Four new 80g hard drives, [b]now[/b] what???

[pijetro]

I've got a P3 1ghz, on a CUSLC-2C mobo..
Both IDE channels are taken up. The Primary carries two hard drives with 40g and 60g respectively...The Secondary channel carries a CD rom, and DVD burner...

Scenario.
I do lots of VCR capturing without a hitch so far. I'm dreaming of using prosumer level NLE's for wedding videos $$ . I'm getting closer, since storage isn't an issue anymore.

Question.
What are the suggestions on my setup?? Should I create a separate tower to drive this?? If so, how do I go about it?? Do I need to remove one of my H.D.D., or can I simply create a Raid to an outside physical tower??

Thanx....

[racerxnet]

Get a hardware based Raid card from Ebay; (HighPoint, 3ware) and install. If you chose the software option you can forget about video editing without the frame loss/audio sync issues.

[wulf109]

By all means get a hardware like the Promise it will expand your IDE to 8 drives,but buy it from someone like newegg.com,don't overpay on ebay.
It it's a new current item you need your head examained to buy it on ebay.

[redwudz]

The simplist solution would be a full tower case big enough to hold all your drives, a PCI IDE card (RAID or not) and a 400W PS to run it all. Another way would be a second PC case for the HD's with a PCI card on your boot PC and IDE cables long enough to make it to the drives. More expensive would be a seperate case with Firewire to it for the external drives. Firewire is the most elegant, but a little more expensive to set up because you would need more in the way of interfaces. The advantage is you could add more drives in the future. You would use a dedicated mulitiple Firewire drive case for this.

[wonderuss]

I had a similar problem connecting up things when i ran out of ide connectors first i bought a raid card.........then i took it back as there are too many problems with them so i got a SIIG Ultra ATA 133 PCI card from Pc World here in the UK (or you could have a look on the SIIG site www.siig.com) and it's now given me another 2 ide connectors inside my pc (without having to have the exact same hard drives with a raid card) it will also run any ide device too. My Pc now has 60gb hd, 80gb hd 2x 40gb hd's and 2 DVD burners all running without any problems.

[PolarBearWY]

I'd say just sell them all on eBay and buy yourself a new 200+ GB drive.

[pijetro]

Good one.

Thanx guys. I'll dig a bit deeper with all your suggestions.
Actually, I could have bought two 160gig H.D. for the same gig to dollar price, but was afraid the motherboard wouldn't handle it..

Anyhoo, W.D. 80gig H.D.D. seem pretty reliable. Call me superstitious, but as far as reliability goes, anything over 120gig scares me....

[gmatov]

Hey, Pete, 170 megabyte drives went splat back when, too.

They're at least as reliable today as they were then.

Only thing I see wrong (theoretically), is, now you need a controller card that is going to be ate up with 4 80 gigs where with 2 160s, you'd have had room for 2 more 160s or bigger in future.

For the hell of it, make sure the card you buy has optical drive support. I just found my Promie does not.

[pijetro]

Great advice, I'll look into that. But like I said earlier, I didn't wanna take the gamble to find out that my mobo didn't support the larger drives.
A google search didn't do any good..

So it looks like I'll get a separate tower, with a PCI Raid card in my main computer. I'll have to find out physically, if the card can reach an external tower.

Thanx...

[bottle-necked]

The way things are right now SATA is the only way to go. It's getting harder to buy a new motherboard that supports IDE. If you would shop around for motherboards you will see. SATA is the only way to go if you're going to buy new drives. If you buy IDE now, they won't be compatible if you ever upgrade. They will require an IDE adapter card forever. Not good.

If you're not going to run RAID-0 and multiple drives then get 1 big drive. You should understand my point there.

Good luck.

[Leoslocks]

Mid tower case with OS on onboard Raid Controller,
2 Drives
Removeable hard drive caddys in two of the fron spaces, Primary Master and Slave
2 Drives
PCI HighPoint Rocket Raid Card w/two 60 gig drives in Raid 0 Array
2 Drives
DVD Drive on Secondary Slave
DVD RW drive on Secondary Master

6 Hard Drives and two optical drives in a Mid Tower. Round cables and short single connector cables for the Raid Arrays. Good Power Supply . . . it fits and works.

