Best external storage solution

Hi All,

I'd like to buy an external drive enclosure with drives to act as both primary storage and backup for an iMac. I will be using Carbon Copy Cloner software to backup the drives and would ideally like a 4 drive enclosure:

2TB drive 1: primary storage
2TB drive 2: copy of drive 1
2TB drive 3: 2nd copy of drive 1 - easily removable to be taken off site and periodically brought back to catch up.
2TB drive 4: bootable copy of main mac HD

Can you recommend a particular drive enclosure and drives? Can't be too expensive, but don't want to compromise on safety of data. The plan would be once the drives are full to remove them and store and then insert a new set of drives.

Can anyone offer advise?

Many Thanks

Well, define "too expensive".

Four bare 2TB drives come in around $100/each, so that's $400 and you still need an enclosure. That's where the money is.

You don't mention how important performance is to you - but if you're chugging that kind of data, I imagine you don't want to wait all day. You also might want to scrap the whole idea of different logical drives and CCC and go with a mirrored RAID instead, at least for the on-site units.

Check this out: Hitachi G-RAID With Thunderbolt Review (8TB) | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

You could get a 6GB unit and RAID it out, and then get something else for the 2GB off-site unit.

Alternatively, something like this sounds like it would meet the needs you are trying to accomplish (although with 3TB drives): http://www.storagereview.com/caldigit_t1_thunderbolt_drive_review

Would highly recommend drive 4 be a RAID mirror of your boot drive - that way you do not have to worry about maintaining it manually - it will always be current.

Drive 2 should be a RAID mirror of drive 1, for the same reason.

Drive 3 can be a manually-created clone of drive 1, and refreshed as needed.

Note that if you go with the 2nd solution above - you only need 3 drive enclosures, as you can take just the drive mounted on a sled out and offsite somewhere.