External backup solutions

RobS

RobS

Suspended / Banned
Messages
65
Name
Robin
Edit My Images
Yes
Evening all,

I recently put together a new editing/gaming rig and as part of that bought 2 1TB drives (Samsung Spinpoint F3's). However when added to my case and all powered up, i get the most annoying 'pulsing' noise as the 2 drives shift out and into sync with each other every half a second or so.

Drove me so mad I have powered them off for now.

This got me thinking of a drobo, made more sense home network wise etc, however I don't have a spare £280 to drop on a new Drobo so i'm after some more cost effective, external backup solutions..

Over to you clever people :)
 
neil_g said:
does your case have rubber hard drive mounts?
Click to expand...

It does Neil but apparently not enough to stop the pulsing.

Cheers for the link photon, I presume i'd just need an enclosure of some kind to strap them in after that?

Any other, mid priced options?
 
It's no problem getting the enclosures etc to brew your own external drives, but the kit shown is a versatile alternative and you'd only need a single one if using one drive at a time. No worries if used with care, but you could put the drives in removable caddies for a bit of protection, with the advantage that they can be slotted into your PC if/when required.

If interested in the caddies, you'd probably want three or four to allow a variety of swapping and usage options. They have a key and, strangely, the last one I bought will only operate in the unlocked position.
 
Hello Neil: I've been using the adapter kit with IDE drives (occasionally) until now, but have just replaced an internal drive and will take two SATA slaves out to use as externals. Just now I've tried one of the drives in situ, still in the case, but using the power adapter and USB cable. No problem transferring a 350 MB file, but I'll leave it connected for a few hours and check its behaviour later.
 
Just get two external 1TB USB drives (Toshiba StorE Art 3 is about £95 on Amazon just now, main powered ones would be cheaper) and be dilgent with your backup routine. Works for me.
 
... and Robin the OP already has the drives; just wants to use them.
 
Stick them in enclosures then. Do your backups overnight if you don't want to be doing other stuff at the same time. Unless your transferring 100GB every time you sync, speed shouldn't really be an issue.
 
neil_g said:
only downside is USB vs SATA is comparible to mondeo vs evo.
Click to expand...

eSATA Add-in card (if your motherboard doens't already support it) & eSATA caddy might be a viable and cost effective alternative without the loss of performance.

However - as Lornholio has said, if you are running scheduled backups, then USB 2.0 caddies are probably the cheapest solution.
 
...but the added bonus of being able to separate the mirrored copies in case of theft/fire. Keep one in your car.
 
Is it really worth have big hard drives? More chance of losing all your pics in one go? Is it better to have several smaller ones?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top