JBOD external drive boxes

I

iroc409

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 17, 2006
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Does anyone have any experience with JBOD external disk enclosures? I am looking at the Rosewill model Newegg currently has on sale ($34.99), and wondering if anyone has any experience with it--or ones like it.

I am about to the end of my single 1TB drive in my server, and I was thinking that instead of trying a complicated disk-spanning or something that I would just upgrade the server to a single 2TB hard drive. I have a pair of 1TB green drives, I thought it would be perfect to stick in a JBOD enclosure--especially since the 1TB drives seem to have a better reputation.

I am going to be digitizing a bunch of old photographs and stuff, but the 2TB should be sufficient for a while.

Or, is this a bad idea and I should just stick another 1TB drive in the server and use a 2TB drive for a backup drive instead? I haven't looked into it, but maybe I can run software JBOD in Server 2008 or something.
 
I'm confused. What is it that's drawing you toward going external? Are you out of space or ports and do you specifically NEED to span your array or can you just add another disk and point to it separately?

Is this the one you're talking about:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182144

If so, I'd probably avoid that and go at least with something with eSATA if you can't possibly fit more drives into your server itself.

Personally, I'd probably just toss another 1TB into my system and use the 2TB as a backup like you mentioned. If you have some really critical things, keep those on the 1TB and keep it with a friend or something in case your house burns down, is broken into, flooded, etc. if you have nothing else to do with it.
 
I didn't mean to confuse... the external is strictly for backups. The server will remain all internal, I'm just getting a little low on space and need to expand. The choice is whether to use 2x1TB in the server and a 2TB for backup, or a 2TB in the server and 2x1TB JBOD as a backup.

I was worried about sharing with two separate drives, but I think I figured out a way to do that that would work. I want to keep things simple for my girlfriend, and not shuffle up her iTunes too much... :)
 
Ah, well yeah I think that keeping the 2TB for backups and using the 2x1TB in the server makes more sense. You probably don't want to keep the backup drive connected to the server for obvious reasons, so I would imagine it being much easier to only have to deal with one drive. Plus, this way you don't need to buy extra stuff (assuming you already have a single external caddy)
 
I think you are right. I already have a couple of those BlackX docks, so I will just use that with a 2TB. No sense in spending more money than I have to these days. I have enough old hard drives laying around to sink a dingy!
 
Sounds good, just remember to keep an offsite backup in mind! I was recently saved from losing several MONTHS worth of photographs by having them all saved, full resolution and all, to my flickr account. Something like that is priceless and I have years worth of old information stored, encrypted, in the office of a family member in a remote location.
 
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