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A friend of mine and I are thinking about building an external USB (or could be firewire) drive array.
Here's what we're thinking: We both have a need to have some good size portable storage. I have five computers; two at home and three at work. Occasionally I need to be able to move large amounts of files off of them (or more accurately between them). I bought a USB 2 external hard drive enclosure and put a 7200rpm 250GB PATA drive in it. Unfortunately as is often the case, I filled this sucker up pretty quickly, so this defeated the purpose of having another drive. What I really need is more space and a way to access it all at once from any machine.
This got me thinking. I could build another PC and make it a server, but that's overkill and would cost too much. Why not just use the internal parts from several of these external enclosures (the part that converts the hard drive to USB), get a small cheap case with a small psu (which I could hook up to the drives), get some cooling fans, and get a USB hub (to plug all the drives into). Then I would have a box with say four or more drives in it that could run to the USB hub. I could have two cords coming out the back, one for the hub and one for to plug into a USB port on whatever computer I would use. It would be pretty simple and not cost much to build. I could add drives on a need by need basis even!
The usb to ide part I was thinking of using would be something like this: http://computerlogin.com/onwa/Whole...IDEAdapter.html
only I wouldn't need the external power (since I'd be using a PSU). I could probably find these somewhere for under $5 each...
A couple of questions I have are:
1) Would the PSU work if it's not connected to a motherboard?
2) I'm not sure how I could hook the hub up inside of the case (or are there hubs that you can buy that go inside of cases?)
3) How to hook the hub up to the PSU's power.
Anyway, I'd like to get other people's opinions on this. I'm sure someone has build something like this before. I'd like to learn from them and get your ideas on the best way to do this.
Feel free to tell me that this would work (if it wouldn't) or make suggestions on a better idea if you've got one. I'm basically looking for cheap, somewhat portable storage, but I don't want to have a bunch of USB external enclosures where I have to plug each drive in.
Thanks.
Here's what we're thinking: We both have a need to have some good size portable storage. I have five computers; two at home and three at work. Occasionally I need to be able to move large amounts of files off of them (or more accurately between them). I bought a USB 2 external hard drive enclosure and put a 7200rpm 250GB PATA drive in it. Unfortunately as is often the case, I filled this sucker up pretty quickly, so this defeated the purpose of having another drive. What I really need is more space and a way to access it all at once from any machine.
This got me thinking. I could build another PC and make it a server, but that's overkill and would cost too much. Why not just use the internal parts from several of these external enclosures (the part that converts the hard drive to USB), get a small cheap case with a small psu (which I could hook up to the drives), get some cooling fans, and get a USB hub (to plug all the drives into). Then I would have a box with say four or more drives in it that could run to the USB hub. I could have two cords coming out the back, one for the hub and one for to plug into a USB port on whatever computer I would use. It would be pretty simple and not cost much to build. I could add drives on a need by need basis even!
The usb to ide part I was thinking of using would be something like this: http://computerlogin.com/onwa/Whole...IDEAdapter.html
only I wouldn't need the external power (since I'd be using a PSU). I could probably find these somewhere for under $5 each...
A couple of questions I have are:
1) Would the PSU work if it's not connected to a motherboard?
2) I'm not sure how I could hook the hub up inside of the case (or are there hubs that you can buy that go inside of cases?)
3) How to hook the hub up to the PSU's power.
Anyway, I'd like to get other people's opinions on this. I'm sure someone has build something like this before. I'd like to learn from them and get your ideas on the best way to do this.
Feel free to tell me that this would work (if it wouldn't) or make suggestions on a better idea if you've got one. I'm basically looking for cheap, somewhat portable storage, but I don't want to have a bunch of USB external enclosures where I have to plug each drive in.
Thanks.