So I have a lot of hard drives...

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Prisoner416

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I have over 10 hard drives, all various sizes.

Most are PATA, but I have a few SATA ones floating around.

Currently, when I want to switch drives beyond the ones hooked into my computer, these are the steps I have to take.

1. Shut down compie.
2. Unplug the third drive I had connected before.
3. Connect the drive I want to access.
4. Reboot and have bios detect the drive.

Repeat as needed.

Now, I know there has to be a better way. I would like to be able to just hotswap them, maybe via USB.

Question is, which method is best?

Something like this seems like my best bet... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

But then again, there are external docks and enclosures. However, I can't find a good one that supports both PATA and SATA.

Since most of my drives are PATA, I really need that support.

Also, I am on a budget.

Anyone have ideas or suggestions?
 
I would recommend just getting a few large Sata drives and put everything on those.
 
Mr.Game said:
As far as I know...

PATA does not support hot-swapping.
Click to expand...

Not exactly true. It isn't so much the drive as it is the connection. However, hot-swap IDE is possible. It does require a backplane setup (which is normal for any hot-swap device).

In all honesty though, hot-swap IDE is very rare to find these days, but is still out there in some form. Usually you can find them now in special hard drive enclosures with removable hard drive trays - similar to that of current SCSI, SATA, and SAS drives.

Be warned though - most IDE drives are not built for enterprise level usage and hot-swapping them may result in some unpleasant problems. SCSI, SATA, and SAS drives are more suited for this.
 
Ph?bus said:
I would recommend just getting a few large Sata drives and put everything on those.
Click to expand...

+1. Please let us know what your budget is on getting a rather large Sata drive & then transfer as much of your stuff from your 10+ drives onto that drive. After that, be sure to recycle the drives (unless you find someone who needs 1, which is rare now n days). I still have a 500gb pata drive that isnt being used.
 
Prisoner,

I have something similar I purchased solely to move data off 2.5 drives to regular drives.
EBay is like 33% of that cost.

+1 to what CK said.

I think what your looking for is a drive caddy, for multi drives, the problem is, the drive caddies can cost as much as the drives are your trying to save, especially one that will hold 3-4 drives. I hate to sound like a broken record, but with 1TB of storage being available at as little as $55 that would be money better spent and then take the old drives and sell via craigslist or whatever.
 
So if I converted to SATA drives only, would I be able to get a caddy or hook-up to hot-swap them almost like floppies?

I have a LOT of data I'm working with here.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182197

That is a Rosewill hot swap drive bay. I often refer to it as the toaster because you press the button and pop it out when you feel like its done! Works wit both 3.5 and 2.5 inch sata drives. It can connect to your computer VIA Esata and USB.

I have the USB only version of this device I believe, or this model, one of them and I have to say it works wonderfully. I don't know which model I have because all I use is the USB on it, I don't have a esata cord to use with it unfortunately. But I can say it does its job well. You just have to be careful when ejecting the drives because they can feel pretty hot to the touch, when in reality isn't really that hot considering the tempatures they are made to withstand and operate at but often will make you drop the drive because of the heat. Just press the button that dissconects the drive or press the power button for the device on the back of the toaster and it will let the drive spin down. Then pull out!
 
Prisoner416 said:
So if I converted to SATA drives only, would I be able to get a caddy or hook-up to hot-swap them almost like floppies?

I have a LOT of data I'm working with here.
Click to expand...

how many geebees are we talkin' here.

And yes, if you switched to Sata, you could get a hot swap caddy thing. I can't think of the technical term, but it can be done lol
 
Yeah, just get a few 1TB drives and a hot swap external enclosure, and you'll be set.
 
Ph?bus said:
Yeah, just get a few 1TB drives and a hot swap external enclosure, and you'll be set.
Click to expand...

Or IF you can spare a few CD drive slots...
(LINK HERE)

Go down to where it says HDD Kits / Cages / SATA Racks, there's a selection
of hot swappable bays that fit in your CD drive slots.


