Firewire Rack

[a12vman]

Anyone see any weaknesses in a device like this for Videos and Music in a
Home Network?

http://cgi.ebay.com/8-bay-IDE-to-FI...Z8771489918QQcategoryZ167QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Thanks in Advance,
-a12vman

 

[Beemer Biker]

Anyone see any weaknesses in a device like this for Videos and Music in a
Home Network?

http://cgi.ebay.com/8-bay-IDE-to-FI...Z8771489918QQcategoryZ167QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Didnt see anything about being able to pull out the drive with the power on
(hot swap). Think they would have said that, you might want to ask the
seller. If it was hot swappable they would have bragged on it one would
think. They should also have shown what the inside of the drive tray look
like. What type of fan, if any. Are the sides metal to conduct the heat?
Bush or bearing in tray fans? All plastic trays are cheap and if the fan
quits you will quickly lose your disk to heat.

You might want to look at network attached storage if you want to put
something like this on a network. Else you put it on one computer and share
it out.


--
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Beemer Biker (e-mail address removed)
http://TipsForTheComputingImpaired.com
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[Rod Speed]

Anyone see any weaknesses in a device like this for Videos and Music in a
Home Network?

Yes, the use of mobile racks means that its hard to
be sure if the drives are being adequately cooled and
you cant even monitor the drive temps using SMART.

I'd have a small PC in there instead so you have a lot
more control over the config and can monitor drive temps
etc, with a gigabit lan to the instead of firewire/USB2.

 

[Curious George]

- reliability
- No SMART monitoring
- speed when managing & maintaining the media archive
- General clunkiness of a slow external box & cables
- For significantly less you can get a sweet Supermicro chassis with 7
or 8 Hot-Swap SATA bays and make a faster, more reliable,
easier-managed network server. The rackmount kit also costs very
little.

http://cgi.ebay.com/8-bay-IDE-to-FI...Z8771489918QQcategoryZ167QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

That's not a rack or rack mountable unit. I guess, though, it's fair
to say it has mobile "racks"

Didnt see anything about being able to pull out the drive with the power on
(hot swap). Think they would have said that, you might want to ask the
seller. If it was hot swappable they would have bragged on it one would
think. They should also have shown what the inside of the drive tray look
like. What type of fan, if any. Are the sides metal to conduct the heat?
Bush or bearing in tray fans? All plastic trays are cheap and if the fan
quits you will quickly lose your disk to heat.

Looks like cheap plastic trays with a cheap 40mm or some such fan.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=167&item=5127586628&tc=photo

You might want to look at network attached storage if you want to put
something like this on a network. Else you put it on one computer and share
it out.

If he just wants to add DAS to one of his computers better to upgrade
the PC server chassis. Reliable NAS is a different pricerange, unless
he is willing to buy a good condition off-lease server & setup the SW
himself. That would also be cheaper than this FW monstrosity & has a
few other benefits.

 

[BeemerBiker]

Rod: What, if anything, are you using to monitor drive temps? Have
you used HDD Thermometer by RSD a Russian company? After installing it
I was asked to open port 135 on my firewall. Didnt want to do that. I
also tried Speed Fan by Alfredo Milani-Comparetti but it has too much
stuff and list all temp sensors to where I dont know which ones are the
cpus & motherboards and which ones are the drives. That russian one
was much better except it asking me to open tcp port 135.

...TIA..

 

[Rod Speed]

What, if anything, are you using to monitor drive temps?

The SMART temp.

Have you used HDD Thermometer by RSD a Russian company?

Dont think so. I have tried a few different temp displays
but currently use Motherboard Monitor and Everest.

After installing it I was asked to open port
135 on my firewall. Didnt want to do that.

Yeah, I wouldnt either.

I also tried Speed Fan by Alfredo Milani-Comparetti

Yeah, I have used that a bit, mainly because MBM can
be a bit tricky to work out which is the cpu temp sensor.
Its obvious enough with the hard drive SMART temps.

but it has too much stuff and list all temp sensors to where I dont know
which ones are the cpus & motherboards and which ones are the drives.

Yeah, tho that is easy to work out using Everest. Use Everest
to work out which is which and use whatever you like that doesnt
label them clearly after you have worked out which is which.

That russian one was much better except
it asking me to open tcp port 135.

Yeah, I wouldnt touch something that did that, particularly from there.

 

[Jim]

It appears to be nothing more than a muliple drive _enclosure_. It's
not a networked device, and it doesn't appear to offer RAID. So if you
need an enclosure for a buttload of USB/firewire connected drives to be
attached directly to one or more computers, then it will probably do
the job. On the other hand, using all those external drives doesn't
have much going for it. For not much more (about $600) you could get a
four-disk RAID5 NAS from someone like Infrant.

 

[Eric Gisin]

The enclosure is just four 1394-IDE bridges in a cheap case with 300W PSU.
You could find a better deal using four dual-bay firewire enclosures, like this:
http://store.yahoo.com/laptopupgrade/2bayfirieee1.html

The only reason to use Firewire is if you don't have Gb ethernet.
I would use 4+ drives in a used Pentium III with soft RAID 5.