[44 lb] 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] Ive been daisy-chaining three of these units for 2 years now. No failed drives. Moving many TBs of 4K media back and forth and medium level editing with Premiere. Units are fast as lighting with full resolution editing. Love these units!

[7x Full Height] If you need the maximum amount of storage this is the RAID for you. My company Cintegral and Clients love these for Motion Picture and Post Production.

[Security Lock] This case is deeper than other options. It has a mid-case fan array, plenty of space to accommodate hot swap drive cages without crowding the power supply or motherboard and an adjustable expansion card support system. It fits my ATX MSI motherboard perfectly. The washable front door filters work great to keep dust out. Standard 26 rail kits fit well. Very happy and plan on using this case forever.

[ATX] I've been using this RAID in RAID 10 with HGST 10TB Helium Drives as my Archival Back up on-set. Excellent software.

[1x 3.5"
] This 12 bay array has been flawless and FAST and I am planning more projects and recommending to friends. Im using 4KN drives only with Mac OSX so far. I was able to test on the 4k BlackMagic drive test and it handles all the various bit rates but the very last and most extreme bit test. But I was shocked at how it keeps a steady consistent flow of data at such extreme bitrate. I want to try on Windows server 2016 also as a primary production storage for file sharing. Would be much faster than iscsi. I have tried OTHER brands raid chassis in this price range and have lost time and money finding out weeks later that the controller is garbage and we lose data or lots of time. Im very pleased with this product and plan to buy more.

[1x 3.5"
] 2U and small depth is perfect

[7x Full Height] Running RAID 6 and getting Write: 1500 mb/s Read: 1800 mb/s. 12 10tb drives, 120tb net, 144tb overall with a very compact footprint. Works equally well under Win10 and MacOS. Perfect.

[7x Full Height] Very solid design, and was the perfect chassis for my new server

[Security Lock] 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.