[geeks] Replacing a Mac Pro 2006

[Nathan Raymond]

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Mark Benson <md.benson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know of a 2 drive or 4 drive box with no drives for
> Thunderbolt?
> Preferably from a UK seller but not essential?

Don't rule out USB 3.0.  I recently bought a new 2012 Mini quad core for
home, installed 16GB ($72) of RAM and swapped the hard drive out for a
Samsung 830 256GB SSD ($170).  Coming from a 2009 Mac Mini with GeForce
9400 graphics, the Intel 4000 HD GPU is a good bit faster, and Aperture is
much more responsive now (my 2009 Mini was dual-core, 8GB RAM, and a 128GB
SSD).  Sure, I could get some expensive Thunderbolt storage, but it's not
going to be much faster than USB 3.0, and there are a lot of USB 3.0
enclosure options (hopefully in the UK you have some of these):

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/GM3QKIT0GB/

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sans%20Digital/MR2UTPLUSB/

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Stardom/SR2SB3/

There are 4-bay USB 3.0 RAID encosures out there as well.

And for $25 you can also adapt any eSATA enclosure to USB 3.0:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADESATAUSB3/

- Nate