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external firewire drive arrays

You want to run a RAID array over Firewire? Why? A single drive is able to fill the Firewire bus when bursting. I imagine you're not going to find too many like that, anybody that needs the performance of RAID and an external case is going with SCSI anyway. (Of course Firewire is just a subset of SCSI.) Pretty much every Firewire drive enclosure is going to be IDE drives.

It's certainly not worth over 2000 dollars for what amounts to a few hundred dollars worth of hard drives and a controller card (of course you aren't buying that one in particular). There aren't any specs there so I don't know whether those are SCSI hard drives, I have to assume they are to be that expensive.

Are you looking for a case for IDE RAID or SCSI?

Have you thought about doing software RAID with daisy-chained Firewire enclosures? I'm not sure it's actually possible with external drives but it's an idea.
 
Mainly I am looking for an external device that I can have say 3 200 gig drives mirrored (total of six drives). The reason I am looking for firewire rather than scsi is because the unit will be transported between several workstation all which have firewire. Getting scsi cards for each machine is not out of the question.

Also, Like you said I could daisy chain drives, but I though an enclosure that held more drives would be more cost effective.

Keeping IDE would also keep the price down since a 200 gig scsi as at least $600 versus a 200 gig ide for around $200.
 
Well, enclosures are only 60 bucks or less for quite decent ones (just make sure they use Oxford 911 or 922 chipsets), so it's really not that expensive.

Here's one dual-enclosure: http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MAP-302F-01

But of course it's not a hardware RAID solution. I seriously doubt you're going to find just an enclosure for RAID through Firewire.

You COULD maybe find a SCSI to Firewire adapter, so you could use a SCSI enclosure on the Firewire ports. They do exist.
 
Thanks, I could probably get buy with a software raid, since these are all w2k workstations. Its just a mirrored situation to make sure the data is backed up twice. Its temporary data so backup is not too important.

You would think if they made a dual drive enclosure, a 4 drive would not be too hard to find.
 
Originally posted by: rudder
Thanks, I could probably get buy with a software raid, since these are all w2k workstations. Its just a mirrored situation to make sure the data is backed up twice. Its temporary data so backup is not too important.

You would think if they made a dual drive enclosure, a 4 drive would not be too hard to find.
Click to expand...
Instead of 3x200GB why not 2x300GB

Edit:
thismight work??


Thorin
 
There are tons of them. All I've seen for sale are for professional markets with professional pricetags.

I have a seen a few empties but cannot remeber where. A google search on "firewire raid enclosure" should give you plenty to work with. Maybe search for Miglia Mediabank if you can use a two drive.

Wait! Here's one.


You want to run a RAID array over Firewire? Why? A single drive is able to fill the Firewire bus when bursting.

Some FireWire RAIDS use more than one channel. Pure speed may not be the only objective. FireWire storage can be shared among workstations. Think of it like a very cheap mini SAN.


It's certainly not worth over 2000 dollars for what amounts to a few hundred dollars worth of hard drives and a controller card (of course you aren't buying that one in particular).

A solution is much more useful and valuable than the parts it's made of.
 
It's certainly not worth over 2000 dollars for what amounts to a few hundred dollars worth of hard drives and a controller card (of course you aren't buying that one in particular).

A solution is much more useful and valuable than the parts it's made of.
Click to expand...
Yes the whole is always more then a sum of it's parts.

Thorin
 
Originally posted by: rudder
found it! Still looking for one that comes empty.
Click to expand...



Look at the order option on the page, they list the enclosures with and with out drives

1022 2 Drive RAID Sys w/ 60W PS (no drives) $399.00
1028 8 Drive RAID Sys w/ 300W PS (no drives) $1599.00
1024 4 Drive RAID Sys w/ 200W PS (no drives) $799.00
1038 8 Drive RAID Rack Sys w/PS (no drives)
w/ 300W PS $1719.00
 
I know a solution is more than the sum of the parts, but that's a LOT more cost for not really much solution.

If you're going for redundancy, maybe putting all the drives in one enclosure on one cable isn't the best thing anyway. 🙂 Use two enclosures, on different cables, connected to different ports on different controller cards. And always set one drive on the left of the desk and one on the right. 🙂

You can always duct table individual enclosures together to make them easier to carry. 🙂 Though the multiple power cords and adapters would be a pain.
 
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