🚀 go-pugleaf

j4m4l_$1xp4ck@salmahayeksknockers.edu wrote:
>>Or decide that you collection of drives is getting a tad bizarre and
>>replace the smaller drives with much bigger drives, say 250G drives. 
> 
> Already done.  These 80GB are the leftovers, but still have life in them.
> 

Dan,

I think the USB path isn't a bad idea, but I'll suggest a few things.

1) Buy a separate PCI/USB Controller card (or two) for this, they can be 
had as cheap as $30. Because USB is a shared network (and not all that 
fast to begin with) spreading the drives across a couple of separate 
controllers, or at least dedicating a controller just to this, will 
greatly improve the performance. I know that may not be your goal, but 
neither is something that is so slow it becomes nearly unusable.

2) Ditch the idea of using a hub, it'll just be a bottleneck.

3) make sure that enclosure has a couple of fans in it besides the power 
supply fan, if possible. Hard drive do generate a lot of heat.

4) If you wanted to get real fancy, consider having the drives them 
selves in those removable drive bays you can buy, and hook the usb 
adapter kits to those. This way you could have the advantages of making 
it easy to hot swap drive in and out, and the USB convenience. It would 
cost a bunch more money, but it is an interesting idea.

5) If you hook it up to a Linux box, as opposed to a windows one, you 
might want to explore using RAID on them to make them appear as a single 
larger volume (RAID5). I have no idea how good it would work in 
practice, but it might be interesting to play with.

Let us know how it turns out. I'd also be interested in knowing if the 
Ebay deal pans out. I have two 40GB USB drives, by Microsolutions which 
use their goofy backpack (Colorado) hardware. It is a major pain as you 
need special drivers to deal with them. I wouldn't mind retrofitting 
them with a real USB/IDE kit of some sort.

-- 
====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+