Does such device exist?

In theory an SSD is no different to a mechanical HDD so all you really need is an empty enclosure that you can drop a couple of SSDs into. You'll probably struggle to find something which is expecting 2.5" drives so expect to have to monkey about with adapters - that might be more difficult than it sounds because the drive will need to line up with the backplane of the enclosure.

There's an Icybox 2.5" enclosure which does RAID but it's only USB2 or Firewire800
 
For the price of an enclosure with RAID 1 support it might be worth taking a look at a NAS.

Some RAID enclosures have a 2TB limit but this wont be an issue for SSD's just yet.

The ZyXEL NSA325 NAS supports RAID 1 and can be purchased for around £79.95. I cant confirm if 2.5 inch drives work yet but there are generic brackets that can help with conversion to the 3.5 inch size.

I know the Synology 213 NAS defos has support for 2.5" SSD's but is notably more expensive.
 
It need to be specifically :

USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt (preferred)
2.5" (so it can take SSD)
RAID 1

3.5" is no no since like you said, it might not line up.
USB 2.0 is no no since that would defeat the point of SSD.

Don't need a NAS, already have one.

This enclosure is basically going to be a temp drive for working on photos. Think of a set of photos go in, get worked, then I archive it. Next job goes in, repeat and rinse.

The NAS will be where the Archive is stored.

I need RAID 1 because it is a self back up solution on the fly while I work on the photos. 128G SSD is not that expensive so it is easily affordable.

I am using a USB 3.0 HD now to work on, it is fine but I still find lag when the HD accessing the data from photo to photo. I am hoping to minimise the lag.
 
Although a 2.5" enclosure is obviously preferable I wouldn't rule out a 3.5" one. Since an SSD has no moving parts they're more robust than mechanical disks - I wouldn't go juggling with them but you've got a bit more leeway.

So as long as you can support the drive in some way that it's not putting stress on the connector you should be OK.
 
While you say you don't need a NAS the Synology 213 still ticks all the boxes of your requirements so it would be silly to discount it purely because it has additional functions.

Raid 1 - Check
USB 3 * 2 + SD Card - Check
Hot swap bays - Check
Supports 2.5" or 3.5" drives - Check
 
uniQ said:
While you say you don't need a NAS the Synology 213 still ticks all the boxes of your requirements so it would be silly to discount it purely because it has additional functions.

Raid 1 - Check
USB 3 * 2 + SD Card - Check
Hot swap bays - Check
Supports 2.5" or 3.5" drives - Check
Click to expand...

Ok, I am almost sold. But how does it take 2.5" drives? Do I need to buy a caddy?
 
The Drobo Mini would be a great choice to utilise the full speed of SSD's and for small file read/write performance.

The Synology DS213 has removable trays which come with 2 sets of screws for 3.5 and 2.5 inch disks, no conversion caddy required.

3.5 - side mounting
2.5 - underside mounting.

This can be seen at around the 1.20 mark with this unboxing vid. The 212 and 213 have the same trays.

 
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thewanted said:
What about the Drobo Mini?
Click to expand...

I don't really want the Drobo Mini for 2 reasons

1 - it is expensive, so expensive that I might as well get the Drobo 5D which I can add a mSATA SSD in to make it function like a Drobo Mini speed
2 - it defeats the purpose of getting RAID 1 in the first place. The Drobo is nice that it has beyond raid which is clever but any data contained within is limited to that enclosure. If the enclosure dies then the drive are unreadable from another caddy unless I get another Drobo Mini

Raid 1 remove that pitfall, RAID 1 is not dependant on its enclosure so it is the beauty of it.

Stratosphere83 said:
The Drobo Mini would be a great choice to utilise the full speed of SSD's and for small file read/write performance.

The Synology DS213 has removable trays which come with 2 sets of screws for 3.5 and 2.5 inch disks, no conversion caddy required.

3.5 - side mounting
2.5 - underside mounting.

This can be seen at around the 1.20 mark with this unboxing vid. The 212 and 213 have the same trays.

Click to expand...

So it works out just under £400 for 128G in RAID 1. or £500 for 256G. Kinda wish it had Thunderbolt though, USB 3.0 will be the bottleneck here with 5G/s but not by much I guess.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I don't really want the Drobo Mini for 2 reasons

1 - it is expensive, so expensive that I might as well get the Drobo 5D which I can add a mSATA SSD in to make it function like a Drobo Mini speed
2 - it defeats the purpose of getting RAID 1 in the first place. The Drobo is nice that it has beyond raid which is clever but any data contained within is limited to that enclosure. If the enclosure dies then the drive are unreadable from another caddy unless I get another Drobo Mini

Raid 1 remove that pitfall, RAID 1 is not dependant on its enclosure so it is the beauty of it.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, can't argue with that reasoning :) I was just bringing the Drobo Mini to your attention in case you'd missed it.