[gmatov]

Was at the computer show today. Hundreds of boards on display. I doubt 10% even had SATA capability.

Don't let the marketing hype get to you. It's going to be a while before SATA catches on, if, in fact, it ever does.

Go to the comp stores, look at the same thing, you will SEE the same thing. 3 or 4 SATA drives in the whole wall full of HDDs.

We got a few people here who are insistent that we should all go that way. It ain't gonna happen that quick.. Give it a rest.

Anyhow, your storage tower sounds good. Gonna have to look into it. Don't try going extra long IDE cables. I don't even know if you COULD do that, but if you could, you'd have signal degradation. They make cables as short as they can and still reach most parts of your computer. Often,you have to move the opticals because the cables are too short. Moving is better than trying for longer wires.

The shorter the electron path, the better. They're not making boards so compact because fibreglass is so expensive. It's to shorten the distance signals have to travel..

[pijetro]

Sata, yeah right, good one. You're kidding me right??

Even if i do upgrade in the future, it'll probably be a P4, which most people have these days, and will be sufficient in the near future.

I'm not gonna throw out the hard drives yet

[bottle-necked]

Sata, yeah right, good one. You're kidding me right??

I remember when everyone said the same thing about ISA....

Good luck.

[PolarBearWY]

The way things are right now SATA is the only way to go. It's getting harder to buy a new motherboard that supports IDE.

I'd agree. Though we really can't see any "performance" benefits with SATA drives (yet!!!!!), the small (and long) cable seem the way to go. Plus, like bottle-necked is suggesting, you've gotta look toward the future any time you buy a periferal -- ANY TIME. Buying 4x 80 GB hard drives is going to max your capabilities, and you won't be able to upgrade in the future without waste. Heck, there's already waste because you will have to buy a card. But really, think about the future. And... I don't think you'd have had a problem with a 160GB HD. If you did have the problem, it should be with your BIOS, not your mobo, which should be an easy fix if you bought a decent mobo in which the company wanted to support for a few days.. hehehe.

[bottle-necked]

After getting bashed here I've spend some time researching my reply and it confirmed what I said.

I am in the process of upgrading my system. I spent several weeks researching motherboards trying to find a high quality P4 board, 875 Intel Chipset, 800Mhz FSB, 8X AGP, and onboard IDE Raid. It surprised me how limited my choices were. Getting IDE RAID just a year ago was simple on high end boards, but today it's a nother matter. Most all P4 high quality boards only offer SATA RAID. Onboard IDE Raid is almost non existant. If you don't believe me then go look for yourself.

Today, if you are in the process of buying a new system or doing a serious upgrade you're just about forced into going SATA if you're into high end home systems expecially if you want onboard RAID. Yea, IDE drives are cheaper than ever. But have you ever asked yourself Why?

Good luck.

[gmatov]

Bottle,

To reiterate, I was at CompUSA this evening. In a wall sized display of HDDs, only a couple were SATA..

One thing I did see, which I almost bought, was a Maxtor 250gig with an add on card, combination SATA and ATA 133.The drive itself was ATA133.

Another thread today had a few guys with noise from the HDD getting into their captures. Both determined it to be from their SATA drives, whether poorly made and shieldded cables or just something they haven't overcome with SATA, I don't know.

SATA's day is not here, yet, I don't care if you have jumped on the bandwagon or no. You might have a front row seat, but this concert is not ready for prime time.

Pijetro needs a solution now, Idon't think he wishes to do the debugging for a new technology.

Cheers,

George

[EwanG]

A suggestion that I got from someone on the forums here a few months ago that worked well for me:

There are Firewire Bays (some even have a USB2 port as well) that you hook to your firewire port (or buy a card). You then buy standard 3.5" HDs and purchase little trays to mount them in. The disks can then be docked in the bay. You get fast transfer, easy backup (put in another drive to backup the one in the other bay, switch again for the other), and near infinite expandability.

Personal setup is one firewire port with three of these drives hanging off it (2x250 Gigs for storage, 1x200 Gig for capture/working) and then my ADVC 100 connects to my other firewire port.

