I've got 4 IDE 3.5 drives > 1 home?

Hi, thought this looked about the best place to ask, so here we go!

I've got 4x 3.5" IDE drives, varying sizes (320gb, 2x 80gb and a 60gb - think they are all 7200rpm, one or two might be 5400 tho) and they aren't all in external cases, so it's a real pain to swap them about. I know I could get an external adapter ready wired to just plug them in, but what I'm looking for is a single box solution to house them all, and ideally with the option of using either JBOD to see them as a single mass storage device, or see them as 4 individual drives, but be able to connect them all at once, using one cable (I'm guessing USB2, tho FW would be great). Not looking for a NAS, I already have a dual drive NAS on my home network, or RAID configs; I just want to be able to access all the drives in one go using a single PSU and a single connecting cable to either my Mac or Dell laptop (disk format isn't a problem either; my OSX machine reads and writes NTFS and my WinXP machine reads and writes HFS+ so I'm covered)

Idea's? Google isn't throwing up much here, so thought you guys might be able to help!

Thanks!

External drives are so cheap, all those drives together is only 540 GB. A single 500 GB, 1 TB or even 2 TB external would be faster, more reliable, more convenient and cheaper in the long run than messing with old PATA drives.

I have to agree. You can get a new terabyte drive for about $90, and it's more reliable than what you have in mind, and it'd probably cost about $60 for a case that does what you want... if you're lucking.

Past the issues of powering them and the light bill.. And personal preference.


Your going to look into JBOD. Which stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks. As you add/initialize more, of the storage capacity/drive speed inequality: That single array goes up. Basically, it is mixed capacity drives melded into one storage link. Which you can then partition off as you need.
You get no speed perks or redundancy. Just more storage, in one linked drive. Slow disks will be slow when using the slow sectors on the drives. Depending on where the data is on in relation to the array.

Most controllers that support RAID, support this level RAID in a JBOD (Non-RAID drive architecture) array.

I agree with Ben though, So much simpler to grab a single large capacity drive.

I think I got a 2 TB WD external drive for around $100 ish... wasn't much more. I actually ended up ripping it apart and throwing the internal SATA drive in my machine directly since it was only a couple bucks more than an internal drive anyway.

Back a couple few years ago. I got a 1TB on sale for $100. It was an external, and was cheaper to get that external at the time versus an internal, on sale. I tore it out of the housing and added it to my server.
It had all the features of the generation.

I, myself would look at the cost of buying hardware and the lighbill. Versus investing in one single drive for the long haul. Though, I am not proud. I will allow drives to sit in a duct tape creation cardboard box enclosure and call it good. Convincing myself function over form.

Hi guys

As I said tho, I don't want a NAS or a RAID config (or any kind of redundancy) - I've already got a 2TB NAS on my network, and I've also got a 2TB ext drive (which I just bought for £55/$90) linked in, as a backup drive for me NAS. I can't stick the drives in my machine, as it's a MacBook Pro so nowhere for them to go. And I know 500gb ext drives are cheap, but I was just looking for a way to utilise the spare drives I have kicking around doing nothing (all of which have stuff on, but it's a PITA to keep swapping them into a single case to go through them - be so much easier to have them in an all-in-one where I can sift through the data on them, delete duplicates and stuff I no longer want, and then collate all the data I do want in one place. As for the lightbill (I presume you guys mean the cost to run them?) They won't be on all the time - the only storage device running all the time is my NAS - everything else is backup only

JBOD is not really RAID. All it does it make all the disks look as one. It is an overlooked feature on most onboard controllers.

As for holding it all and not taaking disks off and adding... Nothing beats a cardboard box. Or being creative attaching them inside something (read:a case) that can hold everything. Sometimes, you have to think outside of that box...

As for thinking inside a box already owned.. I have used plumbing tape and copper pipe straps before, for drives. There is an older thread I made about my ghetto disk mounts. I only needed three drives at the time. But could of used longer straps..
Cutting out the case drive cages and being creative. I seen folks use rubber and pop holes in it. To act as a support for the drives. Heck even cut plastic would work. Long as it is rigid enough to support the drives.

Matt_C said:

Hi guys

As I said tho, I don't want a NAS or a RAID config (or any kind of redundancy) - I've already got a 2TB NAS on my network, and I've also got a 2TB ext drive (which I just bought for £55/$90) linked in, as a backup drive for me NAS. I can't stick the drives in my machine, as it's a MacBook Pro so nowhere for them to go. And I know 500gb ext drives are cheap, but I was just looking for a way to utilise the spare drives I have kicking around doing nothing (all of which have stuff on, but it's a PITA to keep swapping them into a single case to go through them - be so much easier to have them in an all-in-one where I can sift through the data on them, delete duplicates and stuff I no longer want, and then collate all the data I do want in one place. As for the lightbill (I presume you guys mean the cost to run them?) They won't be on all the time - the only storage device running all the time is my NAS - everything else is backup only

Click to expand...

My point was that an enclosure for a bunch of IDE drives is going to cost more than a single drive with a higher capacity than all your IDE drives together and it will be faster and more reliable. If you just want to tinker and mess around the only thing I can think of would be to set up an old machine as a file server. Maybe you could search ebay for a four drive PATA enclosure... never heard of one myself though. For all practical purposes, just get a single new large and cheap external drive.