or FireWire 800, which are the other options on a 2011 Mac, and also better than USB 3.0 or eSATA on other platforms. Other users are filling them with 240-256 GB SSDs and using them as boot volumes.
What about the original post even qualifies as hype?
Impulses - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
Mac owners are a minority, video pros that would want such a setup are a sub minority amongst them. Just saying...I think the comments about TB being over hyped aren't straight up hate on TB, more like frustration with the fact that prices aren't coming down faster and the interface isn't evolving fast enough.
The most poplar usage case for TB right now is as a docking solution, but for all the added expense or it's really gonna do is save you from plugging in one, maybe two, extra cables (TB + power vs USB + display + power + maybe GigE).
Where are the optical cables, the external GPU? Personally I just hope TB survives this stage in order to fully realize it's potential, and doesn't get relegated to a niche market.
Impulses - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
or it's gonna do = all it's gonna dorepoman27 - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
Until this week, Mac users represented 100% of the installed base for Thunderbolt, and with a 25 million unit head start, it will be a while before they cease to be the primary target market for developers of Thunderbolt accessories. Just saying...zanon - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
If it's reasonably priced, "finally what I've been asking for" sums up my feelings pretty well too, although I hope to see 6 and 8 drive models at some point. ZFS eliminates the value of hardware RAID and thus makes this a perfect match. I'm worried about the "reasonably priced" bit though, since most places still seem to want to charge through the nose. But if QNAP can hit no more then a $50-70 premium say then it can't come soon enough for me.DarioLuna - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
Thanks, this is a great giveaway. I would like to scrapbook/journal my getting laid off from a great paying job that Scrubs Seasons 1-9 DVD allowed me to work from home. This charge in my life hit me hard and even my crafting has been affected.Azodan - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I'm looking for somthing similar but rack mountable and with room for more disks, I guess that ten disk would not be a problem. Do any1 know when/if we will see pcie expansion cards for thunderbolt? I have seen Asus expansion card but it requires a thunderbolt header on the motherboard.Laststop311 - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I don't think we will see pure pci-e add on cards as it requires more than just the data connection from pci-e to fully function. It also needs a display port connection.bigtiny - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
For HD production and post THNDBlt is a god send and crazy cheap ROI from our location sensitive perspective. Being able to have a Red Rocket card for RealTime playback/effects then data drops and archiving all in a simple chain carried in your backback powdered up via battery packs in the middle of nowhere is insane!CPUTechs can grumble on, and I get it: it took APPL what 3yrs to put USB3 on machines only after cashing in on ThndBlt. Regardless, Intel's TB is phenomenal new beginning! And, yes, SSDs are a big part of the equation too.