Hard Drive/Computer question

[Sonny]

Eventually, I want to buy a new desktop (tower) computer with a large hard drive (200 gigs or more). I have three old hard drives with lots of my old data that I want to keep and install in the new computer.

I assume they make tower cases that can handle multiple hard drives plus CD, Floppy Drives, DVD, etc. I'm probably looking at 4 (minimum) or 5 slots for hard drives only. Do they make a hard drive ribbon that plugs into that many hard drives (master HD, slave HD, slave HD, slave HD)? Any problems with motherboards support that many HD's?

Your thoughts?

[Campbell]

you will probably want to look into a drive tower. These have a wide price range and depending on how new a tower you want, you may be able to find a used one for cheap. I don't know if MoBos can support more than four drives on the primary and secondary IDE, you might need a controller that goes between the drives and the IDE. Even then you don't leave any space for CD/DVD drives. Drive towers can connect different ways, but your best bet is probably firewire (common) or SCSI (not so common on home PCs). SCSI will either need a dedicated port on your computer or a SCSI slot for a card (much bigger than PCI). I haven't seen a lot of computers with SCSI on them, I don't know if they are even used much anymore. I am not an expert on any of this, but you might do some searching on the web for drive towers and see if they fit in your price range and your needs.

[Hackalicious]

Eventually, I want to buy a new desktop (tower) computer with a large hard drive (200 gigs or more). I have three old hard drives with lots of my old data that I want to keep and install in the new computer.

I assume they make tower cases that can handle multiple hard drives plus CD, Floppy Drives, DVD, etc. I'm probably looking at 4 (minimum) or 5 slots for hard drives only. Do they make a hard drive ribbon that plugs into that many hard drives (master HD, slave HD, slave HD, slave HD)? Any problems with motherboards support that many HD's?

Your thoughts?

You may also want to consider buying an external USB drive enclosure. Basically, it's a stand-alone casing that you drop your existing drive into, then can plug into a USB port. You can buy them for like $20 at most computer stores or can find them easily on Froogle.

I did this with an old laptop drive and it worked like a charm. I use it as a portable drive now. Plus, it's just as easy to drop the drive back into a computer later on.

[Campbell]

Eventually, I want to buy a new desktop (tower) computer with a large hard drive (200 gigs or more). I have three old hard drives with lots of my old data that I want to keep and install in the new computer.

I assume they make tower cases that can handle multiple hard drives plus CD, Floppy Drives, DVD, etc. I'm probably looking at 4 (minimum) or 5 slots for hard drives only. Do they make a hard drive ribbon that plugs into that many hard drives (master HD, slave HD, slave HD, slave HD)? Any problems with motherboards support that many HD's?

Your thoughts?

You may also want to consider buying an external USB drive enclosure. Basically, it's a stand-alone casing that you drop your existing drive into, then can plug into a USB port. You can buy them for like $20 at most computer stores or can find them easily on Froogle.

I did this with an old laptop drive and it worked like a charm. I use it as a portable drive now. Plus, it's just as easy to drop the drive back into a computer later on.

You know I forgot about those things. The only downside to those is that you would have to switch drives in and out rather than just accessing them from the same source. I think that is pretty minor though, especially if you don't need ALL your drives ALL the time. This would also give you the convenience of a portable HD and as Hack said they are pretty cheap.

Also, if you do consider a tower, you might look to just adding another large HD to your main comp. If you are not attached to your old HDs specifically, transfering everything over to two 200-300GB HDs might be a better deal. I like the portable drive idea better though, simple and economical.

[horn17]

I recommend using the usb enclosures as well, that way you can access them as needed. With the other recommendation, having on solid back up is a good idea, but you will want more than one...espically if that HD crashes..then you'll be calling someone like me to help you out...I work in the industry..so if you have questions any further, let me know...


Recommended back up: DVD -R's ....cd's longevity arent what they thought and are actually loosing data....

[Brent Burns]

Recommended back up: DVD -R's ....cd's longevity arent what they thought and are actually loosing data....

This is probably a tad bit going off the topic, yet what horn17 brought up is an interesting/good point about CDs. I have not had the time this morning to read a section of my local newspaper which ran an article on "RIP to CD." From what I quickly ascertained from the headline, I figured that the CDs are becoming obsolete. I need to clarify that a little bit. The article was focusing on cd's vs. music download.

[Sonny]

I recommend using the usb enclosures as well, that way you can access them as needed. With the other recommendation, having on solid back up is a good idea, but you will want more than one...espically if that HD crashes..then you'll be calling someone like me to help you out...I work in the industry..so if you have questions any further, let me know...

Recommended back up: DVD -R's ....cd's longevity arent what they thought and are actually loosing data....

1. Do they make a USB enclosure that handles multiple hard drives? All the ones I see are 2 or 2.5" and they appear to only fit one hard drive.

2. Do you recommending ghosting (i.e. writing all your data to two hard drives at the same time) with occasional DVD-R backups?

[horn17]

Sonny...personaly I back everything up to externals...but everything that is critical that id kick myself if i lost- tax info, work resources, itunes...i use dvd-r...with hard drives, they are going to crash - not if, but when...NOT FUN.....so in ghosting, it works, but remember if your drive goes down so does your ghosted back up...

With external enclosures....www.newegg.com....check out your USB enclosure needs...reasonably priced...there are drive enclosures that support 2 drives...but these boxes tend to have the drives already into them and write data in a striping manner (sorry getting really dorky here....)....

Grab a couple external enclosures...clean off the junk that you dont need from those drives...and store them so they'll be safe and burn DVDs...you wouldnt believe how many people I talk to everyday that dont understand the neccessity of multiple back ups...

[Hackalicious]

1. Do they make a USB enclosure that handles multiple hard drives? All the ones I see are 2 or 2.5" and they appear to only fit one hard drive.

2. Do you recommending ghosting (i.e. writing all your data to two hard drives at the same time) with occasional DVD-R backups?

1. Not that I know of. It's strictly a way to turn a single internal drive into an external USB drive.

2. For an individual user, I'd recommend periodically copying your entire disk to an extrernal backup drive that is kept in a safe place. DVD backups don't hurt, either.

For critical files that you are working on, I'd recommend using a version control system like CVS or SVN. Unfortunately, these are a pain in the ass to set up and use. There are also network backup services XDrive or .MAC for Mac users where you can dump important files. Of course, you could just e-mail important files to a GMail account.

People use ghosting or RAID setups if they have enough disks that it's very likeley at least one will fail sometime, or they might need to hot-swap out a failed drive with a new one without taking the system down.

[KnoxVegas]

Sonny,
There is a place you can go now in the ATL. It is called Fry's Electronics. You can get all you questions answered there and they have everything your could ever want.

Check out:
http://www.frys.com

I just bought 1tb for my home set up.

[laxfan25]

I'm just curious why you wouldn't consolidate all of you old drives to your big new one, and just have to back that up as needed. Any reason to keep all of the old drives operational?

[horn17]

FAN25-

I cant speak for Sonny, but now a days, numerous backups are the safest way to go. Hard drives crash much more frequently now a days than ever before...and externals are just as likely to corupt or crash as an everyday drive.....just some info...as Hack pointed out...offsite storage isnt a new technology...however, they can be expensive and a rather big pain in the arse to deal with...I would do it myself if it wasnt almost 150 dollars a month...

[Sonny]

I have a total of three physical HD's now - There are two in my current desktop computer. I also have one extra one that isn't hooked up to anything at the moment from my old desktop.

There is alot of old USLIA.com data across all three HD's that I'd like to eventually restore to the site.

Personally, I'd rather keep the physical hard drives when I donate old computers to charity.