External multiple hard drive bay

[Jon K.]

I'm after some advice please.

I've recently purchased a laptop with a view to ditching my desktop. I
would, however, like to keep the 3 hard drives that in the desktop and use
them to augment the laptop drive.

What I would like then is an external hard drive bay that can hold at least
3 drives and plug into USB or Firewire (I'm guessing that Firewire would
give the better performance, but I'm more than happy to be corrected).

Firstly, is this the right way forward? I do a fair amount of video editing
and mainly need the storage space, but would hopefully be able to run some
big games off there too.

And I'm having trouble finding anything that matches this description. What
should I be searching for specifically? And where?

Any guidance gratefully received.

Jon K.

 

[Noozer]

I'm after some advice please.

I've recently purchased a laptop with a view to ditching my desktop. I
would, however, like to keep the 3 hard drives that in the desktop and use
them to augment the laptop drive.

What I would like then is an external hard drive bay that can hold at
least 3 drives and plug into USB or Firewire (I'm guessing that Firewire
would give the better performance, but I'm more than happy to be
corrected).

USB2 or Firewire will most likely give you equal performance. You can't boot
a PC from a firewire drive (that I know of), but you can from a USB drive.
USB drives plug into hubs whereas Firewire drives are daisychained one after
another.

You won't be able to find much as far as multi drive enclosures. If you do,
they will be pricey.

You'd be better off to use individual USB or firewire enclosures.

Performance is pretty good, at least copying files to/from these devices.
Not sure how it compares to internal drives for realtime access though.

 

[exine]

USB2 or Firewire will most likely give you equal performance. You can't boot
a PC from a firewire drive (that I know of), but you can from a USB drive.
USB drives plug into hubs whereas Firewire drives are daisychained one after
another.

You won't be able to find much as far as multi drive enclosures. If you do,
they will be pricey.

You'd be better off to use individual USB or firewire enclosures.

Performance is pretty good, at least copying files to/from these devices.
Not sure how it compares to internal drives for realtime access though.

Or... If your feeling sassy enough, you can make your own enclosure
like I am (but only for two drives).

 

[Jon K.]

USB2 or Firewire will most likely give you equal performance. You can't
boot a PC from a firewire drive (that I know of), but you can from a USB
drive. USB drives plug into hubs whereas Firewire drives are daisychained
one after another.

You won't be able to find much as far as multi drive enclosures. If you
do, they will be pricey.

You'd be better off to use individual USB or firewire enclosures.

Performance is pretty good, at least copying files to/from these devices.
Not sure how it compares to internal drives for realtime access though.

Thanks Noozer - that was very useful. I appreciate your time.

 

[Jon K.]

Or... If your feeling sassy enough, you can make your own enclosure
like I am (but only for two drives).

Whoa - that sounds somewhat beyond my frankly shoddy DIY skills!

Cheers exine, appreciate it.

 

[Paul]

I'm after some advice please.

I've recently purchased a laptop with a view to ditching my desktop. I
would, however, like to keep the 3 hard drives that in the desktop and use
them to augment the laptop drive.

What I would like then is an external hard drive bay that can hold at least
3 drives and plug into USB or Firewire (I'm guessing that Firewire would
give the better performance, but I'm more than happy to be corrected).

Firstly, is this the right way forward? I do a fair amount of video editing
and mainly need the storage space, but would hopefully be able to run some
big games off there too.

And I'm having trouble finding anything that matches this description. What
should I be searching for specifically? And where?

Any guidance gratefully received.

Jon K.

On the laptop end:
http://www.startech.com/ststore/ItemList.cfm?category=P41100&mt=P40&ParentCatId=

"Gigabit CardBus Network Card (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec)"
Use a networked storage device, connected via 1Gb/sec network connection

"3 Port IEEE-1394B FireWire 800 CardBus Adapter with Digital Video Editing Kit"
Use external Firewire800 enclosures. The enclosure would have a
bridge-board, that converts IDE to Firewire800 protocol.

"2 Port Serial ATA CardBus Adapter"
Use external SATA enclosures. Stick brand new SATA drives in them.

USB and FireWire400 might be a bit slower. I don't see a good
SCSI PCcard, and that would be another (expensive) disk technology.

For enclosures, it depends on how DIY you can be.

There are various kinds of enclosures here.
http://www.granitedigital.com/_downloadfiles/acrobat/Price_List_Color.pdf

There is a Firewire800 bridge board for $59.95 . You would
need one per drive. Plus an enclosure with power supply, to
power the drives.

If you buy the stand-alone enclosures, they cost a small
fortune. Whether they are Firewire800 or SATA.

Constructing your own NAS from your old computer, and
networking to the laptop would be another solution. Using
the gigabit network PCcard above, and equipping your old
computer with a gigabit network card, might work. Depending
on how things work out, it could be slower than using the
SATA two port card. But reasonably easy to do.

