I need to add additional storage for my MBP. I currently have two FW400 drives (160 and 320GB). I really need to up total storage to 500GB. Trying to decide if I should look at a 2 drive device that runs with RAID 1, or two standalone drives running a nightly back up from one to the other.
While esata sounds like the best way to go, I like the opportunity to daisy chain FW drives.
I've been looking at building my own with separate enclosures and drives. However, there are so many choices that I don't know what will offer ample cooling yet run very quietly.
Suggestions? I'd like to stay around $400 for the whole solution, less if possible.
I bought an Icy Dock e-sata external enclosure with a removable disk tray. I then bought a quiet, cool, 750GB hard drive. I screwed the hard drive into the tray, slipped the tray into the dock, connected the dock to a little bracket on the back of my PC that it turn has a small connector that goes straight into a SATA port on my motherboard. It's just like having a 750 GB internal drive except I can easily access the drive to take it off site. Another benefit of this solution is that you can pick your own drive, rather than being bound to the one that an enclosure-vendor picks for you. I got both parts at newegg.com and spent something over $200. Took me almost 24 hours nonetheless to back up a 360 GB drive full of photography!
there are cases at macsales.com that have esata and Firewire 800. Both will be much faster than FW400 and you can daisy chain the FW. They can have two drives inside for RAID1 or RAID 0. I would do RAID0 as RAID1 isn't good for backup, as dropping the enclosure or other disaster would wipe out both drives.
Tim Carpenter wrote:
I need to add additional storage for my MBP. I currently have two FW400 drives (160 and 320GB). I really need to up total storage to 500GB. Trying to decide if I should look at a 2 drive device that runs with RAID 1, or two standalone drives running a nightly back up from one to the other.
While esata sounds like the best way to go, I like the opportunity to daisy chain FW drives.
I've been looking at building my own with separate enclosures and drives. However, there are so many choices that I don't know what will offer ample cooling yet run very quietly.
Suggestions? I'd like to stay around $400 for the whole solution, less if possible.
I suggest you use two separate devices - depending on your level of paranoia you can plug in just one at a time. If you don't want a DIY solution, you could get two of these: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10869
and if you put everything together yourself, you should be able to lower your out of pocket expense.
CTYankee wrote:
I would do RAID0 as RAID1 isn't good for backup, as dropping the enclosure or other disaster would wipe out both drives.
Stay away from RAID 0. That means you will be having two or more drives striped into 1 volume. You lose one drive and you lose everything in the raid array.
If you are anal about backing up stuff then there is no need for a RAID array at all. A lot of people will say RAID 1 is better served with high availability needs than as a backup. But if you are like me and sometime put off running backups then RAID 1 offers another level of protection. If a drive fails I still have a backup. People say raid 1 can write data corruption from 1 drive to another... but you can get corrupt data with one drive anyway. I have never had that happen to me at home or at work,
I should leave my PC on an run scheduled jobs and just move data from internal to external devices but dont always do that.
It seems that I can save some $$ with a do it yourself solution. If I go that route, should I be looking at enclosures with a fan? One of my external drives now is an ezquest monsoon. Fanless..never seems to get real warm at all. Spins down when not actively being accessed.
Do all drives spin down when not being accessed or is this part of the design of the pre-built drive solutions?
Recommendations on enclosures (single or multiple)? Also, what amount of cache is best?
The western digital mybook is fanless. It has a larger enclosure with better airflow and stays pretty cool. One of my other enclosures is Beyond Micro external that is fanless and has a small case and gets very warm to the touch.
I find a lot of times these smaller devices use small fans that produce a nice whining noise at high rpms.
You can also look for DIY enclosures to find one you like. Consider getting 5400 rpm drives. If it is for backups the RPM difference will not matter that much... particularly going through FW or USB. The 5400 rpm drives will run cooler.
dan727 wrote:
Stay away from RAID 0. That means you will be having two or more drives striped into 1 volume. You lose one drive and you lose everything in the raid array.
If you are anal about backing up stuff then there is no need for a RAID array at all. A lot of people will say RAID 1 is better served with high availability needs than as a backup. But if you are like me and sometime put off running backups then RAID 1 offers another level of protection. If a drive fails I still have a backup. People say raid 1 can write data corruption from 1 drive to another... but you can get corrupt data with one drive anyway. I have never had that happen to me at home or at work,
I should leave my PC on an run scheduled jobs and just move data from internal to external devices but dont always do that....Show more →
I agree that RAID0 does put you at greater risk. I just left out a huge chunk of info on why to use RAID0...it allows you to have faster access and more storage. So the drives I suggested can be used as RAID 0 and work great as a storage drive for regular access. For backup you don't want to use any RAID at all.
