Topic: best solution for multiple internal HD's with no home?

[cleantone]

So I want to come up with the best idea to do something with my hard drives. I do not have USB2 on my mac by the way. I have 3 firewire enclosures with drives in them. I ALSO have 4-5 internal drives that are NOT in enclosures. I have one enclosure unscrewed so I can pull the serial cables and power cables to mount the drives. I would like to get all of these drives usable at once. Should I get more firewire enclosures (1 per drive) or is there a better option? Can firewire enclosures deal with drives linked together with slaved drives? Should I build a tower with many drives inside? Any other ideas? Any vendors to get cheap and relatively quiet firewire enclosures? Thanks.

Also, I found a little box that you can pop two drives into and connects via ethernet to your computer. I know I should know this but how would the transfer rate of that compare to firewire 400? Would that work on my mac? I don't do much networking and don't know all that much about it or the ethernet abilities.

I'm looking at these even though they have no fans.

[guysonic]

So I want to come up with the best idea to do something with my hard drives. I do not have USB2 on my mac by the way. I have 3 firewire enclosures with drives in them. I ALSO have 4-5 internal drives that are NOT in enclosures. I have one enclosure unscrewed so I can pull the serial cables and power cables to mount the drives. I would like to get all of these drives usable at once. Should I get more firewire enclosures (1 per drive) or is there a better option? Can firewire enclosures deal with drives linked together with slaved drives? Should I build a tower with many drives inside? Any other ideas? Any vendors to get cheap and relatively quiet firewire enclosures? Thanks.

Also, I found a little box that you can pop two drives into and connects via ethernet to your computer. I know I should know this but how would the transfer rate of that compare to firewire 400? Would that work on my mac? I don't do much networking and don't know all that much about it or the ethernet abilities.

I'm looking at these even though they have no fans.

Likely best solution is the newer multiple harddrive enclosure 'kits' that take about four drives and allow different RAID configurations.   Best if all drives in the enclosure are same type/size for having configuration versatility in RAID setups.  Most of these multiple drive boxes are SATA or ATA/IDE types, but firewire is also available.  Start searching for RAID kits at http://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/cat/Storage/RAID/category.asp

[cleantone]

That would be ideal if I wanted to spend over a grand. I need a pretty cheap solution. I guess I'll consider a handful of cheap external boxes.

[terrapinj]

there are lots of multiple drive enclosures out there in the couple hundred $ range, many will do Firewire and/or eSata (assuming mac has an eSata interface) i've been looking into a few myself and found one i liked at a good price but it was discontinued 


is there a recommended way to store HDs you don't plan on using? right now i've got a couple sitting in the original anti-static bag and wrapped in bubble wrap but im curious if there is a better/preferred method

[guysonic]

That would be ideal if I wanted to spend over a grand. I need a pretty cheap solution. I guess I'll consider a handful of cheap external boxes.

there are lots of multiple drive enclosures out there in the couple hundred $ range, many will do Firewire and/or eSata (assuming mac has an eSata interface) i've been looking into a few myself and found one i liked at a good price but it was discontinued 


is there a recommended way to store HDs you don't plan on using? right now i've got a couple sitting in the original anti-static bag and wrapped in bubble wrap but im curious if there is a better/preferred method

Look for RAID KITS OR MULTIBLE DRIVE ENCLOSURES as suggested, NOT complete with drives inside as YOU ALREADY HAVE WORKING DRIVES.  Kits cost very little, about $200-$400 as mentioned

[cleantone]

Thanks again. Do you know if a RAID kit like this (or any others) can deal with different size drives? Do they all have to be 200gig or can 2 be 200, 1 be 500, and another be 160 for example? Any info appreciated.

[Brian Skalinder]

Thanks again. Do you know if a RAID kit like this (or any others) can deal with different size drives? Do they all have to be 200gig or can 2 be 200, 1 be 500, and another be 160 for example? Any info appreciated.

The enclosure to which you linked should work fine to hold 4 SATA drives.  (Are your drives SATA?)  The size of the array when running RAID (overview, levels) is typically governed by the size of the smallest HDD, so I don't recommend running RAID with the drives you have due to the broad range in sizes (though you could pair the 200 GB HDDs in RAID1, but you'd have no efficient way of using the the 160/500 HDDs in an array).

When looking at enclosures, take into account several factors:

• Does the enclosure hold the type (e.g. ATA/IDE, SATA) and number of drives you wish?  Not sure which you have.
• Does the transfer protocol suit my needs?  (e.g. Firewire, USB, SATA, ethernet)  Sounds like Firewire or ethernet will do the the trick for you, but not USB.  Dunno about SATA...you'd probably need new SATA control card(s).
• Is the control mechanism appropriate for my purposes?  (e.g. RAID, independent disc operation)  Is your goal redundancy, or simply getting all the drives on-line simultaneously?  I think the latter, in which case don't worry about RAID.  And even if you want redundancy, I recommend reasonable redundancy instead of RAID, unless you have the cash to spend on higher-end RAID controllers or have business-critical data access requirements.
  
• Is it well ventilated?  Don't want those drives overheating and reducing their life.

[JackoRoses]

That would be ideal if I wanted to spend over a grand. I need a pretty cheap solution. I guess I'll consider a handful of cheap external boxes.

not a mac user but can you buy a bigger case and put all the drives into that?
Not sure what kind of headers you have available on your motherboard either.
Yet what I did was get a nice big server tower and that gave me lots of room to install drives.
I suppose yo ucould always install an addon card if you don't have enough headers.

