On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 09:57:08AM -0700, Loren M. Lang wrote: ... > I only have the drives mounted during the 30-45 minutes they are running, > but this hasn't helped. I am curious on what ideas you might have for > external hard drives that only need to run for a short time at night. > Either a cooler enclosure or alternatives like Firewire or E-SATA if > they can power down drives.
A crude but usable solution: You can buy plug timers at most hardware stores ( Ikea Tända for example ) and only provide power for the enclosures during the backup hours. If the drives are unmounted before they are powered down ( perhaps a forced kill on dirvish and unmount from cron at 4x normal finish time ) then they should do fine. For extra lifetime, put a small line-powered fan on the same circuit, and keep the external drive cases as cool as possible. If the outside of the cases get warm, then some components inside must be getting hot. Rsync really thrashes drives, creating heat. I keep my backup drives in fan-cooled trays for that reason. A better solution: Your father's company, Alzatex, makes devices with USB-controlled power switches, right? How about a USB controlled switch and fan and enclosure product for external USB (or E-SATA) drives? For extra points, add some crypto security key stuff to to the product, so the bad guys can't turn on the drive without the crypto key. I bet Alzatex could sell a few of those, and perhaps other folks on the list would like some (let Loren know!). My own long term plan is to go to E-SATA. I assume the drives can be powered down like other ATA drives, and they are faster and better supported than USB. I would like a switch-box for those also, for the extra security involved. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs _______________________________________________ Dirvish mailing list [email protected] http://www.dirvish.org/mailman/listinfo/dirvish