I would think performance wise, the order would be:

1) SATA 2 port (only two drives but less gets in the way
protocol wise). You can get SATA-IDE adapters, if you
really insisted on using the old IDE drives. You'll need
a powered enclosure, and a computer case plus power
supply could do that for you. One unknown, is whether the
Startech 2 port card, uses an ordinary SATA cable or an
ESATA cable. The ESATA cable is shielded and is intended
for external drive connection.

2) Firewire800. Only if you connect one drive per port on
the interface card. You can daisy-chain Firewire drives,
so three drives could be strung off only one port on the
PCcard. But then the bridge board "thru-performance"
determines the max transfer rate for the last drive. Doing
point to point between drives and PCcard would be best.
(I've tried daisy-chaining using Firewire400 and lost about
1/3rd performance for the last drive on the chain.)

3) Make a server from your old computer. String a gigabit
Ethernet cable from laptop to old computer. Windows
networking determines how well this works. If you don't
want to look at your old computer any more, there are
also NAS (network area storage) boxes. I expect you'll
pay too much for those as well.

Unless you have an unlimited budget, there will be an
element of DIY to this project, to save on costs. But
at least there are a few viable options for PCcards.
Picking an enclosure method will make or break the deal.

Paul

 

[Jon K.]

On the laptop end:
http://www.startech.com/ststore/ItemList.cfm?category=P41100&mt=P40&ParentCatId=

"Gigabit CardBus Network Card (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec)"
Use a networked storage device, connected via 1Gb/sec network connection

"3 Port IEEE-1394B FireWire 800 CardBus Adapter with Digital Video Editing
Kit"
Use external Firewire800 enclosures. The enclosure would have a
bridge-board, that converts IDE to Firewire800 protocol.

"2 Port Serial ATA CardBus Adapter"
Use external SATA enclosures. Stick brand new SATA drives in them.

USB and FireWire400 might be a bit slower. I don't see a good
SCSI PCcard, and that would be another (expensive) disk technology.

For enclosures, it depends on how DIY you can be.

There are various kinds of enclosures here.
http://www.granitedigital.com/_downloadfiles/acrobat/Price_List_Color.pdf

There is a Firewire800 bridge board for $59.95 . You would
need one per drive. Plus an enclosure with power supply, to
power the drives.

If you buy the stand-alone enclosures, they cost a small
fortune. Whether they are Firewire800 or SATA.

Constructing your own NAS from your old computer, and
networking to the laptop would be another solution. Using
the gigabit network PCcard above, and equipping your old
computer with a gigabit network card, might work. Depending
on how things work out, it could be slower than using the
SATA two port card. But reasonably easy to do.

I would think performance wise, the order would be:

1) SATA 2 port (only two drives but less gets in the way
protocol wise). You can get SATA-IDE adapters, if you
really insisted on using the old IDE drives. You'll need
a powered enclosure, and a computer case plus power
supply could do that for you. One unknown, is whether the
Startech 2 port card, uses an ordinary SATA cable or an
ESATA cable. The ESATA cable is shielded and is intended
for external drive connection.

2) Firewire800. Only if you connect one drive per port on
the interface card. You can daisy-chain Firewire drives,
so three drives could be strung off only one port on the
PCcard. But then the bridge board "thru-performance"
determines the max transfer rate for the last drive. Doing
point to point between drives and PCcard would be best.
(I've tried daisy-chaining using Firewire400 and lost about
1/3rd performance for the last drive on the chain.)

3) Make a server from your old computer. String a gigabit
Ethernet cable from laptop to old computer. Windows
networking determines how well this works. If you don't
want to look at your old computer any more, there are
also NAS (network area storage) boxes. I expect you'll
pay too much for those as well.

Unless you have an unlimited budget, there will be an
element of DIY to this project, to save on costs. But
at least there are a few viable options for PCcards.
Picking an enclosure method will make or break the deal.

Paul

Wow!

Paul, thank you so much for such a thorough reply. That's given me a lot to
consider, and I'm pretty sure my solution is in some combination there.

Thanks again, really appreciate you taking the time...

JK

 

[Noozer]

Or... If your feeling sassy enough, you can make your own enclosure
like I am (but only for two drives).

I'd love to build something where I'd only need one power and USB connection
for all the drives within the enclosue, supporting multiple ATA drives (Sata
too???)

 

[exine]

I'd love to build something where I'd only need one power and USB connection
for all the drives within the enclosue, supporting multiple ATA drives (Sata
too???)

Just remember when you pile multiple drives ontop of each other they
need to be cooled. My original plans were for two drives, but then I
was thinking about everything that was going to go into this project
and I up'ed it two four removable drives.