Thunderbolt 2 Arrays From Nestor: The Biggest Game in Town

Creative COW by Bob Zelin

Apple pulled the rug out from under their users with FCPX, and they've done it again with the new Mac Pro. They've said, "Surprise! Buy everything all over again, because there are no more PCIe slots for your stupid cards."

And here we go again. Remember the G5 transition to the Mac Pro – everyone was waiting for a PCI-X to PCIe bridge – and it NEVER came. "You bought new. You don't like it? GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS." That's Apple talking, not me.

This time, though, companies like Sonnet and Magma responded quickly to the new Mac Pro with their expansion chassis. And Promise and Areca released Thunderbolt 2 drive arrays, and in smaller capacity, so did CalDigit, and G-Technology. But NO ONE said, "Let's go all the way, and make the BIG products."

If you need something bigger than 8 bays, it's hard to believe, but at this moment, there is only ONE choice – a company from Taiwan named Netstor.

The Netstor NA333TB is a 16 bay drive array that takes conventional 6gig SATA drives up to 4 TB capacity, allowing for up to 64 TB of storage. I prefer HGST Ultrastar drives, so all testing was done with these drives. Because the Netstor does NOT come with a RAID host adaptor card, we tested it with the same trusty Areca ARC-1882ix-16 card that we often use in conventional miniSAS drive setups.

The Netstor has three integrated PCIe slots inside the chassis, eliminating the need for an external Thunderbolt 2 expansion chassis. This saves lots of money while also answering the question, "What about all the cards that I bought? Do I have to throw them out?" The answer is NO! PCIe slots are built in!!! read more...

Check out these items featured in this post and available to BUY NOW at Videoguys.com.
	HighPoint NA333TB Thunderbolt Storage and PCIe Expansion $2,141.00			HighPoint NA333TB Thunderbolt Storage and PCIe Expansion $2,141.00			HighPoint RocketStor 6328 Thunderbolt 2 Hardware RAID Adapter $699.00