Okay, so I'm thinking of finally moving off DVD-R for (most) of my backup needs. As mentioned previously, there's no way in hell I'm trusting 2TB of data to a single drive, so here's what I'm thinking of getting:
1 Syba dual port eSATA card (Sil 3132 controller)
1 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green (EARS variant)
1 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP (I figure that buying from two different manufacturers reduces the chance of a simultaneous failure.
4 Rosewill RX35-AT-SC eSATA/USB 2.0 enclosures (two for now, two for adding two more 2TB drives in the future)
Total cost: about $360 Canadian including taxes and shipping.
Now, I figure by buying four identical enclosures, I should be able to swap AC adaptors between them, right? So tape two AC and two eSATA cables to my desk as a kind of poor man's docking station that allows me to have two drives hooked to my desktop. I'll also give my brother (who sometimes needs to access my collection) one AC adaptor and cable set to allow him to set up something similar on his desk, and I'll have one "portable" set.
Once I've filled up 2TB worth of data (remember, I'll be copying the same data to both drives because I'm not going to trust 2TB to just one), I'll buy another two 2TB drives and add them to the remaining enclosures. And since the enclosures are identical, I still don't have to worry about which adaptor goes with which. Furthermore, the Syba eSATA controller will allow me to take the two eSATA ports with me to my next computer.
Things I'm concerned about... my main concern is simply making sure that each drive works. I'm probably going to transfer well over 1TB to each drive right off the bat, but I'm not sure that really counts as a "burn in" period. And while I suspect I can read the S.M.A.R.T. data off the two drives using eSATA, I'm not completely sure of that.
Any feedback on this would be great!
1 Syba dual port eSATA card (Sil 3132 controller)
1 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green (EARS variant)
1 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP (I figure that buying from two different manufacturers reduces the chance of a simultaneous failure.
4 Rosewill RX35-AT-SC eSATA/USB 2.0 enclosures (two for now, two for adding two more 2TB drives in the future)
Total cost: about $360 Canadian including taxes and shipping.
Now, I figure by buying four identical enclosures, I should be able to swap AC adaptors between them, right? So tape two AC and two eSATA cables to my desk as a kind of poor man's docking station that allows me to have two drives hooked to my desktop. I'll also give my brother (who sometimes needs to access my collection) one AC adaptor and cable set to allow him to set up something similar on his desk, and I'll have one "portable" set.
Once I've filled up 2TB worth of data (remember, I'll be copying the same data to both drives because I'm not going to trust 2TB to just one), I'll buy another two 2TB drives and add them to the remaining enclosures. And since the enclosures are identical, I still don't have to worry about which adaptor goes with which. Furthermore, the Syba eSATA controller will allow me to take the two eSATA ports with me to my next computer.
Things I'm concerned about... my main concern is simply making sure that each drive works. I'm probably going to transfer well over 1TB to each drive right off the bat, but I'm not sure that really counts as a "burn in" period. And while I suspect I can read the S.M.A.R.T. data off the two drives using eSATA, I'm not completely sure of that.
Any feedback on this would be great!