I need some input.
I want to build an external enclosure that will allow me to mount multiple hard drives.
The case will power the hard drives and will also allow me to connect to them via a USB2 or Firewire cable.
I know these are generally considered Raid arrays but I will probably not be setting the hard drives up in a Raid fashion. Therefore I am not sure if this is actually a Raid array.

I would think that this should be a fairly simple thing to build. I have an old PC case and I also have a power supply for the case.
Where I am a little stumped is in how to connect the hard drives to the Firewire or USB2 cable and how I can turn the Power supply on and off at will.
And of course this will have to be something that a PC or laptop will see.

Can somebody point me to a DIY for this?
I would really love it if this turns out to be an inexpensive project.

Thanks

1/31/2007 6:06:04 AM

The time you will spend engineering your own circuitry and writing your own driver FOR your own circuitry would be better spent working for $5/hr cleaning toilets and buying one of these for like $20.

They are simple, cheap, and I can't imagine why you would want to build one-- I don't mean to sound harsh, just... why not buy it? I would almost give you an old one I have, but I have to keep it around to (eventually) work on an ATA drive that I'm putting off saving some data from.

see:
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=92

1/31/2007 7:55:40 PM

omf! $18.99 with free shipping! I didnt even read my own link!

haha

1/31/2007 7:56:33 PM

Thanks Jn13Y...
Actually...I know about single units.

I want an enclosure capable of powering and holding multiple hard drives.
And if I can get one that will allow both PATA and SATA, that would be golden.

1/31/2007 8:19:40 PM

$40 a pop will get you 1 IDE external enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

$130.00 will get you 4 IDE drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817332008

$12.99 each will get you 1 IDE to USB cable:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812189122

I don't know how many drives you have, so this could be easy or difficult. If you have too many of them hooked up and only one cable running back to the PC, you are going to run into issues with not enough bandwidth to effectively support them all. If the data doesn't move that often, buy a powered USB hub for them.

I'd rather save the money and migrate the data to a larger HD, but thats me.

[Edited on January 31, 2007 at 8:28 PM. Reason : .]

1/31/2007 8:28:00 PM

why not use multilane SATA?

[Edited on February 1, 2007 at 8:27 AM. Reason : http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=427353]

2/1/2007 8:26:26 AM