What to do with eight external USB hard drives?

[MartinB]

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post as it's not specifically Gentoo related (although the system to which the drives are connected is indeed running Gentoo ).

Anyway, over a number of years, I've built up a fairly large collection of external USB hard drives after running out of internal drive bays in my PC. Here's what I've got on my desk:

• 2 x 3TB external
• 2 x 1TB external
• 2 x 750GB external
• 2 x 500GB external

The problem is, each drive requires its own USB connection and power socket outlet, and I'm running out of both (and I really don't want to daisy chain multi-way outlets together).

I'm wondering if there's any such device that I could use to "consolidate" these drives into that would require only one power outlet and one USB connection? (I assume USB3 or eSATA would be necessary to maintain speed from all the drives together).

The obvious solution would be to build a second PC to host the drives internally and access them as network drives (i.e. like a NAS), but this seems expensive and overkill for my requirements, and I'd rather not add additional fan noise to my living room. I've also seen RAID enclosures, but I don't think these would work given that all the drives are different capacities.

Does anyone know if there's anything I can do with these drives to make my setup a little more practical?

[py-ro]

Hi,

something like this?

http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/2217

Bye
Py

Edit: Changed Link to english version

[eyoung100]

Before you shop too hard, Consider:

1. Download a GParted Live CD
2. Use it to Free up space by shrinking the partition(s) on each device to the smallest size possible
3. Buy 3 of These Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST4000NM0053 4 TB 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
4. Test Them
5. Copy Data Over
6. Put them in your machine
7. Attempt to stay away from External USB

[MartinB]

Hi,

something like this?

http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/2217

Bye
Py

Edit: Changed Link to english version

The only review on Amazon gives the product 1-star and claims that it's only Windows compatible, which is useless to me on a Gentoo system if true.

Aside, my understanding of RAID is that all drives must be of the same size, which is not the case as explained in my original post. Unless the device can be configured to see the drives individually, it isn't really very useful.

Before you shop too hard, Consider:

1. Download a GParted Live CD
2. Use it to Free up space by shrinking the partition(s) on each device to the smallest size possible
3. Buy 3 of These Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST4000NM0053 4 TB 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
4. Test Them
5. Copy Data Over
6. Put them in your machine
7. Attempt to stay away from External USB

I had hoped that it was implied that I'm not about to spend $1,000+ on this problem, not to mention a new case to house the extra three drives, whilst throwing away a bunch of perfectly usable existing drives.

It's also worth noting that the reason I have two of each drive is for backups, so for this purpose, the solution would require two 4GB drives and two 2GB drives.

[py-ro]

Not it is not Windows Only, but depends of the ability of your esata to work with PortMultiplier.

But this is all mentioned on the product page.

[eyoung100]

I had hoped that it was implied that I'm not about to spend $1,000+ on this problem, not to mention a new case to house the extra three drives, whilst throwing away a bunch of perfectly usable existing drives.

It's also worth noting that the reason I have two of each drive is for backups, so for this purpose, the solution would require two 4GB drives and two 2GB drives.

I gave those drives because those are the biggest size you can get internally,and using GParted to shrink the partition ensures it will fit. I've never liked external USB because of cables hanging out etc. Py-Ro's solution is right on target...