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Multiple External Hard Drives

post #1 of 17
12/11/12 at 6:19am
Thread Starter 
Im sure there is a thread out there on this but I been searching for it for hours and had no luck for this I am sorry! However the question I have is about combining all my external hard drives I dont care if my PC reads it as one or multiple I just want to clean up the wire mess from all the power cords and USB cords. Right now I have 3 eternals a 1TB, 2TB, and a 3TB might buy a 4TB sometime down the road anyway they are connected to a powered USB hub so again more wires lol.

I thought a RAID would work but I saw that all the drives had to be the same and that they need to be formatted. well thats not an option cause I have a lot of stuff stored on the drives.

What are my options?
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post #2 of 17
12/11/12 at 7:08am
Drive pooling or Flexraid is good option. Flexraid can allow you parity back up and drive pooling
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post #3 of 17
12/11/12 at 7:14am
I'm not sure how a raid by itself is going to solve your wire problem. It you really want to get rid of the wires, you can take the hard drives out of their casing and put them all in something like this. Does your PC have an eSATA port? Keep in mind removing the hard drives from their cases will probably void their warranty.

Also, in the off chance that all of your external hard drives have dual firewire ports, you can daisy change them together which is much cleaner.
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post #4 of 17
12/11/12 at 7:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

I'm not sure how a raid by itself is going to solve your wire problem. It you really want to get rid of the wires, you can take the hard drives out of their casing and put them all in something like this. Does your PC have an eSATA port? Keep in mind removing the hard drives from their cases will probably void their warranty.
Also, in the off chance that all of your external hard drives have dual firewire ports, you can daisy change them together which is much cleaner.

I have USB 3.0 version of the Sans Digital enclosure and it seems to work well.

If OP really wanted to clean up the look, and did not want anything near the HTPC, then he/she should have to build a server and keep it somewhere on the network, perhaps in the basement. Or get a bigger case that can accomodate multiple drives.
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post #5 of 17
12/11/12 at 7:29am
Thread Starter 
I clicked your link and it showed me a raid tower. No it doesnt have an eSATA port. Im not worried about the warranty. No they dont have the firewire ports either. looks like i might be up a creek lol. Im not the best with this kind of technology so I goin by what I read and find. I thought bout taking them out of the cases and and seein if there a way to splice them but then again I thought I would ask. To be honest I have no clue.
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post #6 of 17
12/11/12 at 7:48am
What PC case are you using? Is there room to just put the hard drives in your PC?
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post #7 of 17
12/11/12 at 7:56am
Thread Starter 
oh im sorry i am using a toshiba notebook.
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post #8 of 17
12/11/12 at 8:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by monti83 View Post

oh im sorry i am using a toshiba notebook.

Can you get the specific model? What ports does it have? Does it have an express card bay?
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post #9 of 17
12/11/12 at 8:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by monti83 View Post

oh im sorry i am using a toshiba notebook.

Build an HTPC, laptop is not going to look good.

Get an HTPC case, like nMedia or Silverstone, and it will blend in with the rest of your AV gear....
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post #10 of 17
12/11/12 at 8:57am
Thread Starter 
yeah it a Satellite X205-Sli1. It has SD Slot, 6 usb ports, Svid, HDMI, VGA, EX card port, and a small port that says Is (i cant make out the rest of the letters) Im running Windows 7. I bought it back in 2008 so she seen better days but still runs pretty good I lost a couple features with it the last time i loaded windows like bein able to run dual display, mic doesnt work, and the finger swipe but other than that it does a pretty good job.
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post #11 of 17
12/13/12 at 9:03am
Thread Starter 
well this didnt solve much but thanks for the the info
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post #12 of 17
12/13/12 at 9:23am
You could put an eSATA card in the expansion slot and use one of the external hard drive bays I linked before.
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post #13 of 17
12/13/12 at 9:29am
Thread Starter 
right now i using a USB hub that they all plugged into so being able to hook them all up isnt an issue. I was lookin to neatin things up by figuring a way to put them all in one case. you know one powercord and one USB cord.
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post #14 of 17
12/13/12 at 9:36am
Storage tower with eSATA or USB 3.0 is as good as it gets.
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post #15 of 17
12/13/12 at 2:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by monti83 View Post

right now i using a USB hub that they all plugged into so being able to hook them all up isnt an issue. I was lookin to neatin things up by figuring a way to put them all in one case. you know one powercord and one USB cord.

Maybe I'm confused about what you want. You're okay with using a USB hub with bunches of USB cords sticking out of it, but you only want one USB cord? Using an eSATA expansion card like I described would let you use a single eSATA cable going to the hard drive bay, which could store 4-5 hard drives.
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post #16 of 17
12/25/12 at 4:02am
Thread Starter 
ok i trackin what you sayin so now i have a direction i just have to find the hard drive bay, eSATA expansion for my puter.
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post #17 of 17
12/25/12 at 7:44am
Crack open external cases and install internal. Add Flexraid and drive pooling. Last step: profit
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