VeeshanVault

Not familiar with these, are you able to insert an internal hard drive into it and run it as if it were an external hard drive? If not, please explain

retiredwikit wrote:Not familiar with these, are you able to insert an internal hard drive into it and run it as if it were an external hard drive? If not, please explain

That's prety much it. A lot of the decision has to do with how the external hard drive will connect to your computer...USB 2, Firewire 400/800, ethernet 100/1000, SATA, etc,

There's a site with variout types of hard drive enclosures:

http://www.cooldrives.com/

I recently bought a 2.5" inclosure for laptop hard drives, it kicks ass because it's small, USB 2.0 and has 40GB as my disposal. Already come in very handy on some deals.

Marb

Marbus wrote:I recently bought a 2.5" inclosure for laptop hard drives, it kicks ass because it's small, USB 2.0 and has 40GB as my disposal. Already come in very handy on some deals.

Marb

Deals? What are you? Johnny Neumonic? A transporter of information? : )

I bought a 1000 GB Terastation which is 4X250GB HDs in it's own box connecting via Gigabit (with Jumbo Frame support). It's its own server so you can FTP to it if needed. You can also RAID 0,1 or 5 the four drives in any way you like.

It's a bit pricy but I'm loving life with all these GB to fill. It won't take long if I keep the 285GB/month download average up off Giganews.

http://www.cnet.com/4520-10602_1-5618710-1.html

There are definately cheaper solutions but this has raid, fan, gigabit, preconfured and easy web UI interface to switch around your RAID setup or set share folders, access privs, etc.

$1000 is truly a hefty price

Winnow is swimming in cash.

Winnow wrote: It's a bit pricy but I'm loving life with all these GB to fill. It won't take long if I keep the 285GB/month download average up off Giganews.

Dude, what the hell are you downloading? If that is all Pr0n, its gonna fall off. If it isn't, you might expect a visit from some federal agents about copyright infringement.

Adelrune Argenti wrote:

Winnow wrote: It's a bit pricy but I'm loving life with all these GB to fill. It won't take long if I keep the 285GB/month download average up off Giganews.

Dude, what the hell are you downloading? If that is all Pr0n, its gonna fall off. If it isn't, you might expect a visit from some federal agents about copyright infringement.

Stuff takes space these days. My HD-Tivo recorder has a 250GB HD in it and only holds 30 hours of HD material. Not enough!

There are HD newsgroups now and HD recordings are serious space hogs.

Any pr0n I download typically gets deleted the same day. I'm not sure why people would save it when new pr0n is readily available anytime you want it.

DVD images, CD images, MP3s, Comics (comics alone will take 100GB by the end of the year with 40GB more added each year in just new comic releases alone), Movies of all sorts, all take up space. 1000 GB may seem like a lot of space but it really is just planning ahead for a year or two. I'm tired of being out of space and I don't feel recording stuff to DVD is the answer as I want everything accessible right away and within easy reach of a desktop search engine like Copernic to my entire network. Also, RAIDing two of the drives cuts the space down to 750GB already but I feel much better about protecting 250GB of the more important data I have.

I bet most people have some sort of large external storage within a year or two that's more permanent than switching around HDs and reformatting them for new OSs etc.

Winnow wrote:I bet most people have some sort of large external storage within a year or two that's more permanent than switching around HDs and reformatting them for new OSs etc.

This does not sound feasible.

Most ordinary (read: non-techie) people I know treat their computers as appliances and do not fuck with peripherals. At all.

I'd think that "data utility companies", online mass storage farms that require no user intervention, would be far more feasible due to their non technical (to the user) nature, but there's privacy, reliability and security concerns inherent there that even a Type 2 SAS 70 review can't address. Remember Application Service Providers a few years ago and how they were going to revolutionise IT for small businesses? They all went broke and took their customers' (expensive, priceless, unreplaceable) data with them.

I wonder if there's some sort of tool you can use to search your desktop Winnow!?

