I hate tech refreshes this close to NAB

It always sucks thinking about doing some tech refreshes this close to NAB. But as the saying goes - if you need it now, buy now - especially if you have the workload to recoup on your investment within a year.

That said - our 3 station boutique is in desperate need of a SAN - or at least some external enclosures that offer RAID5. I know SANs are going to be the popular thing this year at NAB - but we can't hold off much longer.

We currently basically build software RAIDs in various configurations (0 or1) with the internal slots of our mac pros. Then swap out the drives for different projects.

At my previous company we used to use Sonnet enclosures in the same manner. But we got bit in the ass a couple times with RAID 0 when we needed the speed. Plus lazy editors would put project files on there and when we lost the RAID it got messy.

Someday we hope to buy a proper SAN - but in the meantime we were thinking of getting some external enclosures to tide us over. We don't NEED file sharing capabilities yet - really we just need somewhat fast, redundant local storage.

We are deciding between theSonnet D400QR5 and the OWC Mercury Rack Pro. Both enclosures offer RAID 0,1 and RAID 5 as well as JBOD. Plus they have SATA and FW connections, so we wouldn't have to buy Sata controller cards for all the machines - just the main "online room"

The OWC is remarkably cheaper - which as a "short term" solution may be fine. Just wondering if anyone has recommendations on which to go with and why?

Or if I should put the credit card away and wait for "the next big thing" to come out in April. We did just buy a Mac Pro with "thunderbolt" but I've heard that it doesn't look like lightpeak PCI cards are coming anytime soon, so I don't see waiting for that to pan out.

-Rick

PS> Bob before you rip me a new one -- as a former Final Share user - I know that option, but again we aren't making the SAN leap at this time.