2 or 4HD to one USB setup?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Impmon
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I

Impmon

Is there such thing as an USB controller that can handle up to 4 hard
drives to one? The reason I'm asking because I have need for more
space but my PC's a bit cramped and getting individual USB enclosure
would be more expensive than a single setup. I have an old AT case
with power supply and I could put 4 hard drives there and add the USB
controller and make it an external hard drive case.
 
Impmon said:
Is there such thing as an USB controller that can handle up to 4 hard
drives to one? The reason I'm asking because I have need for more
space but my PC's a bit cramped and getting individual USB enclosure
would be more expensive than a single setup. I have an old AT case
with power supply and I could put 4 hard drives there and add the USB
controller and make it an external hard drive case.
Click to expand...

Why use USB? SATA works fine in that kind of situation. You run 4 cables,
not 1, but so what? You do have the SATA distance limit, which is a lot
less than for USB, but you also get the full performance of the drives,
which is usually not the case with USB attachment.
 
Why use USB? SATA works fine in that kind of situation. You run 4 cables,
not 1, but so what? You do have the SATA distance limit, which is a lot
less than for USB, but you also get the full performance of the drives,
which is usually not the case with USB attachment.
Click to expand...

Doesn't help since I'd need SATA cards and all 5 PCI slots in my PC
are already filled. At the tyime I do have extra 160GB, 250GB, and
80GB hard drives and unless there's a cheap IDE to SATA adapter and a
cheap PCI expansion chasis, I'd still prefer the USB or firewire to 4
HD setup.
 
Impmon said:
Doesn't help since I'd need SATA cards and all 5 PCI slots in my PC
are already filled. At the tyime I do have extra 160GB, 250GB, and
80GB hard drives and unless there's a cheap IDE to SATA adapter and a
cheap PCI expansion chasis, I'd still prefer the USB or firewire to 4
HD setup.
Click to expand...

The cheapest way to get a decent Firewire to ATA bridge is in an external
enclosure for about 26 bucks. There is a four drive adapter out for about
100 but the performance should be pretty poor due to its using a less than
excellent bridge chip. There are also Firewire to ATA RAID solutions for
about 375 bucks.

Froogle "Oxford 911 Firewire" and you should get a bunch of hits.
 
Hi. Why are you doing the USB thing? Cheapest thing to do is take your
drives, put them in your case, hook them up to the IDE ports 2 each,
put an operating system on one, and share them out via ethernet. Would
cost almost nothing, and should be fast enough.

Irwin
 
Irwin said:
Hi. Why are you doing the USB thing? Cheapest thing to do is take your
drives, put them in your case, hook them up to the IDE ports 2 each,
put an operating system on one, and share them out via ethernet. Would
cost almost nothing, and should be fast enough.
Click to expand...

(a) Please quote the post to which you are replying. If that seems like a
stupid idea to you then you don't have enough experience with USENET.

(b) He said, and I quote, "my PC's a bit cramped", which I take to mean that
he doesn't have any free drive bays, so he wants to use "an old AT case
with power supply". That "old case" needs an AT motherboard with an
Ethernet host adapter and two IDE ports that can handle modern drives for
your idea to be viable. While he can probably find an AT board with a PCI
bus on ebay fairly cheap, he's then going to have to add an Ethernet board
and a disk controller and enough RAM to run whatever OS he's going to use
and possibly another OS license depending on what he's using and what he's
willing to learn. Alternatively he could try to run IDE cables between his
main machine and his AT case but with 18" of cable total to work with and
the need to attach two drives, it's sometimes difficult enough to connect
to drives that are in the same case, let alone an external case.
 
Yup, I missed the AT part. Still, an ATA controller card can be had for
less than $40, maybe less than $30. I assume the old AT box will have
an operating system which he already knows how to use, and should have
a network card also. Shouldn't need any more RAM, just what is needed
to run the already existing operating system. Therefore, allowing for
the assumptions, it still sounds cheaper and simpler to me anyhow.

IMF
 
Hi. Why are you doing the USB thing? Cheapest thing to do is take your
drives, put them in your case, hook them up to the IDE ports 2 each,
put an operating system on one, and share them out via ethernet. Would
cost almost nothing, and should be fast enough.
Click to expand...

Hmm... I wonder why I didn't think of that... I do have an old mobo
that is AT, has PCI slots, and has 300MHz CPU. I'd still need an IDE
card as the onboard IDE probably won't work with drives >137GB. It
does have onboard USB so I could unplug keyboard and mouse when it's
up and running.
 
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