Re: [OT] (A little) : Firewire cables...

["noel_pilot" <HA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In amongst all this lot, can you get external enclosures like those
that I think Phil uses but that can take Sata drives? sorry if im
being blind but everything i saw on specialtech seems to say ide only.
I have a big heavy pc which isn't overly reliable but has four 300gb
sata drives in and i'd like to re use them! currently torn between a
nas or a mac mini and an enclosure, or just carryin on as i am! like
the mac mini route, i use a macbook 100% of the time and could run
everything i could aspire to and don't even yet need from the mini?!

thanks in advance

Noel

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Phil Harris" <phil@...> wrote:
>
>=20
> > er ... remind what this was all for ... ... the current system
was
> > working without any problem, at all ...
> >=20
> > withdrawal symptoms, presumably ... running a system without
problems
> > just don't seem right ?
> >=20
> > it's late ...
> >=20
> > Chris
>=20
> No - current system working brilliantly but there are three identified
> "needs"...
>=20
> 1) Short term major rebuild to get the physical size down quickly due
to
> moving house and not being able to house the server in its current big
> "multi box" form whilst I'm lodging / dossing with friends
and most
of my
> kit is in a storage container.
>=20
> 2) Medium term increase in "grunt". The current setup is
working
brilliantly
> and copes with streaming multiple audio streams, multiple video
streams and
> even multiple hi-def video streams (although multiple hi-def streams
are
> pushing it rather too hard for comfort) but when copying around large
> amounts of data then an increase in disc-to-disc transfer rates would
be
> useful, an increase in LAN access speed would be really handy too (so
> Gigabit rather than 100Mbit) and a bit more processing headroom is
always
> useful.
>=20
> 3) Long term increase in storage. Current platform is based around IDE
> drives and was put together when 160Gb IDE drives were the biggest
thing
> available and were stupidly expensive. I think I have somewhere around
> 5-5.5Tb of storage (maybe more, maybe less) made up of odds and sods
of
> drives ranging from 160Gb to 320Gb (plus a 1Tb SATA) but it's spread
across
> so many drives (26 of them) that I really don't have a clue how much
space
> there is and what data is where (physically). Trying to move all
data over
> to 1Tb drives for point "1" (above) which means migrating
all drives
over to
> SATA as the 1Tb drives aren't available as anything else.
>=20
> I had found some 2 x 6 Pin Firewire400 + 1 x USB to SATA
bridgeboards that
> were quite cheap (=A325 or so) and I could have just substituted those
(i=
n
> place of the old 2 x 6 Pin Firewire400 to IDE versions that I
currently
> have) as I went through retiring the old IDE drives so was going to
stick
> with those but they've since been discontinued.
>=20
> To use any of the alternatives will require changing all my firewire
cabling
> which is a not inconsequential cost in itself (about =A3150 just on
firewire
> cables) and when you add in a dozen bridgeboards at about =A340 a pop
plu=
s
> ideally a Firewire800 hub then it could well be cheaper to build a new
> "server" which is what I ended up exploring yesterday.
>=20
> The only thing I need to find now is a supplier for either of the
original
> style Coolermaster CM Stacker big tower cases (
http://tinyurl.com/3ydt5r or
> http://tinyurl.com/2yxncm ) so that I
can build a first iteration of the
> machine that will satisfy the short term need for a one-box solution
that
> will take all my current data plus a bit of "spare" to tide
me over
till I
> sort out my new abode.
>=20
> Phil
>