Norco HD Enclosures/Cards Experiences

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lotech

126 posts

Master Geek

#25418 20-Aug-2008 19:36

We do post production and currently run a Sonnet 500P 5 Drive Enclosure/Sonnet X4P Sata Card on our edit suite, and have 10 drives sitting in clamshells or various enclosures. So I'm trying to improve our storage setup. I've come across Norco brand drive enclosures - especially the DS-1500, 15 Drive eSata box. The general plan will be to run on our G5 based server with access mostly done via Gigabit ethernet and Final Cut Server.
Norco DS-1500

15 Drives, 4 eSATA ports, 4U Rack Height.
Free PCI/PCI-X eSATA Card. Mac Support.
$US799 / $NZ1120 + Shipping + GST

Has anyone had any experience with any of Norcos enclosures or the cards?

Also, they also have a cool 10 Drive Array, the NORCO DS-1220N (Review) -
Norco 1220N

Simonm

181 posts

Master Geek

#159075 22-Aug-2008 22:23

Have never heard of these, but that doesnt mean they arnt good.

If your after something a little chunker/more room for expansion then something like this would be my bet...

24 Bay chassis plus 3ware raid card....

Price, well, very roughly about 4k.

lotech

126 posts

Master Geek

#159541 25-Aug-2008 12:44

That does look yummy. Unfortunately the included card isn't Mac compatible and $NZ1400 is far more in our price range. I haven't used SAS at all, also with most of our enclosures having eSATA, the options are a little better/wider/cheaper. The AMUG review of the 10 Bay model seemed positive so we're going to take the dip on a Norco.
I'll post my experiences for sure.

Simonm

181 posts

Master Geek

#159628 25-Aug-2008 16:48

The 3ware will work under OSX. Guaranteed. After looking at the Norco the only thing that concerns me is the cooling, the backplanes vent slots are on the best part of tiny! So you will have to hope the fans can pull enough air over the drives to keep them at a satisfactory temp.