External enclosure compatible with TVS-871?

[foreigneye]

I want to add more storage to my TVS-871 and need help picking a unit that is USB 3, holds between 4 and 8 drives, and the TVS-871 can manage the RAID directly (as opposed to the external unit appearing as a single drive and doing the RAID stuff by itself).
Back when I bought the unit in 2015 I had bookmarked the UX-800P but looks like it's not manufactured any more and nobody keeps them in stock, probably since the thunderbolt model was released (which obviously will not work with my unit since it doesn't have thunderbolt).

So what options do I have left? Would *any* USB multi-drive enclosure work, or are there any specific models I need to stick to?

Thanks,
Julian

[P3R]

I want to add more storage to my TVS-871 and need help picking a unit that is USB 3, holds between 4 and 8 drives, and the TVS-871 can manage the RAID directly (as opposed to the external unit appearing as a single drive and doing the RAID stuff by itself).

The only product that fit your description is the Qnap TR-004.

It will still be a separate storage pool or volume though and you need to update the TVS-871 to QTS 4.3.6 for it to be supported.

Back when I bought the unit in 2015 I had bookmarked the UX-800P but looks like it's not manufactured any more and nobody keeps them in stock, probably since the thunderbolt model was released (which obviously will not work with my unit since it doesn't have thunderbolt).

The UX-800P and the TX-800P coexisted so that was not the reason. The UX-800P was probably dropped because it was a terrible product. It was overpriced (it was almost as costly as an 8-bay NAS) and very slow (as USB 3 simply haven't the performance to connect more than at most 4 or 5 disks with decent performance).

Customers that bought UX-800P have reported here in the forum about their disappointment with the bad performance.

So what options do I have left?

Personally I very much prefer to add more NASes instead of doing storage expansion through an inadequate interface like USB 3.

A NAS is very much more versatile and usable than an expansion chassis and can easily be used in other ways in the future when demands have changed.

Would *any* USB multi-drive enclosure work, or are there any specific models I need to stick to?

No.

[foreigneye]

Many thanks for the feedback. Extremely useful. You addressed all my questions and concerns. Cheers!!

Julian