Hot-swap USB hard drive.

  • Thread starter Thread starter fellow
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fellow

Sure, yo can buy a USB2 hard drive, but it's expensive for what it does, and
suppose you have 5 machines that you want to back up. I was thinking of 5
hard drives in their own caddy, and a single IDE-USB2 converter, so saving
on the cost of the other 4. Trouble with this is that the HD IDE connector
isn't designed to be un/plugged that many times, and perhaps likewise with
the IDE connector on the converter. What would you do if you had 5 machines
to backup with 5HDs?

Thanks
 
What would you do if you had 5 machines
to backup with 5HDs?
Click to expand...

How much backing up do you have to do? Can't you just buy one really big
hard drive. Lacie has terabyte drives now.

Or if it's really that much, you could put together a stripped down computer
with a network card and several hard drives, and use that as your network
file storage. A full tower case and a mobo with 2 IDE channels and an SATA
channel could get you a 6-drive server, that's potentially over 2 TB.
 
fellow said:
Sure, yo can buy a USB2 hard drive, but it's expensive for what it does, and
suppose you have 5 machines that you want to back up. I was thinking of 5
hard drives in their own caddy, and a single IDE-USB2 converter, so saving
on the cost of the other 4. Trouble with this is that the HD IDE connector
isn't designed to be un/plugged that many times, and perhaps likewise with
the IDE connector on the converter. What would you do if you had 5 machines
to backup with 5HDs?
Click to expand...

Checkout the KingWin KF-83 and KF-23-IPF ~$30.
www.kingwin.com
 
Sure, yo can buy a USB2 hard drive, but it's expensive for what it does, and
suppose you have 5 machines that you want to back up. I was thinking of 5
hard drives in their own caddy, and a single IDE-USB2 converter, so saving
on the cost of the other 4. Trouble with this is that the HD IDE connector
isn't designed to be un/plugged that many times, and perhaps likewise with
the IDE connector on the converter. What would you do if you had 5 machines
to backup with 5HDs?
Click to expand...

1) Buy your own USB enclosure and add your own 5400 rpm
hard drive (7200rpm drives can easily overheat in some
USB enclosures). Enclosures are around $30.

2) Go the removable drive route (e.g. StarTech DRW115
series), but you'll pay a bit more for caddies ($45ish).
Advantage is that it's going to be faster then USB, but
you'll probably have to turn the machine off to switch
drives.
 
Toshi1873 said:
1) Buy your own USB enclosure and add your own 5400 rpm
hard drive (7200rpm drives can easily overheat in some
USB enclosures). Enclosures are around $30.
Click to expand...

Wow, never hear of a USB enclosure and it sounds that it might be OK for
what I want. Got a link?
 
Wow, never hear of a USB enclosure and it sounds that it might be OK for
what I want. Got a link?
Click to expand...

http://www.thenerds.net/productpage.asp?d=1&pn=554903

MACE GROUP - MACALLY
3.5IN USB 2.0 HARD DRIVE ENCLOSURE FOR MAC AND PC
mfg part # (ca-405u2)

$35

I have 3 or 4 of these. They're only big enough to hold
3.5" drives (IOW, you can't put a DVD-ROM in them) and
they come with built-in power-supplies. Which is nice
because you never have to keep track of a custom AC/DC
adapter (they take a standard AC plug, just like 90% of
the other computer equipment in the office).

All of the newer ones have suppored > 137GB drives.

Used to use them for off-site backups, but we're
switching over to removable StarTech units (faster
transfer rates, a bit smaller unit to carry around).
 
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