Something to hold and access 5 - 10 HDDs

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27-03-2007, 12:36 PM
mycarsavw

Something to hold and access 5 - 10 HDDs

One of my offices is closing and I'm about to receive all their old desktop machines. The units themselves are useless to me but the information on the HDDs is very important.

I don't want to find space to store XX machines so in my head I'm picturing an external stack of drives in a tower connected to my desktop machine.

Sadly, I seem to be lacking the terminology to find what it is I want.

Can anyone offer any advice?

I probably should add I'm running a CAT5 network (with space for more users) but I don't want to tamper with the current server.
27-03-2007, 01:02 PM
Steve B

what sort of drives are they? IDE?
27-03-2007, 01:07 PM
nichomach

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=276030 ?
27-03-2007, 01:10 PM
mycarsavw

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve B

what sort of drives are they? IDE?

Sorry, schoolboy error - they're IDE drives

Quote:

Originally Posted by nichomach

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=276030 ?

Nice, but holy crap that's pricey!

My budget wouldn't stretch to anything more than, say £50.

If there's nothing out there, I'll have to get a bundle of external HDD enclosures, but I did want to streamline it a bit.
27-03-2007, 01:17 PM
jimbouk

Keep one of the rigs running and slap in a couple of cheap controller cards?

No price on the 2 channel one in scan but there's a 4 channel slightly over budget or 1 channel.

How much actual data is on the drives? In the long run it might be easier to get 2 large hdd drives and back up to them in raid-1.
27-03-2007, 02:01 PM
arthurleung

Quote:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=276030

This one will probably wipe all the data on the HDDs so its not good

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=62704
You could buy a few of these and swap the disks when you want the other data.

Bear in mind IDE does not support hot-swap so you have to shut down before pulling drive(s) out.
27-03-2007, 02:44 PM
shaithis

£50? lol, good luck :)
27-03-2007, 02:57 PM
dave87

One of the old machines, plus a couple of Highpoint RAID cards (Configured in a non-raid application) and a network cable?

That has got to be the easiest way to share it, run linux on it or something...
27-03-2007, 03:06 PM
mycarsavw

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimbouk

Keep one of the rigs running and slap in a couple of cheap controller cards?

No price on the 2 channel one in scan but there's a 4 channel slightly over budget or 1 channel.

How much actual data is on the drives? In the long run it might be easier to get 2 large hdd drives and back up to them in raid-1.

This was my initial thoughts but as I haven't yet had a chance to see what machines they are I wasn't sure of internal space.

The latter idea may be the winner so far. So simple, can't think why I missed that one :embarrassed:

Quote:

Originally Posted by arthurleung

This one will probably wipe all the data on the HDDs so its not good

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=62704
You could buy a few of these and swap the disks when you want the other data.

Bear in mind IDE does not support hot-swap so you have to shut down before pulling drive(s) out.

I've been looking at those before posing my question, but I thought they mount internally?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shaithis

£50? lol, good luck :)

Hey, I'm new to this, I could readjust if need be ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave87

One of the old machines, plus a couple of Highpoint RAID cards (Configured in a non-raid application) and a network cable?

That has got to be the easiest way to share it, run linux on it or something...

I have plenty of NICs laying around, I'm just starting to pick up Linux so this could be an option too.

What are your thoughts on one of these?

http://www.starmount.co.uk/products/307.html

Looks aside, it doesn't seem too bad, but I don't really know what it is I'm looking for. Granted it's not going to fit my initial idea of 5 - 10 drives, but using jimbouk's idea of copying data to other drives I'd be ok.

Heck I could just pick up an external drive and copy everything to the one drive - problem solved
27-03-2007, 03:15 PM
chuckskull

For £50 I'd have to say buy a 320GB drive and just move the data. I'm assuming it's just general office stuff, though. If it's high end CAD/Media stuff you might struggle to fit it all.
27-03-2007, 03:55 PM
arthurleung

Quote:

Originally Posted by mycarsavw

This was my initial thoughts but as I haven't yet had a chance to see what machines they are I wasn't sure of internal space.

The latter idea may be the winner so far. So simple, can't think why I missed that one :embarrassed:

I've been looking at those before posing my question, but I thought they mount internally?

Hey, I'm new to this, I could readjust if need be ;)

I have plenty of NICs laying around, I'm just starting to pick up Linux so this could be an option too.

What are your thoughts on one of these?

http://www.starmount.co.uk/products/307.html

Looks aside, it doesn't seem too bad, but I don't really know what it is I'm looking for. Granted it's not going to fit my initial idea of 5 - 10 drives, but using jimbouk's idea of copying data to other drives I'd be ok.

Heck I could just pick up an external drive and copy everything to the one drive - problem solved

The caddy itself is internal, but there is a tray that you can pull the harddrive out and put another one in, so you don't need to open up the case when you want to use another drive.