2 HD's in one external enclosure w/RAID

How feasible, practical, and what performance could I expect from trying to set up two hard drives in one enclosure.

-Could I set them up in RAID even if it's USB or Firewire?

-ATA or SATA? Cables? Power?

Is this way out there or is there a cost effective way to do this?

i just wanna know what kind of enclosure you have that holds 2 hdd's?

I have a bunch of external boxes for two IDE drives (I'm not sure how they are connected, possibly jbod or actual raid, I didn't really look at the controller) that are seen as one drive. The connection from the case to the computer is scsi. Odd if you ask me, but then, they are Mac enclosures.

I haven't swapped hd's before but, I would think you could format a SCSI or IDE hd for either Mac or PC....
-But I'm more interested in a cost effective way to do this... perhaps mod a controller card and a transformer.....

-Probably better to just buy two enclosures, but could you still get the same RAID setup with two USB or Firewire connected drives?

You could probably use two USB drives, and setup a software raid. Probably would not be too difficult.

charmapsyche said:

I haven't swapped hd's before but, I would think you could format a SCSI or IDE hd for either Mac or PC....
-But I'm more interested in a cost effective way to do this... perhaps mod a controller card and a transformer.....

-Probably better to just buy two enclosures, but could you still get the same RAID setup with two USB or Firewire connected drives?

Click to expand...

I didn't have any problem formatting the drives and using them in a PC. I was just pointing out that there are systems like this. I'm not sure if the controller card in mine uses actual RAID or JBOD (since I took the drives out of the case and just used them as IDE drives). However, the cases have space for two drives, include a controller that also converts the connection to SCSI, and also have a small PSU that powers both drives and the card. The trick would be finding a stand alone controller card. It would be better to do this with a controller in the same box, otherwise, how would you preserve your RAID configuration when you moved it (I assume mobility is the reason you want this externally)?

I found several options for doing just what you want by googling "dual ide enclosure raid" (no quotes), but I didn't see any cheap options. It seems that the enclosures (no drives) run from a couple hundred dollars to over a thousand.

Non RAID -
$54+s/h
$130+s/h
$180+s/h
$180+s/h
$130+s/h

RAID -
$350+s/h
3-bay with RAID 5, $800+s/h

Various -
various

Maker -
Lacie makes setups that raid two drives together, but they don't sell the enclosures (they made some of the ones I have), but you may be able to eBay and older one if you like what they have.

Retailers -
Other World Computing (Mac shop, but I bet the enclosures work with PCs)
Weibetech (Mostly Mac oriented, but works on PCs as well)

[EDIT]Added some links[/EDIT]

I just dont see the point of external raid0. Unless its a network attached storafe solution. Spending all this extra cash for external bays. Just use the cash to buy two excellent drives and good cooling for them.

Higher performance with large capacity storage while maintaining mobility is one reason, though many of those enclosures are pretty big to lug around. However, some of the LaCie enclosures are not much bigger than a standard external enclosure.

... pointless to have RAID externally unless it's a large solution. Just get a USB 2.0 200gb external drive from maxtor/wd...

You aren't going to get "insane speed" from an external solution unless its a NAS/SAN solution.

-Frank

Good advice.
I guess my logic was, I can get two 160 Gig HD's for less than a hundred a piece, plus an enclosure for $40-$50...
I thought it would be worthwhile, but two individual enclosures for $30 a piece seems much more practical.

You're right though, mobility is the reason. Laptop storage is horrible.

Thanks for the input!