Best mass storage method?

[ryangarfield]

Anyone know of some relatively priced mass storage methods? I like the Drobo, but was wondering if there were similar products out there that were maybe a better deal for the same thing? Any help or info for someone who is relatively new with this is greatly appreciated.

[Krispy Kritter]

A 2nd PC would work just as well, and depending on the case size, would have expansion room as needed. Otherwise, you could look into an external HDD case. IcyDock has a few that hold several drives and utilize eSATA for fast access. I'm sure other makers have similar solutions.

[poisondeathray]

Some things to consider:

1) What order of magnitude? "Mass Storage" might mean 1TB to some people, it might be 100's of PB to others

2) Is this something to be used for continous or frequent backups, or stored away, infrequently accessed

3) Are transfer rates or avaliable interfaces on your system an issue? firewire? SATA? eSATA? USB

4) Is interoperability or accessibility an issue? Do you want this storage to be accessible elsewhere by you and/or others? For example you can get online storage services. Special equipment might be needed for other options

5) Price range

It might help to give more specific information on what you intend to use it for

[DereX888]

Best mass storage method?

HARD DRIVE, what else!

and
hdd + hdd (RAID)
for those who want protection

[ryangarfield]

i'm really just looking to store all my crap in one place. Definitely would be used frequently, from windows based pc's. Probably at least 2TB in size, that can hold at least 4 drives. I have 3 independent external hard drives that are just getting kinda messy, and was hoping to consolidate them into one thing, with room for upgrading. Price range is where im stuck, obviously the cheaper the better, but with quality still respectable. I've had external hard drives that have failed on me, and would not like that to happen again.

[redwudz]

What I did is to get a couple of full tower PC cases, put it a motherboard, about nine 320GB hard drives and a OS. You can use Linux to cut down costs. And it can be any motherboard you have around. I keep the PC in a back room and access the drives over a gigabit LAN from my HTPC in the front room. This photo was before I added the other three drives and cleaned up the wiring. SATA drives will reduce the wiring mess also. It's presently about 2.5TB.

[Jim44]

I like redwudz' solution

I went a little simpler, and picked up a 4-bay eSATA enclosure and an eSATA PCI card (sorry, don't recall the exact brands, but can look when I get home). I already had a couple of bare drives, so just wanted a single enclosure. Used mainly for backup/archives, so only gets turned on when needed. Sits right next to the main PC. And still have 2 bays open, for future expansion, and have no current need for networking capability for these drives.

[ryangarfield]

what would you say the average cost was for either of the last two suggestions? excluding the hard drives

[jagabo]

I like these for offline storage:

http://www.kingwin.com/product_pages/kf1000-bk.asp

[Soopafresh]

Where's that trademark redwudz cable organization in that pic ? :P

[redwudz]

Where's that trademark redwudz cable organization in that pic ? :P

I was out of cable ties?
Actually that photo was taken during assembly. After I added the other three drives, I redid all the cabling.

Costs: About $40 for the Uneec steel full tower case. The 500W power supply was about $50. Motherboard was a used AMD 754 about $60 new, CPU and RAM added about $120. You can use about any motherboard. A Micro-ATX is the easiest. You need some PCI controllers, so you need enough PCI slots. I used two Promise TX2 PATA controllers.

On my second server, I used all SATA drives and one add-on PCI SATA controller.

The drives were the biggest cost, about $80 each X 8 or about $650. I needed to use 3.5 to 5.25 adapters to put the extra drives in the optical bays. There's a 80mm fan in front of each three drives and two exhaust fans in the rear of the case. The whole thing weighs about 60 pounds, so it sits on the floor on casters. It's fairly noisy with all the fans, so that's why it's in a back room. I can switch it off and on over the gigabit LAN.

Here's a photo of the SATA version, without the cables being cleaned up.



I had a AM2 motherboard with 4 onboard SATA connectors, so I just needed one TX4 PCI card. The boot drive and the burner is PATA. It has 7 fans.

Surprisingly, it only uses about 150W of power when running. About 350W when it starts and the drives spin up. My other computers draw about 130W during normal operation, so the power requirements aren't really that high. A 500W PS is more than enough.