Another option would be to get a new PC case that has hot swapping
capabilities, but that's if you're looking for a new case.
 
ya, id have to agree w/ phobus on that. get id say 2x1tb hard drives. when you get the 1st drive almost filled, go ahead & install the other. its never a good idea to completely fill a drive as it slows the drive down (the more stuff you have on a drive, the longer it takes for the processor to pull up the info on it).
 
pillar said:
ya, id have to agree w/ phobus on that. get id say 2x1tb hard drives. when you get the 1st drive almost filled, go ahead & install the other. its never a good idea to completely fill a drive as it slows the drive down (the more stuff you have on a drive, the longer it takes for the processor to pull up the info on it).
Click to expand...

Almost. The read speed of the drive is not dependent on your processor. Unless you have a really bad hard drive. lol :P
The more stuff you have on a hard drive, the more crap it has to look for. Especially if you don't defrag your hard drive. Then it has to look for more crap, and it will be in multiple places collectively. That's not good on your drive.
 
pillar said:
ya, id have to agree w/ phobus on that. get id say 2x1tb hard drives. when you get the 1st drive almost filled, go ahead & install the other. its never a good idea to completely fill a drive as it slows the drive down (the more stuff you have on a drive, the longer it takes for the processor to pull up the info on it).
Click to expand...

That's not entirely accurate. If you are a hardcore enthusiast who bases all their performance and configurations based off of benchmark tools and statistics, then yes, filling up a hard drive 100% may result in a decrease in performance.

However, in real world applications of such hardware, there will not be any perceived degradation in performance because of the amount of space used on a drive. The current technology has surpassed the point where raw speed is much of a factor in how good a hard drive performs.

What you need to look at are the specifications of the hardware you are using. Hard drives with larger caches, optimised distribution of the data, changes in the "heads" that move, and other technological advances can outperform hard drives with raw speed (e.g. 7200 RPM vs. 10,000 RPM).

Some hard drives, like a lot of the newer Western Digital Caviar Blacks, and the Western Digital REx drives have dual-processors on their drives. This allows for faster performance in real world tests.

In all honesty, if you are hurting for absolute performance of storage, you will not be using standard SATA drives with onboard controllers in a gaming system. You're looking at advanced RAID solutions, 15,000 RPM SAS drives, fiber channel or similar backends for pushing data around machines, and clusters of expandable storage.

Now, there are ways to increase performance of a drive. Specifically speaking, short stroking moves data around the drive platters a specific way, but it cuts down your usable space by a significant margin. Reads/writes are only done on the fastest part of the platter, thus decreasing latency on the drive.

Ph?bus said:
Almost. The read speed of the drive is not dependent on your processor. Unless you have a really bad hard drive. lol :P
The more stuff you have on a hard drive, the more crap it has to look for. Especially if you don't defrag your hard drive. Then it has to look for more crap, and it will be in multiple places collectively. That's not good on your drive.
Click to expand...

The read speed of a hard drive is dependent on a lot of things. It very well could result in the CPU being overtaxed if you have an onboard controller of lower quality.

Just because I have more stuff on a hard drive doesn't necessarily mean that it will be worse than when I started with. The moment you put any data on the hard drive, the raw performance decreases. Not so much due to the amount of data or where it is on the platters, but moreso because of how the data can be fragmented, formation of bad sectors, etc.
 
Gah, I hate reading reviews of the docks. There's always at least one horror story of someone losing data or a drive.
 
Dude, thats always gonna happen. Just goes to show ya that its not a perfect world out there. You need to look for a hard drive that has the best & most 4-5 star/egg ratings available.

We highly suggest that you look into Newegg's hard drives. They have a great selection of TB hard drives, they show you how many people have rated a certain hard drive & will even comment on their experience with that hard drive. YOU WILL SEE NEGATIVE REVIEWS ON HARD DRIVES, thats just a given. The main thing to look for is hard drives that plenty of 4-5 egg ratings (good news w/ Newegg is that most hard drives tend that have more 5 egg ratings than 4).
 
I'm talking about dock reviews, not hard drive reviews...

I can't afford having one fry a drive.
 
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