Five hard drives in a PC?

[you know who maybe]

Hi,
I'm thinking of building a PC to support at least five EIDE devices.

Arcserve Brightstor r11 on Windows 2000 Pro is currently backing up to disk
for us in a five-day rotation and we are storing two days each currently on
250GB drives but we are running out of room.

The M-F daily backup is nearing 125GB. I could buy larger than 250 GB
drives but eventually I would run out again.
If I only had a mother board which supported five 250GB drives I would be
done.

Thanks for any advice.

PS. Yes, we backup to Tape from the disc backup and the tapes go offsite.

 

[you know who maybe]

Here is a thought: What if I just added a 2-channel SATA card to this PC and
bought two SATA drives, to go along with the three 250 EIDE drives? Or do I
have to disable EIDE controller?

 

[Mike Redrobe]

Hi,
I'm thinking of building a PC to support at least five EIDE devices.

Arcserve Brightstor r11 on Windows 2000 Pro is currently backing up
to disk for us in a five-day rotation and we are storing two days
each currently on 250GB drives but we are running out of room.

The M-F daily backup is nearing 125GB. I could buy larger than 250 GB
drives but eventually I would run out again.
If I only had a mother board which supported five 250GB drives I
would be done.

There are lots of PCI IDE cards that support 4x drives in addition to your
motherboard.

They're often sold as RAID cards but work fine just as IDE cards.

 

[Rod Speed]

Here is a thought: What if I just added a 2-channel SATA card to this PC and
bought two SATA drives, to go along with the three 250 EIDE drives?

Yes, that will work. So will adding a 4 drive IDE controller too.

Or do I have to disable EIDE controller?

Nope.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Hi,
I'm thinking of building a PC to support at least five EIDE devices.

Arcserve Brightstor r11 on Windows 2000 Pro is currently backing up to disk
for us in a five-day rotation and we are storing two days each currently on
250GB drives but we are running out of room.

The M-F daily backup is nearing 125GB. I could buy larger than 250 GB
drives but eventually I would run out again.
If I only had a mother board which supported five 250GB drives I would be
done.

Thanks for any advice.

PS. Yes, we backup to Tape from the disc backup and the tapes go offsite.

Have you considered using "mobile racks" or "removable trays" such
as those made by Kingwin? You could copy the entire primary HD
to the HD in the removable tray each night and then replace it with
another HD in another removable tray. Kingwin's rack/tray combos
go for about $24 street, and the removable trays go from anywhere
between $14 and $20. Check out their webpage at:
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_Cat.asp?CateID=25 . I use the model
with the fan in the bottom of the removable tray, and I find it keeps the
HD very cool:
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_detail.asp?LineID=&CateID=25&ID=136

If you want to go Serial ATA with a PCI SATA controller card, Kingwin
makes removable tray assemblies for SATA drives, too:
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_Cat.asp?CateID=47

I use a removable trays to archive periodic backups of my WinXP OS
as bootable clones. If all you want to back up is data, perhaps even
on a separate partition, you can use all kinds of utilities to do that kind
of copy, even drag 'n drop.

*TimDaniels*

 

[you know who maybe]

Have you considered using "mobile racks" or "removable trays" such
as those made by Kingwin? You could copy the entire primary HD

That would be a good idea but we like not having to change the drives when
we are taking long weekends.

 

[J. Clarke]

Here is a thought: What if I just added a 2-channel SATA card to this PC
and
bought two SATA drives, to go along with the three 250 EIDE drives? Or do
I have to disable EIDE controller?

Will work fine. You can also get IDE or SATA RAID controllers that support
up to at least 12 drives--there may be some that do more.

 

[Ian Roberts]

Hi,
I'm thinking of building a PC to support at least five EIDE devices.

Arcserve Brightstor r11 on Windows 2000 Pro is currently backing up to
disk for us in a five-day rotation and we are storing two days each
currently on 250GB drives but we are running out of room.

The M-F daily backup is nearing 125GB. I could buy larger than 250 GB
drives but eventually I would run out again.
If I only had a mother board which supported five 250GB drives I would be
done.

Thanks for any advice.

PS. Yes, we backup to Tape from the disc backup and the tapes go offsite.

Just a thought seeing as no one else has mentioned it... If you have a high
end CPU + lots of drives, fans, DVD+CD drives + other devices your
power supply may run out of puff. So you might need to or upgrade the
existing one or fit an extra p/s just to power the additional drives to
ensure it all stays stable.

HTH

Ian

 

[Cl.Massé]

Hi,
I'm thinking of building a PC to support at least five EIDE devices.

Arcserve Brightstor r11 on Windows 2000 Pro is currently backing up to
disk for us in a five-day rotation and we are storing two days each
currently on 250GB drives but we are running out of room.

The M-F daily backup is nearing 125GB. I could buy larger than 250 GB
drives but eventually I would run out again.
If I only had a mother board which supported five 250GB drives I would be
done.

Thanks for any advice.

Use SATA drives, that you can connect and disconnect easily, even when the
computer is on.

Or use external USB drives, slower though.

So, you can use so many drives you want, buy them outdated and cheap, and
put them in different secured places.