CalDigit T4 Thunderbolt 2 Professional RAID - RAID 0, 1, 5, JBOD(T4R-24000-US-150)

I wish I had read Remik's Amazon review prior to buying this device. I would not have bought it, seeing that CalDigit's replacement drives are about double the price. And I'm not talking about generic hard drives. I'm comparing to HGST drives and Samsung SSD's.Out of the box, this is quite a nice and solid product. It's beautifully made, easy to connect, and performs brilliantly. I've been using it for RAW image processing with Adobe Lightroom.As of writing, I've had the CalDigit T4 for about 1.5 years, and a drive finally failed. Since I don't want to lose RAID functionality, I ordered a drive from CalDigit. On Amazon, I can get a quality brand 1TB 7200 RPM for about sixty USD or less. I paid about one hundred twenty USD to have CalDigit ship me a replacement. I can understand a reasonable premium, but double is way too much for me.Prior to this experience, I was thinking of eventually enlarging the capacity. Now, I am going to look for a different product.

I give it 3 star because its the third I buy and the previous ones were fine. This was DOA. Got me into trouble, since I needed it for work and paid extra for reliable, tested brand. Guess this can happen but I would not expect it from Caldigit. People in film business have been complaining about LaCie for a few years now, suggesting Caldigit or G-Technology, but this has never happened with me before with either brand.Besides this very item, the products are good. A little turnoff you need to install drivers and set up the T4 with proprietary software though, which you don't with their T3s, those just run straight out of the box, and are configurable through standard drive utilities.Good speed on all of them!

Data rates are as they should be. The only thing that concerns me is planned obsolescence w/ this company. We have 45k worth of raid arrays from this company that works perfectly but can only address concerns / rebuild raid 5/6's w/ a dual boot drive. Meaning, they won't work moving forward w/ the HD Pro 2's and the HD Pro 24's.Also, don't put your own 'better' drive in this unit, the raid functionality won't work (as they built it). You'll have to use https://www.softraid.com/ which has the same data rates.Shame on Caldigit but they do make high quality products and the guys that work there are extremely helpful. It's the higher guys, cross seas that are the problem.Still 4 stars for speed, functionality, & quality. Just hope they don't deem your unit 'out of service' when the next interface comes in.

This "raid" system does NOT work. DO NOT BUY THIS. I purchased this system and called CalDigit to get support setting up. Caldigit was very helpful getting the system up and running, but I had to wonder, why did I even need to call them? Setting this thing up should be as easy as 1-2-3. After getting the system up and the raids set up, it seemed to run fine. Then, after a couple of days, it completely crashed. I had not even USED the raid system. I had not even stored one single file on the system, and it crashed, needing to have all drives erased. I started over building the raid from scratch, and again, it seemed to work. I didn't put any information on it, and later that day, it crashed again. I wish I had not missed my window for returning this piece of junk. I am out $1,200 and it is completely worthless. Nothing but a boat anchor. I should have bought a G-Tech system instead. Hard lesson learned. Don't be fooled. This thing is a total waste of money.

The CalDigit T4 is a solidly engineered piece of equipment. I just switched from a Drobo S because of poor customer support and unreliable software. The CalDigit offers a lot of flexibility when configuring the 4 drives included: JBOD, and RAID 0, 1, and 5. I set up as RAID 0 two pairs of drives = each of the two 4TB drive has an identical copy of itself for a total of 8 TB if usable storage. Since I mainly use it for storing family pictures and videos, this RAID setup is great for safeguarding the data but won't offer the maximum performance the unit is capable of. I had a poor understanding of how RAID works, but Wikipedia and a few articles in the internet will help demystify this. The software monitors the drives' health, temperature, ..., and can be set to send the user e-mail notifications if any of a number of problems are detected. I called customer support before I received the unit, and someone answered the phone promptly and answered my questions. The unit works with Time Machine, and I have been very impressed with its solid construction and seamless compatibility with my iMac. Drobo, on the other hand, could never get things right. The 5 year warranty is for the enclosure, while the hard drives have a 3 year warranty. This is the best warranty out there. The unit will serve well a demanding photo or video editing professional user. Its performance may be overkill for someone like me who is mainly interested in archiving photos. However, I have peace of mind with the quality of the equipment, warranty, and customer support. To me this is worth the premium I paid for the unit.

very touchy about the 120v power feed. works at one house. doesnt at the other,

Had to add drivers to see it but pretty painless and it works great!

Good solid product at the right price range.