Tenuvil wrote:

Winnow wrote:I bet most people have some sort of large external storage within a year or two that's more permanent than switching around HDs and reformatting them for new OSs etc.

This does not sound feasible.

Most ordinary (read: non-techie) people I know treat their computers as appliances and do not fuck with peripherals. At all.

I'd think that "data utility companies", online mass storage farms that require no user intervention, would be far more feasible due to their non technical (to the user) nature, but there's privacy, reliability and security concerns inherent there that even a Type 2 SAS 70 review can't address. Remember Application Service Providers a few years ago and how they were going to revolutionise IT for small businesses? They all went broke and took their customers' (expensive, priceless, unreplaceable) data with them.

Wouldn't that also be considered external storage to your computer?

In any case, I would never store my stuff using an online service if I could help it. I may not be a big pr0n collector but to be honest, many are and I think those people would have second thoughts about opening themselves up to privacy concerns of all sorts. It's true that news services like Gigabit can probably track exactly what each person is downloading so i guess it doesn't matter much except that authorities would probably want something on a storage device for evidence and not just the fact that the data was transferred. That's where my 256bit super encrypted ultra algorythm comes into play! I have my Terastation buried under 10 feet of concrete and at the flip of a switch I can detonate a small charge releasing the connections and sealing the block of cement. muahahahaha! Oh yeah,, and the UPS accompanying the terastation in the concrete block has enough juice to write zero's and ones to every byte before it dies! muahahahaha!

Dr Evil.

The people that get tagged by the authorities are the ones that use torrent and kazaa type P2P that displays your IP. They also usually only tag those that are downloading brand new movie releases out in the theaters that have been camcordered or TSd. Newsgroups are still the safest way to get anything of that sort besides actually going to the movie and paying for it like normal.

I got the encolsure off Ebay for $20 then found a refurb 40GB Seagate for like $60, so for $80 I have a nice transportable 40GB harddrive. I've got most of my information backed up on it from my laptop and numerous other information.

By deals I meant this... I work in Outsourcing so very often I'm meeting with CIOs and Directors who always seem to have the exact peice of information I need to finish building their basecase or finishing the deal but...oppps we just don't have connectivity in here "I'll send it to you right after this meeting".... heard that toooo many times. So now I just pull out the drive and go, oh here ya go, just copy it over for me and we'll be good to go As I said, already come in VERY handy on a couple of big deals I'm working on.

Marb

PS - Win, since you have so much extra cash I'll be happy to except old video card donations when you upgrade

Winnow wrote:

Tenuvil wrote:

Winnow wrote:I bet most people have some sort of large external storage within a year or two that's more permanent than switching around HDs and reformatting them for new OSs etc.

This does not sound feasible.

Most ordinary (read: non-techie) people I know treat their computers as appliances and do not fuck with peripherals. At all.

I'd think that "data utility companies", online mass storage farms that require no user intervention, would be far more feasible due to their non technical (to the user) nature, but there's privacy, reliability and security concerns inherent there that even a Type 2 SAS 70 review can't address. Remember Application Service Providers a few years ago and how they were going to revolutionise IT for small businesses? They all went broke and took their customers' (expensive, priceless, unreplaceable) data with them.

Wouldn't that also be considered external storage to your computer?

Yah it is, but it doesn't require fiddling with hardware.

In any case, I would never store my stuff using an online service if I could help it. I may not be a big pr0n collector but to be honest, many are and I think those people would have second thoughts about opening themselves up to privacy concerns of all sorts. It's true that news services like Gigabit can probably track exactly what each person is downloading so i guess it doesn't matter much except that authorities would probably want something on a storage device for evidence and not just the fact that the data was transferred.

