External multiple HDD RAID solution

liamw

Hi,

Current situation: I have four seperate external USB HDDs (IDA/ATA with enclosures).

Goal: I want to have them all in one external storage solution (RAID would be nice).

I know I could set up a server and get a case with multiple bays but i'd rather have a specific unit for the job. The output should be USB 2.0. I know the JBOD controller will handle the USB output plus various RAID configurations.

I've done some research and found a couple of solutions which I think will work:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/eboxu/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816855006
[Both same product I think]

http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/mst4.asp

However none of them seem to ship to Ireland / internationally.

Any thoughts or opinions? Anyone else found a solution to this issue?

Thanks in advance!

joePC

Some of these would work,

http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.aspx?bn=10622

liamw

but those NAS solutions are very expensive and probably overkill for what I need

joePC

Whats the budget?

liamw

I'd say no more than €200 is reasonable...

joePC

These Guys ship to Irelanday - http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/

Should have what your after

liamw

Thanks Joe. Pity they don't have ATA / IDE enclosures too

It came as a surpirse to me that his type of solution seems to be very targetted towards enterprise and not the consumer. Hence why a lot are so expensive. I reckon this will change in the near future.

There has to be something I can do here. I thought this would be quite a common issue. Maybe I'll just have to resort to buying SATA HDDs or wasting money on IDE-SATA connectors.

rrpc

liamw wrote: »

Thanks Joe. Pity they don't have ATA / IDE enclosures too

It came as a surpirse to me that his type of solution seems to be very targetted towards enterprise and not the consumer. Hence why a lot are so expensive. I reckon this will change in the near future.

There has to be something I can do here. I thought this would be quite a common issue. Maybe I'll just have to resort to buying SATA HDDs or wasting money on IDE-SATA connectors.

Quite honestly Liam, there is no real requirement for such a solution and very little demand. USB is slow compared to IDE and slower by a factor of something huge when compared to SATA. Additionally, multiple drives add a large overhead to your processor and a single large cap SATA drive would be much simpler and quicker, even when partitioned.

You would be wasting money on IDE-SATA connectors, cheaper in the long run to buy a SATA mobo. You can also get PCI SATA controllers, but that also defeats the purpose of SATA.

My advice is flog off your external drives and replace with a single large capacity drive either SATA or IDE and use that instead.

liamw

Thanks. I see your point here. However:
I have a laptop
I have 4 500GB ATA drives (so they aren't really old)
I want the solution to be somewhat portable.

The four external drives at the moment are fine I guess. It's just awkward the way I have to plug one in and one out to switch, or have four seperate plugs. and move the USB connector from one enclosure to the next.

Do you get me?

rrpc

liamw wrote: »

Thanks. I see your point here. However:
I have a laptop
I have 4 500GB ATA drives (so they aren't really old)
I want the solution to be somewhat portable.

The four external drives at the moment are fine I guess. It's just awkward the way I have to plug one in and one out to switch, or have four seperate plugs. and move the USB connector from one enclosure to the next.

Do you get me?

I do, but it's kinda mad Ted

2 terabytes of data :eek:

You could use a USB hub to deal with the cabling issue. You can also buy bigger 2½" HD's for the laptop and you can get external 2½" caddies as well: much smaller and handier than the 3½" ones. I have one that's smaller than a cigarette pack.