I am sorely tempted to get the Drobo 5D, even though I had a Drobo v2 and hated its slow speed. My PC with 14 x 2TB drives and FlexRAID gives me too many headaches, so swapping it out for a Mac Mini with a Drobo 5D (5 x 4TB drives) is very appealing. And very expensive.
 
Seems like a lot of places sell external RAID SSD's but only with the disks. Can't see any without disk. There is a Bytecc 2.5-inch dual-bay mobile rack, which is USB3 and eSata. BT-M252U3. I don't know if its bus powered though. I was curious about getting one for sticking old laptop disks into.
 
Yup, I even contemplated at a Drobo 5D point. My options basically consist of

1 - 3TB USB 3.0 HD - £120

What I am using now.

Pros - I already have it, its cheap
Cons - There is no on the fly back up, although this isn't really a problem as such as the way Lightroom functions, the settings is held on the HD in my OS which is time machine every day to my Time Capsule. It just mean I have to make sure I put a copy of any work in my Drobo FS. Slowest of all the options.

2 - WD Thunderbolt Duo in RAID 1 - £430

Pro - Thunderbolt, large storage (3TB for £430 including enclosure), RAID 1
Con - It probably won't be notibily faster than USB 3.0, lag will be evident in HD writing and accessing

3 - Drobo 5D - £1,000 +

Pro - Fast (with internal SSD), expandable, enormous storage (5 x 4TB), Thunderbolt, UPS battery, all the Drobo features, Beyond RAID, hot swap, easy access etc
Con - Expensive (£660 + drives costs = £1500 for a full 5 bay with SSD), nothing to prevent unit failure and subsequent access of data.

4 - SSD via USB 3.0 with Synogy - £500

Pro - Fast (probably fastest or second fastest if USB turns out to be the bottleneck), enclosure reusable for 3.5" HD later on. RAID 1
Con - Small storage, at most I can only access 2 weddings at a time if I get 256G SSDs, most expensive per Gigibyte of all the options.


I already am using Option 1.
Option 3 is too expensive.
So it is between Option 2 and 4, they cost similar...decisions decisons...
 
Why do you need an enclosure? Does it need to be mobile?

If it were me I'd set up a 2nd machine (Tower) as server with the drives shared over Gigabit LAN. Everything else to sync to this once it connects, you could use powerline adapters to speed it up and its less cables than any other option. Because its a server you have full control on what you want to do with the drives.

One professional photographer I know, has his laptop set up so it syncs the important stuff slowly every time it hits a internet connection. Hes more of a society/press photographer than a weddings so perhaps he has less volume of material than you. But of he gets a few good shoots it critical he doesn't lose them.

I sync my stuff to a usb 2.5 2.0 drive and it 5 or 10 mins copies a good few GB's of stuff. Are you working with massive images? How much data? How much needed to be backed up immediately and how much later?
 
We are talking about around/under 100G per job when it starts, final Jpeg will be under 4G which is delivered to the client.

It needs to be that size because I am not working on the odd photo, it is a set of images, the 100G is a set and if 1 moves, the whole goes with it.

When everything is done, the best of the lot will go to a portfolio drive.

Drive 1 - OS (iMac)
Drive 2 - Working Drive
Drive 3 - Archive (Drobo)
Drive 4 - Portfolio (USB/online - my website)
Drive 5 - Cloud Back up (Crashplan)

I have the others all set up, it is the Drive 2 that I am trying to find the best solution. If I am working like 200 images at a time that you cut down to like 5 for a magazine then I don't need this method, but when the volume is 10/15 times bigger per job then every extra second spent loading the next photo soon add up.

Currently I am using Drive 3 as purely a back up, so if Drive 2 goes down, I get another one and copy the content from Drive 3 (Drobo) back and keep working. This new method is basically all about speed.
 
200 images at 4G ish is 800GB.

Isn't any advantage in load times negated by the copy to and from the working disk if its too small to hold all the files your working on in a session?
 
No....lol you got the numbers wrong.

100G is raw
4G is jpeg

Each raw files is around 30mb.
The archive files will be DNG.

The copying across can be done whilst I do something else or sleeping, which is what I do when I export them in my old iMac. 500 images at 90 seconds each is an overnight job.

I did pre-render 1:1 on my holiday images yesterday on the old system took 4 hours. I did that while I was doing something else. I can go do something else if the time is like in 1 lump, I can't when it's 2 seconds here, 3 seconds there.
 
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