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I need more storage space....Would this be a fitting solution?

C

Certain

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 16, 2005
Messages
141
I currently have 3 external hard drives placed in seperate external enclosures and connected to my PC via USB. I like this because I can determine what drive I want in what enclosure and I can usually come out cheaper than if I had gone and bought a retail external drive. But I'm now at the point where I want to add more drives, but I dont want to keep adding enclosures and continue to have them stacking up next to my tower. So I looked for a solution and this is what I found:

http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast4.asp

It seems straight forward. Get the brackets for the hdd's and install them in that little tower and connect them to your PC via usb. My question to the board is, will this work like I'm thinking it will. Would I be able to add my drives to this tower and plug in the usb interface between my cpu and this prodect and power up this little tower and windows recognizes the drives like it does with my individual external drives? Or would I need extra equipment or anything that I'm not forseeing?

If anyone knows anything about that particular product or maybe has what they feel is a better solution, please let me know.
 
I have no experience with that unit. That said, it looks pretty damn spiffy. If you are not concerned with speed and want a large single drive, it appears the USB/JBOD model would be the way to go.

Another option (besides a similar extrenal all-in-one enclosure) would be another box. A dedicated storage machine requires minimal horsepower. Pick up a P3 era box on ebay for $50-$60, slap in a raid card and away you go. A slightly more elegant route would be a new low end micro atx machine (sempron, 256MB, onboard vid, etc) which you could probably build for around the same price as the unit you are looking at.

Either route would achieve what you are looking to do, but you cant fold on the addonics! ;)


 
Hmm interesting. How would I go about setting up that other box you are talking about. I have 2 or 3 cases lying around that I'm not using and that would probably be great for adding a bunch of storage drives to. Only thing is, I just dont understand how to get it operational. Where the addonics box would use the usb interface, what would the box that I set up using a spare case use? What you have proposed is right up my alley because I love to tinker with stuff like this, so if you could explain further or point me in the direction of a tutorial or something of that nature, it would be appreciated.
 
Another box would probably use gigE for the connection. It'd be available to any computer on your network. The catch is that you'd need a good router/switch to make it work well unless you hooked it up directly. Depending on what you're putting on there 10/100 might still be fast enough if that's what your router/switch is already. Unless you're moving really large files where speed would be a huge factor.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
Another box would probably use gigE for the connection. It'd be available to any computer on your network. The catch is that you'd need a good router/switch to make it work well unless you hooked it up directly. Depending on what you're putting on there 10/100 might still be fast enough if that's what your router/switch is already. Unless you're moving really large files where speed would be a huge factor.
Click to expand...
gigE? I'm not familiar with this. Is that how I would have to interface the two machines, mine and the case with all the extra storage in it?
 
Certain said:
gigE? I'm not familiar with this. Is that how I would have to interface the two machines, mine and the case with all the extra storage in it?
Click to expand...
Gigabit ethernet
 
hity645 said:
Gigabit ethernet
Click to expand...
Oh. Guess I have heard of that ;). That does make a lot of sense though. But I'm still in the dark on how I would go about setting all of this up. Questions come to mind like: Will this storage box need some kind of operating system?
 
Yep, you'll need an OS on the box. If you go linux you could go with a software raid5 array (paging unhappy_mage), or XP pro with a mod. For a dedicated storage box, software arrays should perform fine. You'll just have fewer features than if using a dedicated raid controller.

If you dont mind spending a little money, grab a raid controller. First things first, what kind of box are you planning to use (specs or era)? Fair assumption that your existing drives are all IDE of different sizes?
 
dirtydr said:
Yep, you'll need an OS on the box. If you go linux you could go with a software raid5 array (paging unhappy_mage), or XP pro with a mod. For a dedicated storage box, software arrays should perform fine. You'll just have fewer features than if using a dedicated raid controller.

If you dont mind spending a little money, grab a raid controller. First things first, what kind of box are you planning to use (specs or era)? Fair assumption that your existing drives are all IDE of different sizes?
Click to expand...
Thats correct, all drives are IDE of varying sizes. And the case I would use would be a normal size mid tower case. Also, I dont mind spending money on the controller so I'd go that route.

Now, is the advice of the other poster correct when they say I'd have to use gigE? If that is the case, would I also have to purchase another NIC or is there another way to interface the two machines?
 
http://www.freenas.org/
Get a motherboard that can boot from a usb key or get a IDE->CF converter (i did the IDE->CF route) and boot off of flash.
I'm using the software RAID5 and it seems to work just like it should. If you've got the money though, I would reccomend getting a hardware raid card (i plan to in the future)

You wouldnt HAVE to use gigabit ethernet, only if you want the extra speed. I'm using 100 right now, and dont have any problems. GigE is something that I would say could be an upgrade later, for your server and your network when you have money to throw around.
 
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