[Steel] 2014: bought the original Areca 8050 filled with HGST drives and used primarily for Lightroom/FCPX editing. Zero issues with this RAID. Thunderbolt 1 and see 400-600mb read/write speeds.


2020: Upgrade RAID system for more storage and better performance. After reading/watching all the reviews, I was expecting 800-900mb since my laptop/iMac still thunderbolt 2. RAID 5 with 8x WD Ultrastar providing 1100+mb and I couldn't be happier with these results.


For anyone shopping one of these, don't be intimidated by the setup/config that some of the reviews note. It's a little bit of work, but nothing horrible. Honestly, I've had Alexa dongles that were more complicated to setup than this.


Also: one of the review sites noted this T3 unit is not backward compatible with thunderbolt2 devices. I'm using the Apple T3-T2 adapter and it's working flawlessly.


Thanks Areca for making such a solid performing array!

[ATX] Just what I needed and arrived just as described.

[1x 80 mm] I experienced some mild web graphical interface bugs during initial setup, but the cineraid support was very accommodating and helpful. I put this unit to work immediately with 20TB of transfers and transcoding. I also switched between M1 and Intel machines without any problems what so ever. I'm very happy with this product 2 weeks in.

[1x 80 mm] Couldn't be happier with this enclosure.

It's not perfect. It's not the newest model. But it's very well engineered still today. Having said that installing it was not simple on silicon Mac but I am reasonably IT savvy and figured it our, hint: install driver and configure as root.

I am using a MacBook Pro M2 Max on Ventura and Filled it up with WD Ultrastar 20TBs giving me 80TB usable with RAID 6. The array took about 30 hours to initialize. I am getting 1439 MB/Sec Write, and 1034 MB/Sec Read using Aja test. You could beat those numbers with RAID 5 but I want to be guaranteed to survive 2 disk failure so I am willing to sacrifice a bit of speed.

So needless to say I am pleased. Can edit 4k raw video files. I also work with large numbers of large RAW photos and the write speeds in particular are near SSD level. My laptop is very powerful and I got it working hard pushing this DAS. I put it in closet so I can't say it's loud. Can't hear the fans but can hear the drives barely, but they are loud drives.

The device is very solid and solftware is comprehensive. I am coming from OWC Thundunderbolt arrays and while they are very nice is well, this blows that totally out of the water. I also prefer hardware RAID which this has and the OWC didn't. Even with my 6 data center class drives (meaning power hungry) all on and engaged I am only getting peaks of 70 ish watts of power consumption. Idle sits at 60 ish watts and if that's a concern go with home prosumer drives like wd red which won't last as long but uses less power when idle.

[1x 3.5"
] Working like charm
easy to set up and no issues so far

[Front Bezel] Best case ever

[ATX, Micro-ATX] I bought this case to move an existing NAS from an ITX tower into a rack mountable case. I had (5) 3.5 drives to mount. I found a (3) 3.5 to (2) 5.25 bay adapter with matching hexagon venting (the black isn't a perfect match, but good enough for a rack) and was able to add another 80mm fan. I thought I would only be able to fit one drive on top of each of the 3.5 cages making this adapter necessary. With an ITX board I was able to fit two drives in each of the 3.5 bays. The drive bay adapter brings the total capacity up to (7) 3.5 drives which seems insane for a short depth 2U case.


I already had a SFX power supply with an SFX to ATX adapter which allowed for some extra room. A 24-pin extension was necessary to reach the motherboard. I don't think this would be an issue with a standard ATX power supply.

It definitely feels like a cheap case. For the price I'm not complaining at all. My only gripe is I wasn't able to find rails that were compatible with my shorter depth rack (Tripp Lite SWR15US). I overcame this by mounting a shelf on the rear posts of my rack to support the back of the case which makes getting this in and out of the rack much easier.

Overall a great case. I couldn't find anything else able to support (5) 3.5 drives in a short depth 2U chassis for even double the price.

[ATX] 2U and small depth is perfect