[cleantone]

Thanks for the info and analysis. I am now thinking the RAID is not fitting my needs. How about a hot swap type of setup? Maybe something like this? Anyone know if you can get some sort of hot swap bay that is firewire connective to a computer? 

not a mac user but can you buy a bigger case and put all the drives into that?
Not sure what kind of headers you have available on your motherboard either.
Yet what I did was get a nice big server tower and that gave me lots of room to install drives.
I suppose yo ucould always install an addon card if you don't have enough headers.

Well that is what I was thinking about originally. I am on a laptop though as of now. I would need ethernet or firewire connectivity from the device. PCMCIA card perhaps as well.

[imgoinmad]

For what it's worth, here's what I'd do...

1) get a USB 2.0 card for your computer (about $12)

2) get one of tehse USB 2.0 to Sata/IDE cables ($35 + $3 shipping from China!)
http://usb.brando.com.hk/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00002

You can use this to connect any drive IDE or SATA to your computer via the USB port.

I don't like all my drives online all the time (heat kills drives, having them on the shelf unplugged, they'll virtually last forever). I fill a drive then put it on the shelf till i need to access it. This cable lets me quickly grab a drive, plug it in and access all the data...and guarantees a long life for my drives (no redundancy is really required for this setup). I bought 5 of these (got a few for friends) and the shipping for all 5 from China turned out to still be only $3 and they came in about 4-5 days!

[Brian Skalinder]

I don't like all my drives online all the time (heat kills drives, having them on the shelf unplugged, they'll virtually last forever). I fill a drive then put it on the shelf till i need to access it. This cable lets me quickly grab a drive, plug it in and access all the data...and guarantees a long life for my drives (no redundancy is really required for this setup).

Trying to find an article that indicates long-term reliability of shelved/unplugged HDDs isn't all that great.  Hopefully I'll find it.

Fair point about redundancy, if one maintains proper backups.  With proper backups, redundancy is just a question of convenience, i.e. it provides easy and quick access to data in the event of HDD failure.  Proper backups should provide long-term access to data in the event of single HDD loss (without redundancy) or multiple HDD loss (with redundancy, e.g. both original and redundant HDD fail), but not necessarily easy/swift access.

Curious what you use for backups?

[cleantone]

That is not too bad of an idea imgoinmad. I'll have to consider that. I feel like the drives should be protected somehow but I suppose the original box and static sleeve would suffice to some extent.

[imgoinmad]

I've been doing this for quite a while and do nothing in the way of other types of backup...the only drive failures I've ever experienced were drives that were installed in my machine for extended periods, getting exposed to heat and bearing wear (drives turned on are constantly spinning)...I always have a temporary 'work drive' where I move stuff I'm currently working on. If i need something from the archives, I plug in the drive (very quick with that cable), copy the files to my 'work drive' and do what needs to be done (weather it's to burn, edit, etc). If i make changes I need to archive...off to the archive drive it goes. The way I see it is a drive on the shelf with only a few hours usage is as good as a new one from the store...should last a good long time! 

Before I bought those cables I used to do enclosures, I've got about 20 enclosures on the shelf, that is a bit expensive by comparison.

[Brian Skalinder]

I've been doing this for quite a while and do nothing in the way of other types of backup...

Sounds like it's worked for you...so far.  Good luck! 

[JackoRoses]

I don't like all my drives online all the time (heat kills drives, having them on the shelf unplugged, they'll virtually last forever). I fill a drive then put it on the shelf till i need to access it. This cable lets me quickly grab a drive, plug it in and access all the data...and guarantees a long life for my drives (no redundancy is really required for this setup).

Trying to find an article that indicates long-term reliability of shelved/unplugged HDDs isn't all that great.  Hopefully I'll find it.

Fair point about redundancy, if one maintains proper backups.  With proper backups, redundancy is just a question of convenience, i.e. it provides easy and quick access to data in the event of HDD failure.  Proper backups should provide long-term access to data in the event of single HDD loss (without redundancy) or multiple HDD loss (with redundancy, e.g. both original and redundant HDD fail), but not necessarily easy/swift access.

Curious what you use for backups?

I agree with you Brian I read an article not too long ago about storing drives away to retrieve data at a future time. These drives generally do not fare any better than drives that are installed due to the lubricant used starts to lose it's chemical makeup ie: the grease becomes sticky.
Google had a very good white paper released on drive longetivity on their servers.
Heat generally was not linked to drive failure.

[imgoinmad]

Google had a very good white paper released on drive longetivity on their servers.
Heat generally was not linked to drive failure.

I'd love to see that one, as heat is generally thought of as one of the most common causes of drive failure
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/106839/common_causes_of_hard_drive_failure.html

When I came up with my strategy, I based it on the number of drives I had, the speed at which i was filling drives and the cost involved. If I only had one or 2 drives, it might make sense to do a 3 drive raid setup and just keep them all online at one time...but with nearly 50 drives now (have another 500gb on the way) it would take a great deal of time to make a backup (backup sets notoriously fail), it would be quite a big more costly to do multiple raid setups, not to mention the amount of heat generated (could probably heat my office with 50 drives running), electricity used and most importantly...all the noise...drives spinning, raid enclosure fans, etc.

I fill drives rather rapidly with multitrack audio and video projects. I'm working on an independent film project right now that consumes 40gb of storage...Sure would suck to lose data, but I've been running this strategy for a while and not gotten bit....it's worked out well and the cost is about as economical as you can get.

[imgoinmad]

Stiction is known to cause read/write heads to stick the platters of the hard drive due to the breakdown of lubricants which coat the platters themselves.

In my case my drives don't reach the termperatures which would cause breakdown of the lubricant.  Do drives on the shelves in stores/warehouses suffer from stiction?

[cleantone]

anyone know much about hot swappable setups? It makes sense to me that having one unit that could accept hot swap caddies. Maybe cost effective as well. I'm looking for brand and vendor suggestions. Something WITH a cooling fan would be awesome. Thanks in advance...