Anyone know of a reasonably priced external enclosure that will hold 4-6 EIDE drives?

[Doghouse Riley]

I have several external drives which I've installed in individual
cheapo external enclosures. Would like to consolidate them into a
single casing as the cable/power supply hassles are getting to be a
pain.

The only multi drive cases I've seen however are RAID units which are
so expensive that I could go cheaper by buying another PC, installing
the four drives there and networking to my main box. But that would
require me to make one of my storage drives bootable which I would
prefer not to do.

Is there a device out there that meets the spec I have in mind? 4-6
IDE drives, single power supply and communication cable (USB/Firewire)
coming out the back. price under (say) $300? Considering that I can
get an external case for a single drive for less than $40, my price
point should not be wildly optimistic.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have several external drives which I've installed in individual
cheapo external enclosures. Would like to consolidate them into a
single casing as the cable/power supply hassles are getting to be a
pain.

The only multi drive cases I've seen however are RAID units which are
so expensive that I could go cheaper by buying another PC, installing
the four drives there and networking to my main box. But that would
require me to make one of my storage drives bootable which I would
prefer not to do.

Is there a device out there that meets the spec I have in mind? 4-6
IDE drives, single power supply and communication cable (USB/Firewire)
coming out the back. price under (say) $300? Considering that I can
get an external case for a single drive for less than $40, my price
point should not be wildly optimistic.

And how should the drives be organized if not as RAID? Don't forget
that in the dsigle drive case you have one cable per drive. Connecting
several drives over one cable requires some kind of adding them together.
Of course an internal USB hub would do the trick, but there seems to
be no market for that.

If you go the PC-case route, you could allways use a bootable Linux
CD optimized for storage server applications. I think there
are several now.

Arno

 

[Steve Cousins]

I have several external drives which I've installed in individual
cheapo external enclosures. Would like to consolidate them into a
single casing as the cable/power supply hassles are getting to be a
pain.

The only multi drive cases I've seen however are RAID units which are
so expensive that I could go cheaper by buying another PC, installing
the four drives there and networking to my main box. But that would
require me to make one of my storage drives bootable which I would
prefer not to do.

Is there a device out there that meets the spec I have in mind? 4-6
IDE drives, single power supply and communication cable (USB/Firewire)
coming out the back. price under (say) $300? Considering that I can
get an external case for a single drive for less than $40, my price
point should not be wildly optimistic.

Take a look at:


http://www.cooldrives.com/usb-external-enclosure-for-multiple-drives-4x.html

There might be a 6 drive option somewhere on the site but this was the
first one that seemed to fit your need.

A little more searching found:

http://www.cooldrives.com/8hadrusb20ra.html

which is RAID or JBOD for 8 IDE drives for $260.

Steve

 

[Rod Speed]

I have several external drives which I've installed in individual
cheapo external enclosures. Would like to consolidate them into a
single casing as the cable/power supply hassles are getting to be a
pain.

The only multi drive cases I've seen however are RAID units which are
so expensive that I could go cheaper by buying another PC, installing
the four drives there and networking to my main box.

You can get some which use the eSATA multiple drive over a single cable system.

Not that cheap yet, but better than the external RAIDs.

Likely that wont work for you tho because yours most likely arent SATA drives.

But that would require me to make one of my storage
drives bootable which I would prefer not to do.

Is there a device out there that meets the spec I have in mind?

Yes, a minimal PC and put all those drives in that minimal PC on the lan.

4-6 IDE drives, single power supply and communication cable
(USB/Firewire) coming out the back. price under (say) $300?

You can do that easily with an obsolete PC.

Considering that I can get an external case for a single drive for
less than $40, my price point should not be wildly optimistic.

You can do that with the eSATA boxes, but that obviously wont work for ATA/IDE drives.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

You can get some which use the eSATA multiple drive over a single cable system.
Really?


Not that cheap yet, but better than the external RAIDs.

Likely that wont work for you tho because yours most likely arent SATA drives.



Yes, a minimal PC and put all those drives in that minimal PC on the lan.


You can do that easily with an obsolete PC.


You can do that with the eSATA boxes, but that obviously wont work for ATA/IDE drives.

No? Why not?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

And how should the drives be organized if not as RAID? Don't forget
that in the dsigle drive case you have one cable per drive. Connecting
several drives over one cable requires some kind of adding them together.

Of course an internal USB hub would do the trick, but there seems to
be no market for that.

No, babblebot?
What exactly makes you think that, your usual cluelessness.