How To Store Internal Hard Drives?

mike writes "I have been ripping all my movies and TV shows for easy viewing through a media PC. Because I would rather not rip everything again I'm looking for a simple backup solution. I'm considering a hard drive dock and several internal hard drives to use as 'disks' to back things up every once in a while but I don't know what the best way to store internal drives would be in the meantime. Could they sit together in any empty box and be OK, or would a number of externals be worth the slightly higher cost with fewer worries about storing them in the meantime?"

Comments

Re:Easy solution

[yincrash]

make sure your closet doesn't overheat.

RAID 1

[Calmiche]

I actually had the same problem. I've got my entire 1,000+ Movie DVD and 400+ Television collection ripped to hard drive for use as streaming media to a media PC. I've been working on it for about 4 years now.

I ended up buying and setting up a bare-bones computers with RAID capabilities. Get a big tower with plenty of cooling. I originally used your same method. I purchased hard drives and external hard drive enclosures. This was cheaper than building pre-made drives. I especially like Vantec enclosures. However, I had a couple of drives go bad over the years. After some experimentation, I found that underpowered drives tend to loose data.

Now, I use the aforementioned RAID 1 solution. Originally I used 400gb drives but now I'm up to purchasing 1-TB drives. I've only had 1 drive go bad in the last 3 years and it was easily replaced with no loss of data. You could probably use Raid 5 just as easily, but my first setup didn't support it so I defaulted to Raid 1. The extra controller cars also used to be cheaper for RAID 1 but the costs have since equalized.

For the moment, I would advise against the 2TB drives. Many have serious slowdown problems and the cost/storage ratio is to high. 1.5tb drives are looking better and better.

Just remember good cooling! This may be the most important factor. Hot hard drives last a MUCH shorter time. I REALLY like Thermatake icage bays. They change 3-5.25" bays into 3-3.5" hard drive bays and have a really nice 120x120 fan on them to keep the drives cool.

If you buy a hard drive a month you can get some enormous storage capacity really quickly without breaking the bank. I'm up to 8TB right now. (16TB of drives).

eSATA and 'books'

[mollog]

1Tb external 'books' are enclosed, store and look like books, can be labeled like books, and can be unplugged and plugged in like they're removable media. And they're not that expensive.

Re:Take your pick

[Aladrin]

You could attach a metal handle and call them 'wedges' a la Dollhouse.

The scene where he 'saves' the wedge from calling, they show the back of the drive and they're SATA. Hehe.

Re:Easy solution

[Sandbags]

It's actually far more important for the temperature to remain relatively constant (a 10F degree range or so) than it is to remain under a certain temp. your closet isn't going to get anywhere near 158 degrees, or more than 40 below zero... Even when spinning HDDs are acceptable up to quite uncomfortable for human temperatures! at idle the range increases quite a bit. However, a poorly insulared closet could fluctuate 30 degrees or more, and on a daily basis, that couold cause a lot of damage. