Need some suggetion for this specific storage problem.

[diomedes]

My storage approach has worked well for me until now, and i'm looking for general solutions:
Basically i have many harddrives (4 external, 2 internal & main C/) and i don't like this external situation anymore. Have ALOT of usb connections, and one of the usb hubs i bought a long time ago is starting to crap out on me. It killed one of my drives today (fortunatly, almost all of the lost content is backed up on unplugged external Drives). Right now, i'd like to add a drive, if not more, internally and move some of the ones from the external setup to the internal if possible. The internal drives i have currently is whatever combination of SATA and IDA i could manage.

My problem is i don't know if i have enough room INSIDE the pc to add more drives. There are slots, but when i added the other internal drives recently, i did not have enough places to plug in the wires coming from them. I have attached pictures about the setup. I don't know if they are useful, you'll have to tell me.

Is a 500GB the largest size available? If i could i'd get a 2 TB drive installed. So much easier than all these small partitions.

 

[lowleg26]

Sorry to hear about the drive that got killed. It always sucks when hardware craps out. Good thing it was backed up, though.

Just a couple clarifying questions

My problem is i don't know if i have enough room INSIDE the pc to add more drives. There are slots, but when i added the other internal drives recently, i did not have enough places to plug in the wires coming from them

When you say that "you don't have enough places to plug in the wires coming from them" do you mean that all your sata ports on your motherboard are filled or do you mean that the hard drives themselves seem like they're missing some plug in areas?

Is a 500GB the largest size available? If i could i'd get a 2 TB drive installed. So much easier than all these small partitions.

If you mean for IDE drives, I believe you're right. 500GB would be the biggest you could get.

Can you give any other info about your rig? Type of computer, amount of sata ports? From the pictures, I can see you have an ASRock motherboard. If you know which model it is, we may be able to look up the specs to get a better idea of what you're working with.

 

[diomedes]

Yeah, the sata and ide ports are filled in, last time i had to specifically get a sata (or was it ide?) cause that's all that was left, and only one of those remained anyway. Is there any way i can bring it in to a store and they'd add some junction of sorts?

Can you give any other info about your rig? Type of computer, amount of sata ports?

That's where my knowledge is embarrassingly weak: i haven't the faintest. If you think it's important enough, tell me where to look and i can toss it up in the thread.

 

[lowleg26]

Yeah, the sata and ide ports are filled in, last time i had to specifically get a sata (or was it ide?) cause that's all that was left, and only one of those remained anyway. Is there any way i can bring it in to a store and they'd add some junction of sorts?



That's where my knowledge is embarrassingly weak: i haven't the faintest. If you think it's important enough, tell me where to look and i can toss it up in the thread.

You should never be embarrassed about tech knowledge. There's a reason that there are support lines and computer technicians: tech issues can be really hard! :abandoned:

But, getting back to the issue, if the ide and sata ports are all full, there may not be much you can do.

They do make PCI cards with sata ports that you can use, but I wouldn't recommend getting one. I've looked into them myself and have yet to find one that was well reviewed. Also, Guy mentioned this in my "hard drive" thread when talking about external enclosures:

I don't fully trust external enclosures, because their USB-SATA controllers are usually very cheap/flaky and can cause data corruption. This is also true if you use a PCI card to add SATA ports inside the case

Its not worth the risk of data corruption. The only way to reliably get more sata ports on the motherboard is to get a different motherboard.

Believe me, I wish I knew of a good way to get more ports. I'm actually in the same situation right now. I've got no open sata ports and I'd like to add multiple new drives for storage and backups. So its either externals or a new motherboard for me.

I'm sorry I don't have more positive information. Maybe another member may have an idea on how to proceed? :virtuous:

 

[diomedes]

Shit. That's not good, man, last thing i want to do is a mass upgrade on hardware, financially not a good time for it. Thanks for the advice, though, it's very very valuable....

The problem with externals is they are more vulnerable, and after a while, when you "extend the family" it becomes so impractical, it's almost humorous to see em all lined up.

So new mother board huh?

Thanks again, maybe someone else will have some thoughts to share.

 

[scarletsnow]

Copying between several drives stacked in a case might cause heat problems. It might even cause heat problems without extensive usage.

How many drives are SATA and how many are IDE? What are their capacities? How many SATA cables do you have? What are the lengths of your SATA cables in centimeters? Do you have four SATA ports? What is the brand and type of your PSU? Do you have case fans? If so, what are the diameters of these fans? What are you willing to spend, maximum?

 

[lowleg26]

Copying between several drives stacked in a case might cause heat problems. It might even cause heat problems without extensive usage.

Its possible, but there are quite a few variables that could affect that. I've currently got a samsung drive sitting above two WD black drives. The samsung (my OS drive) sits at a surprisingly cool 25-27 C and the two WD drives below it run at a pretty consistent 33-35 C (which, from what i've been able to find, is thought of as an "ideal" HDD temp).

Despite the two drives below it running nearly 10 degrees hotter, they don't seem to affect the drive above them. I have no spaces between them, either. They're stacked right on top of each other.

From the pics, diomedes' drives have some space between them (some breathing room, so to speak). So I wouldn't be too worried about heat at the moment (provided there is at least decent ventilation).

However, if all the bays were filled and we were looking at some possible ventilation problems, then heat could become a concern.

 

[Rollyco]

Heat and high utilization are not a major factor in drive failures.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/022607-google-disk-drives.html

 

[scarletsnow]

At one time I stacked two 3,5 inch drives on top of each other and copied the contents of one drive to the other. The top drive became quite hot, but could be handled with bare hands, but the bottom one became scorching hot and too hot to handle. I quite sure this generously exceeded 45 degrees Celsius. This bottom drive still functioned afterwards, but had developed a huge amount of bad sectors. I now use portions of an aluminium shelf to sandwich between drives when stacking them and a 12 cm fan at 5 volts at some distance to maintain some airflow. They now do get warm, but not hot.