YMMV,
Ewan

[arcorob]

Bottle....Not a bash, but you did not look hard enough as they are abundant.

Example, my ASUS board P4P800 deluxe.

Has SATA raid and VIA IDE RAID in addition to the nomal raid.

Potential to have 8 hard drives in.

I use the normal IDE for 2 hard drives and to optical.

I use the IDE RAID for 4 hard drives (120 gig each) in 2 RAID ZERO arrays which give me 2 drives, 240 gig each at double speed.

ABit has the IS-7 G and AB-IC7-MAX3

there are others....Here is a good source for finding
http://www.motherboards.com/default.php?category_id=4&index_id=7&PHPSESSID=c1bc36ee3fc...2103b8dadebac9

[lordsmurf]

Ultra ATA card will do you.

[Gazorgan]

Having run 12 drives in a full tower case (it's good to be a geek!), unless you have a leaf blower for a cooling system you can have MAJOR problems. 6 hard drives and 2 optical drives can't run in a standard full tower case. You are going to have to have the auxillary cooling fans.

You need a real full size tower case ($100 minimum) that's designed for servers. 400 Watt PS minimum, and not a cheap on, one designed for 400 watts average, not peak use. Multiple cooling fans blowing in the correcct directions .

I don't mean to scare you, but you want server grade components, not a glorified desktop case. you may be better off iwth an external 200 GB dive using Firewire/USB 2.0 . I recently got a pair of USB 2.0 cards (the kind that can deal with USB 2.0 and 1.1 at teh same time with no performance hits) and an external USB enclosure that can handle up to 300 GB drives for under $55 total. I have my eye on a 160 GB Western Digital drive for $79 after rebates.

[bottle-necked]

Well Boys I'll tell ya what. Lets save this link in our Favorites and come back here next New Years Eve and talk about it some more ok.

Happy New Year everybody.

And Good luck.

[gmatov]

And a Happy New Year to you.

Next year at this time it may well be a different story.

We may have something entirely new to argue about. Jeez, I hope so, it's been boring, lately.

Cheers,

George

Off the subject, but I bought a MoBo Sunday, soldered on CPU (AMD 2000). No floppy controller or connector. No biggie, but when I set it up for my daughter, found the damn thing also doesn't have a parallel port for printer. The same board comes in an onboard RAID version, ATA.

[LisaB]

Removeable hard drive caddies are great! You can get them cheap at compgeeks.com (we're talking only about $7 per drive caddy).

I actually put the removeable drive bay in an external firewire case! (5 1/4" of course) This works great....you only have to buy a single external firewire case and then several interchangeable drive caddies. There's no need to have all those drives spinning and screaming 24-7.

[lordsmurf]

Ditto on the fans. Look for those PCI slot exhaust fans, those are nice.

[lacywest]

I'm using a normal tower with 4 bays ... but I took one of those AOL tin cases and laid my 4 60 GB Maxtors ATA 133 on their sides and cut strips out from the AOL tin case and left a 1/4 in gap between all of them. I also included "feet" for the HD on the bottom to allow air under it to flow.

I wrapped cardboard around back fan to prevent it from sucking the hot air from the power supply fan back into enclosure.

I placed this brick of harddrives on the bottom of my tower. I use 3 fans. One in the back. One located on side panel aimed at CPU and one located in front sucking air out ... next to the brick of harddrives.



MSI PC Alert CPU temperature is 105 Degrees.

5 - 60 GB
1 - 40 GB = 340 Gigs of Hard Drive Space

[Leoslocks]

4 hard drives mounted on edge at the lower right. Two intake fans blowing over them.

Floppy and Front USB/Card reader just above drives.

DVD drive above that, DVDR drive just on top of that.

2 Hard drive caddys in the upper right of the picture(not really vissable).

Exhaust fan in top of the case, two exhaust fans at the back. Antec TruPower 430 PS.

[SLICK RICK]

I have the same mother board as arcorob, (asus P4P800 deluxe). I have 3 hard drives set up on the raid controllers for a total of 520GB and 3 optical drives on my IDE controllers. I can still put another hard drive as a slave on the secondary raid controller and 2 SATA hard drives for a total of 6 hard drives.

SLICK RICK