I had a colleague who a few years ago (when ASPs as mentioned above were new and promising) did a very persuasive presentation showing parallels between large scale use of electricity 70-100 years ago and data storage today. When the Industrial Revolution began, most factories generated their own power through hydro, steam or other means. This is much the same as computing and data storage today. When some people realized there were economies of scale in power generation (high fixed costs and low incremental costs per kWh), most enterprises abandoned their own power plants in favor of centralised power plants. The economies of scale are generally the same for data storage (high fixed costs and low incremental cost per gb). The thing that people can't get past is as you mentioned the confidentiality, integrity and availability part.

That's where my 256bit super encrypted ultra algorythm comes into play! I have my Terastation buried under 10 feet of concrete and at the flip of a switch I can detonate a small charge releasing the connections and sealing the block of cement. muahahahaha! Oh yeah,, and the UPS accompanying the terastation in the concrete block has enough juice to write zero's and ones to every byte before it dies! muahahahaha!

Just put a gauss loop around the doorway to demagnetize anything that leaves the room

Marbus wrote:
PS - Win, since you have so much extra cash I'll be happy to except old video card donations when you upgrade

I gave 1GB of old RAM and a 4400ti graphics card to a needy EQer a year or so ago so it might happen! Have a Ati9700Pro sitting around but that may end up in a hall of fame graphics card display. Best card evah for the amount of time it ruled the FPS world.

I don't buy stuff for the hell of it BTW. I do lots of research to make sure what I'm getting will hopefully last awhile and be a good value. You can see the process develop in the 24" LCD thread in this forum.

Any pr0n I download typically gets deleted the same day. I'm not sure why people would save it when new pr0n is readily available anytime you want it.

Some folk have their favorites that are tried and true.

I know that is why I put the PS in there!

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 343&depa=0

i just purchased that one recently for this harddrive

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... 176&depa=0

easy install...only downside is the same as what many people say in the reviews listed on newegg...the damn LED light is too bright...i mean REALLY bright...i'm probably going to disconnect it soon as it burns my eyes again!

though the enclosure is fanless it keeps the HD very cool

They're also notoriously unreliable... they won't even work with WD 200Gb drives. They are often DOA. They are relatively good for heat disappation though.

which are you talking about Z?...some aren't designed to use higher than a 150gb drive...you have to buy newer models like the one i posted that uses a different chipset or what not

Tenuvil wrote: I'd think that "data utility companies", online mass storage farms that require no user intervention, would be far more feasible due to their non technical (to the user) nature,

Here's something along the line of a "data utility company" concept:

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?s ... y_id=31950

mmmmmm! /drool

Hitachi aims for 1TB desktop
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) plans to begin selling hard-disk drives based on a new recording method that could allow for 1TB desktop drives by 2007. That sound like plenty of space, but then I used to think a 40GB drive would always be plenty large enough for any personal computer.

But HGST has a new method to make the 1TB desktop a reality. That's right - 1TB. The new method uses a perpendicular recording method that arranges the north and south poles of the magnetic particles in a perpendicular fashion, unlike today's disks which use longitudinal recording. The perpendicular method crams more particles onto an area of the disk's surface, thus allowing for the greater recording capacity.

I see the 2TB TeraStations are about $950 these days depending on where you get it. That's a bit tempting really.

Aslanna wrote:I see the 2TB TeraStations are about $950 these days depending on where you get it. That's a bit tempting really.

Nooo, you can go cheaper (or faster/better for same price). I like my TeraStation but you can buy 500GB HD for ~149.00 each these days. That's 2TB of HDs for 600.00 leaving you 400.00 to find an enclosure that you like.

If/when I buy another external storage station, I'll probably consider an eSata solution as it's much faster than even gigabit ethernet for transferring data. My Cox DVR uses eSata...all eSata means is a different type of external Sata connection that's supposedly more durable. Basically, you could buy an eSata thingy that fits into one of the lots on the back of your PC and connect it to one of your internal SATA connections on the motherboard and you effectively have external SATA. I'm not sure how well this works with networks though so if you have more than one computer, the ethernet Network station route is best. I happen to use my laptop often to read a comic or watch a movie from my bedroom and my Terastation is always available even if my main computer is turned off...which it never is so this point may be moot as well if you leave your PC on all the time.