[DarrellS]

This Thermaltake case is $160 ($125 after rebate) but it has 18 drive bays and 7 expansion slots.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133021

You'll need to buy a power supply but it has...

1 - 90mm rear fan
1 - 90mm top fan
1 - 120mm front blue fan
1 - 120mm rear blue fan
1 - 250mm side panel fan

[Krispy Kritter]

Just an FYI (redwudz included), if you intend on using HDD's in 5 1/4" slots, there are racks available to mount 4 or 5 HDD's using 3 bays (assuming you have full tower cases with plenty of unused 5 1/4 bays). There are parts from Cooler Master (4n3 bays) and IcyDock (4n3 or 5n3 bays).

I was looking at the IcyDock 5n3 trays for my new server, they only use a single SATA cable and run in a RAID configuration (RAID 5).

There are several makers of roomy tower cases, Cooler Master has the Stacker line (or even the Cosmos) and ThermalTake has the Armour & Armour+ line. Not to mention the numerous generic brands.

[redwudz]

I try to keep about a 1/4 inch minimum of spacing between the drives for airflow. All the drives have fans in front of them. The server I showed with the SATA drives has 5.25 adapters in the optical bays that include a fan and fan failure warning system. The SATA drives seem to run cooler than the equivalent PATA drives anyway. The only reason I used PATA drives in the first computer is because I already had five of them. I used 320GB drives as those were the best value per GB at the time.

As mentioned, the servers weigh about 60 pounds as is. Any more drives in there and I wouldn't be able to get them up on the workbench for servicing.

BTW, no HDD failures or data loss after two years of use. They are blocked from internet access, so no antivirus or other programs running except the OS.

I don't know that this is the best method for mass storage, but it works for me. The gigabit LAN is just to transfer data to the drives quicker. Even 100MB/s LANs are fast enough to play video from the drives. All drives are mapped to my HTPC and other computers, so they behave just the same as a local drive. I use Extreme Movie Manager to catalog and index the video files. I access the servers for maintenance with Radmin 3.0, so I can work on the files from my laptop or HTPC.

[DereX888]

lovely cabling, redwudz

yes - again - HDDs *is* the only (most)reliable and (most)affordable storage solution tp basically anyone.
In a proper govt.-grade special alloys casing (lead+copper and something else) it'll even survive nuclear blast providing the explosion didn't occur right on top of it...

[ahhaa]

Nice work, Red!:]

There's a rarely mentioned but kinda incredible 'prophecy' in that 'Stone Age' flick, H.G. Wells/George Pal's The Time Machine.
Rod Taylor journeys far into the future, only to hear the downfall of humanity told by backlit talking translucent rings... not only was this long before CDs & DVDs, it was long before digital computers!

Reminds me, there's another, its in a short story reprinted in either Omnibus or Treasury of Science Fiction ; themselves 60s reprints of Golden Age SciFi.
There's this talking bear; he's a genius when drunk, in passing he invents a raygun from one of those glass towel rods. Often wondered if he didn't give Gordon Gould, Theodore Maiman, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow an idea in the back of their minds?

For my money, the CD will give usable playback long after other computer media have failed, assuming a working device to read them. They are still cost effective too.

I'm waiting for a flash drive the size of a pickle that will hold everything!

[redwudz]

It's surprising how much physical space it takes to store a few terabytes of data using hard drives. I have my 5TB about 2/3 full at present and may have to go for another 2 or 3 TB in the future. Considering the human brain can hold an estimated 1,000 TB of data, we still have a long ways to go with mass storage.

The nanotube technology is still developing and that might increase the memory density of sold state devices considerably. It would be nice to eliminate the hard drive completely.

There has also been some research work done with three demension data storage, such as a cube that can be read by multiple laser beams. That's been a common theme in science fiction movies.

One of the current problems with CD and most similar media drives is that they depend on mechanical systems to operate. A drive motor to spin the discs and a linear or other mechanical system to move the read/write laser across the surface and to focus the laser beam. It's not hard to envision a system that reads a stationary disc with a moving laser beam. The 'discs' could be square and be read from top to bottom like a TV scan.