[Low Profile] I had the 8 bay TB2 and it worked super. Needed to upgrade and went for the 12 bay. It too works super. Hardware Raid is amazing. Nothing seems to slow it down. It maintains top level transfer speeds no matter what I am doing. It NEVER dips...consistent to drawer performance.

[Low Profile] 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.

[Low Profile] This is a very solid external RAID array. The hard drives install easily and were immediately recognized by the unit. Instructions are clear, and the manufacture has released a new application which makes setup and management very clear. You still have the option for the web-based GUI interface (which actually has more advanced options available).�

I heard that fan noise was an issue in these units. The fan does have a temporary (15-30sec) startup at full speed, but then it quiets down quite nicely. I have the 6 bay unit, which only has one fan, so this may also be contributing to a lower overall fan noise. (That, and I have NAS drives which I selected specifically for a lower overall operating temperature.).�

Overall very solid build, good speeds via the Thunderbolt 3 port, and easy interface -- a technological "hat trick."

[Low Profile] 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.

[Low Profile] 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.

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

[Low Profile] 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!

[Low Profile] 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!

[Low Profile] 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.

[Low Profile] Working like charm
easy to set up and no issues so far