So one RAID 0 with lots of space (60% or less used on a drive is optimal for speed) to use as your regular access storage drive. Say two 500GB for 1TB total and plan to use 600GB or less. Then another that is not as big as your backup that is just a good single drive. This need not be as large as your storage drive since performance is not as important. Backup often and keep the two drives stored in different locations or the backup in a fire safe. Don't let theft or fire take out all your data.
I have two 1TB internal drives in RAID0 on the Solaris 10 ZFS format. ZFS has great data corruption protection. This server is also available online. I then have anything important backuped on DVD's that are stored in a fireproof safe. I am not exactly sure if the heat from a fire would damage the DVD's or not but i suppose it is better then nothing. BB had 1TB external drives on sale for 250 last week. Not sure if they still are this week.
Fatwallet.com has a forum for buy/sell deals. Many individuals like the icy? e-sata connections.
I personally used to use connections from SuperDLG out of Ebay- have 6 of their controllers. I found firewire not reliable enough for me, so I've converted everything to sata (and the firewire controllers are just sitting there now, unused).
I would recommend a raid-5 esata box for you, but that will be expensive (at least 600$ + HDs). There's been several reviews of cheap PCI-E raid 5 and raid6 cards on TomsHardware.
Good luck.
edit: I just read someone recommended LaCie drives. We've had 50% of the drives fail at work... and I'm talking on the order of 20 drives. Lacie 4packs were bricks and door stops now- the old 1 tb drives would have one drive fail and then everything would be shut down. You'll never find a lacie anywhere near our business or home again (unless I'm using it for a shotgun target). - Just a personal opinion based upon hundreds of lost hours restoring data from tapes.
I have scanned a lot of 4x5s, plus take lots of shots, so I have the following:
2 Fusion Drive arrays that hold 5 500GB drives each (sata); 10 drives total.
1 Venus T4s array that holds 4 500 GB drives (sata) that basically backup my 4 internal drives.
All of the above drives connect to my workstation. The arrays are kept off most of the time in my attempt to extend their life.
Each of the 10 Fusion drives, plus the internal drives are backed up to 2 external drives each. One copy is kept onsite, and another is offsite.
I also keep 1 DVD copy onsite and 1 offsite.
I used to keep only DVDs offsite but then realized I was at the point that a catastrophic on-site loss would take an awfully long time to replace with DVDs.
I use Universal Explorer to keep a list of all the files on each drive. These files are also backed up!
I then backup the on-site drives about once per 6 months and then rotate with the offsite drives annually.
This requires some manual work on my part, but works pretty well.
For short term backup, I backup all new folders to another drive and make a DVD copy, one of which is shipped offsite. So if the whole system crashes, I can replace 98% of the stuff with external drives and the rest with a recent DVD.
I suppose a good raid system would be better for me, but I just sort of evolved into where I am now.
I use Maxtors and WD drives only. I have lost 1 Acomdata, 1 Buffalo, 1 Maxtor, and 1 WD drive over time. In general I prefer the Maxtors first and then the WD drives. I am sorry to see the new external drives seem to be made cheaper and some do not have a power on and off button.
The Venus enclosure can be found at newegg and other places. It was about $200 bucks. The nice thing is that, with my Venus and Fusion enclosures combined, I have 14 drives coming into 1 sata card with room for one more array. So that is 7 TB on one card using 500GB drives.
I do use Firewire some but the USB drives are generally cheaper and the stuff I work on actively stays on one of the internal drives.
I hope some of this info in my long post is food for thought!
With the venus enclosure I could use these disks in a JBOD set-up, correct? With the single esata connection, will the disks then mount as independent drives? Also, do all of the bays need to be loaded with a drive? Could I just start with two drives?
Yes, the Venus (made by AMS) can be used in a JBOD setup. The disks still mount as individual drives and yes you do not need all 4 drives in. You can just start with 2 drives and add as you go. If you do, I suggest populating bays 1 and 3 to maximize cooling.
By the way, the Venus T4S uses sata. The Venus T4U is USB (not sure how the USB version works).
AMS external enclosures are nice. Mine has a large, quiet fan (that can be replaced if broken) that keeps my drive relatively cool. Mine is the FW400 external. I would stay away from externals that don't have fans, IMO.
SATA is probably fastest. You may want to go with this, or just daisy chain as someone suggested above.
is the fan on AMS T4S quiet? The AMS 4bay enclosures are only configured for USB2.0 or eSata connections, right? No firewire? Also, it appears that you cannot power down individual drives...is that corret?
A D-Link DNS-323 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure works like a charm..... Just slap in 2 SATA 500gb drives, RAID them to mirror and your good to go. Not blazing fast but they do the backup thing very well.
