[OT] Re: external hard-disk enclosure advice?
* Stefan Monnier [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006-09-11 11:26:07 -0400]: Performancewise, it's probably not going to be as good as firewire (not sure about USB2). Also be super-extra careful to get a box that runs some Linux kernel firmware so you can get it integrated with your Linux environment (you can even install Debian on it). I use a similar setup here and am pretty happy with it: my NAS is just a generic server http/print/ntp/mpd/... with the advantage that it's small and quiet. Just out of curiosity, and slightly OT, may I ask what hardware you are using? I am thinking about changing my current 7-disk jet airplane of a NAS to a smaller one with external USB disks, to eliminate the noise level but still let the server function as something more than file storage. -- Kim Christensen I am Jack's smirking revenge. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: external hard-disk enclosure advice?
Stefan Monnier [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You may want to check out some of the network-attached-storage solutions. ASUS and Linksys have pretty cheap ones (not much more expensive than an external USB/firewire box) and it does give you a lot of extra flexibility. Hmmm, I wanna use it as my main disk though (e.g. lots of compiling), so I don't want anything as slow as NFS, for instance (I sometimes compile stuff in NFS mounted trees at work, and man, it's _painful_)... Now that SATAe is starting to be supported, I'm thinking maybe it's worth getting a SATAe enclosure and a PCI SATAe card for my current PC -- if nothing else the enclosure should be pretty cheap (since it would require almost nothing in the way of interface electronics), and as fast as the disk itself. Thanks, -Miles -- If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. [George Carlin] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: external hard-disk enclosure advice?
On 2006-08-26 @ 13:44:29 (week 34) Miles Bader wrote: Hi, thanks for the review. Sorry to take this long to respond. Been away for a short holiday. How's the I/O speed / CPU usage (I heard USB can eat a lot of CPU at high speeds)? I haven't really measured it, but to me it was quite acceptable. Note however that I usually only do background rsyncs to that disk. If you want me to I can do some test runs for you. Grx HdV -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: external hard-disk enclosure advice?
Given the way disk prices have fallen, I'd like to get a new bigger disk (say 40-50 GB), but want to get something that I can easily move to a new system when I buy one. As I expect any new system (I'll probably buy one within the next 1-2 years) will use different somewhat different technologies (e.g., SATA, PCIe, etc). You may want to check out some of the network-attached-storage solutions. ASUS and Linksys have pretty cheap ones (not much more expensive than an external USB/firewire box) and it does give you a lot of extra flexibility. Of course, whether it's a good option or not depends on whether you have a chance to share it with other computers over the network. Performancewise, it's probably not going to be as good as firewire (not sure about USB2). Also be super-extra careful to get a box that runs some Linux kernel firmware so you can get it integrated with your Linux environment (you can even install Debian on it). I use a similar setup here and am pretty happy with it: my NAS is just a generic server http/print/ntp/mpd/... with the advantage that it's small and quiet. Stefan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: external hard-disk enclosure advice?
On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 01:44:29PM +0900, Miles Bader wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (J.A. de Vries) writes: I recently bought such a beast for backup purposes. I choose an Icy Box IB-360-BL. This is an external closure for 3.5 IDE/SATA disks and features both USB and Firewire interfaces. The disk itself I had to buy separately, but that was exactly what I wanted. Hi, thanks for the review. How's the I/O speed / CPU usage (I heard USB can eat a lot of CPU at high speeds)? I use a couple of disks in external USB caddies to carry around a Debian mirror or two :) I'm currently using caddies from Iomega which originally had 160GB disks in - I think the latest caddies from them now have 300 / 320GB disks as standard. These are strong aluminium caddies with a steel tray inside and rubber washers providing some shock absorption round the drive fixing screws, the end fixes with two small flat head screws and the caddies have a robust power supply. I've previously borrowed a caddy that would spin a largish disk but not read from it because there wasn't enough power reserve given by the power adaptor block. Cheap caddies really feel cheap and flimsy: try and look at the quality before you buy. Watch out for heat dissipation if the drives are on full time: I've run disks for 6 hours + and the caddies get quite warm to the touch on the outside - the disks themselves are hot to the touch if you take them from the case. I tend to use rsync to copy gigabytes of data across to these. I have been noticing md5sum errors in the copied Debian archives: I _think_ this is because even after you umount the external disk, you tend to switch it off when it's still spinning at full speed :( I was thinking to make this disk my main disk, not a backup disk, so I'm more concerned with that than most people probably are. You may want to reconsider that and use the disk primarily as backup and portable storage. Some motherboards won't boot readily from a USB attached hard disk. [Is there such a thing as an external SATA disk? That should be much faster I guess, but I'm not sure offhand if disk speeds justify worrying about interface speed this much ... :-] There are - but I haven't seen many yet. 300GB transfers fairly fast over USB 2.0 - in about 10 hours :) 480 MBit/s = 48MBytes transferred per second or so - and real life suggests that it feels fast :)_ Thanks, -Miles HTH, Andy -- Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. -Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: external hard-disk enclosure advice?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (J.A. de Vries) writes: I recently bought such a beast for backup purposes. I choose an Icy Box IB-360-BL. This is an external closure for 3.5 IDE/SATA disks and features both USB and Firewire interfaces. The disk itself I had to buy separately, but that was exactly what I wanted. Pros: I can change disks whenever I want without bringing down the system and now I have a very flexible storage solution. Moreso because I have an USB network adapter, making it possible to turn the whole thing into a stand-alone network storage solution. Hi, thanks for the review. How's the I/O speed / CPU usage (I heard USB can eat a lot of CPU at high speeds)? I was thinking to make this disk my main disk, not a backup disk, so I'm more concerned with that than most people probably are. [Is there such a thing as an external SATA disk? That should be much faster I guess, but I'm not sure offhand if disk speeds justify worrying about interface speed this much ... :-] Thanks, -Miles -- Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. -Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: external hard-disk enclosure advice?
On 2006-08-06 @ 09:27:48 (week 31) Miles Bader wrote: Hi, I'm looking for advice on buying a new hard-drive / external hard-drive enclosure: [snip] Hi Miles, I recently bought such a beast for backup purposes. I choose an Icy Box IB-360-BL. This is an external closure for 3.5 IDE/SATA disks and features both USB and Firewire interfaces. The disk itself I had to buy separately, but that was exactly what I wanted. Pros: I can change disks whenever I want without bringing down the system and now I have a very flexible storage solution. Moreso because I have an USB network adapter, making it possible to turn the whole thing into a stand-alone network storage solution. Con: those irritating blue LEDs that are way too bright. HTH Grx HdV -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
