GRAPH LEGEND
6 drive RAID 0 TB2 = Areca ARC-5028T2 Thunderbolt 2.0/USB 3.0 RAID enclosure with six Seagate 2TB SSHD drives in RAID 0 mode connected to a Thunderbolt 2.0 port
6 drive RAID 5 TB2 = Areca ARC-5028T2 Thunderbolt 2.0/USB 3.0 RAID enclosure with six Seagate 2TB SSHD drives in RAID 0 mode connected to a Thunderbolt 2.0 port
6 drive RAID 0 USB3 = Areca ARC-5028T2 Thunderbolt 2.0/USB 3.0 RAID enclosure with six Seagate 2TB SSHD drives in RAID 0 mode connected to a USB 3.0 port
Test 'mule' was the 'late 2013' Mac Pro except in the case of USB 3.0 where we used the faster results from the iMac 5K's USB 3.0 port. (See comments below)
LARGE SEQUENTIAL TRANSFER TEST
We used AJA System Test to test file level sequential transfer speed using a 16GB test and 4096x2160 Frame Size. RED graph bar means the FASTEST overall in Megabytes per Second.
INSIGHTS
We like the flexibility of a "RAID-in-the-Box" storage device with both Thunderbolt and USB ports. We were able to use the ARC-5028T2 with every Mac from the 12" Retina MacBook with USB-C port to the 'late 2013' Mac Pro with Thunderbolt 2.0 ports. Since the RAID volume is setup using the internal ARM_based 933MHz storage processor, moving from Mac to Mac does not require reformatting.
RAID support includes level 0, 1, 1+0, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60, and JBOD. For complete list of features, consult the Areca product page for the ARC-5028T2.
With six bays, you don't need SSDs to take advantage of the transfer speeds possible with Thunderbolt 2.0. We used six Seagate 2TB Desktop Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD model ST2000DX001) for our testing but even faster and larger capacity drives are possible if you want to reach the magical 1350MB/s real world possible speed of Thunderbolt 2.0.
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