Multi-Bay 3.5 HDD Enclosure advice

[lozkin]

Hi guys

I currently have 3 x 2tb external hard drives, but am looking to move over to a multi bay enclosure that can hold 3 or 4tb drives. I've been researching over the last few days but struggling to find exactly what I'm looking for.

The main thing I'm looking for is to be able to see all the drives as one larger driver, so instead of 4 x 3tb, it would be 1 x 12tb. I'm confused as to whether this is actually something I should be looking for as an option available in the hardware, or whether this is additional software, or a tweak to a setting on my OS. I'm currently running OSX Mountain Lion

I'm looking for non-raid, and to give you an idea, this is the sort of thing i've been looking at

http://www.ebuyer.com/179317-startech-4-bay-3-5-hard-drive-enclosure-black-s354ufer

Thanks in advance

 

[popatim]

1:that doesnt support drives larger than 2TB.

2: You are going to need raid to do what you want. Either raid0 or jbod to get 12tb from four 3tb drives. Please be aware that if 1 drive fails in raid0 then you will loose all the data on all the drives. In JBoD if 1 drive fails you lose all the data on the one drive.

And just FYI, in a 4 drive raid5 using 3tb drives, you will have a total of 9tb available and if 1 drive fails you won't loose anything beside performance. Replace the drive and the array will rebuild itself (over the course of a day or two). It is critical that you do not lose another drive during this downtime or you will lose all your data.

3: none of the options means you dont have to do regular backups anymore. Backups of your important data are vital in all situations.