Hard drive enclosure to use with FCPX

Hello all,

I have several external hard drives from IOMEGA, called Ultramax Plus ( www.amazon.com/Iomega-34440-eSATA-FireWi...traMax/dp/B001NOJO4U ) and I was thinking about switching to another hard drive enclosure to benefit it with the thunderbolt 2 connection.

I am editing a full feature documentary and with my iMac 2011 (i5 3.1, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD inside and AMD
HD 6970M) I sometimes notice that the FCPX 10.1.1 lags a little bit, specially due to FW800 connection. I own a Lacie eSata hub and did noticed some improvements in speed with eSata connection, but not that much.

So I thought in buying the PROMISE Pegasus2 R4 Diskless 4Bay Thunderbolt 2 RAID System ( store.apple.com/us/product/HE150VC/A/pro...erbolt-2-raid-system ). It's Thunderbolt 2, but still I can use in my iMac thunderbolt 1 connection.

My question is: Will I be able to switch all hard drives inside the IOMEGAs and put inside the Pegasus2? Is it something that can be made? Will I benefit myself with the thunderbolt connection, even with some older hard drives 7200 rpm?

Any advices would be welcome.

Best,
I

A RAID enclosure has a controller card. Each manufacturer uses their own unique controller. Thus, one RAID enclosure is not going to simple accept drives from another verbatim like that. Answer is no, you can't swap out drives and keep the data. Those drives will have to be reformatted and the RAID created from scratch. You can backup the data to a third storage unit, move the drives to the Pegasus, create the new RAID, then restore the data to the new RAID from the backup.

Promise also has somewhere on their site listing their recommended drives to use with the P2 diskless RAID. I'd be sure to stick with that list.

BYW, I'm using a P2 diskless with 4TB drives. Great performance, though a tad noisy.

You can plug Tb2 into a Tb1 port, and only get Tb1 speeds. Not sure if there would be any degradation, I'd check with Promise on that first. Also, P2 may be more expensive than a Pegasus Tb1 RAID, so aside from future proofing, not sure the extra money would be worth it. Going to be your call there.

Hello BenB, thanks for the reply.

I'm not worried about formatting the drives. I will have a hard work to manage all disks and its contents, but I guess would be worth it.

My main doubt was if I could switch the hard disks and by your answer, I assume I could do it. Great!

Promise hardware is picky. Verify make & model with Promise. The list is here.

www.promise.com/promotion_page/promotion...on=en-global&rsn=102