On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 12:35:17PM -0400, Celejar wrote: > On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:33:11 -0400 > "Douglas A. Tutty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Or, the cheapest external multi-drive enclosure I've found is called > > someone's old computer. Turn it on when you want to do a backup, backup > > over rsync or NFS, and turn it off. If it does wake-on-lan you could > > script it all from your main computer. > > But IIUC, the power draw, especially of an old and probably energy > inefficient computer, is much higher than that of a dedicated external > disk enclosure. I currently use an old computer, but I'm planning to > try some sort of home built NAS (openwrt on a router and an attached > external drive), and I'll see how that goes.
My 486 only uses about 20 watts with one 6 GB drive going but it won't see a some 6 GB drives and anything larger. My P-II takes about 40 watts with a 6 GB drive. I haven't measured my dual-P-133 Tyan. Remember, for just file storage, especially for backup, you don't need a lot of processing power unless you are moving a whole lot of data over e.g. a gigabit ethernet to a raid array and want to keep both at full throughput. But if that's the case, a simple external disk enclosure can't match that speed either. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]