Now, with the terastation, I can replace the hard drives with larger ones, even mix sizes if I'm not using raid but the enclosure isn't very friendly. I'm still set up with 2 solo hard drives and two hard drives that are in a raid configuration. When I think about it though, the amount of "crucial" data I wouldn't want to lose is so small, I'm not sure raiding external storage is needed. I could just make sure it's stored on two different drives. and not have to tie up hundreds of GB in a raid. I use the raided HD's to store images of my OS partition (which should be on a monthly back up basis but I slack off sometimes) Remember to keep your OS partition manageable. 40-50GB for the OS partition makes backing it up much quicker and that's usually plenty to fit all sorts of apps and games on. Backing up a 300GB partition is going to take a long time and is impractical to store several images in case you need to backtrack and mount an old image to pull data off it (which i've done several times...it takes just a minute or two to mount an old image and have it assigned a drive letter).

Also, with the terastation, you don't need to buy fast drives as you can't take advantage of the speed anyway transferring data over your network. Reliable quiet drives would be preferred.

The benefit to the Terastation is that it's all setup for you and easy to configure via a web based setup. My Terastation sends me an email reporting how much space is available on each drive each night at midnight.

Looks like this:

TeraStation Activity Report

[TeraStation Information]
TeraStation Name: ********
IP Address: 192.168.0.101
Time: 2006/11/29 00:00:01
Running Time : 96 days, 14:15:19

[HDD Usage Status]
RAID Array 1 Usage Rate : 100392792 kbytes / 243362140 kbytes (Usage Rate 82%)
Disk 1 Usage Rate : 227278724 kbytes / 243362256 kbytes (Usage Rate 94%)
Disk 2 Usage Rate : 206599128 kbytes / 243362256 kbytes (Usage Rate 85%)

As you can see, it's been 96 days since a monsoon last knocked out the power! When the power does go out, if you have raided HDs, the Terastation goes through a self analysis and verifies all data which takes awhile (can still use the HDs while it's doing this)

The front light indicators on the Terastation are nice. The transfer led changed colors depending on the connection you have. Mine is blue for gigabit, otherwise it's green. There are four separate leds for the hard drives. They blink individually if there is activity and switch from green to red if the HD is over 90% capacity. There are a buttload of USB ports to add additional storage to your Teratation (2 in front, 2 in back) I don't think I'd ever do that though.

Bottom line: Terastation is nice but don't expect blazing speeds even with gigabit. If you're transferring mega GB's of data it's going to take awhile. I think a little less than 2 minutes per gigabyte is fair estimate when transferring to the terastation...it's faster when transferring back from the terastation though. A 7.05GB Xbox 360 images takes ~12 minutes to xfer (eSata would take about 2 minutes in comparison) so if I have a bunch of those, I start the xfer before I go to bed. Setting up the various raid configurations is a snap and reconfiguring them is easy as well (although you lose your data if you decide to switch raid types)

As an alternative, you might want to read this review of an eSata external solution:

http://consumer.hardocp.com/article.htm ... 9uc3VtZXI=

Hot Swappable hard drives sound nice to me! For example, I wouldn't care if my HD full of PC and Console Game images is always connected. I wouldn't mind hot swapping a 500Gb or 750 GB HD to put those on and then leave a HD with movies, music, comics or something in one of the quad bays most of the time. Same with Acronis True Image Back up Images. Those wouldn't need to be accessed all the time so you could put them on another HD and hot swap it. (if you ran out of 2TB of storage space!

An extra tray would just cost you 24.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817994038

Looks like 259.00 is the going price for the eSata solution review linked above but it's new and hard to come by still.

http://www.centralcomputers.com/ccp5497 ... icyb4r.htm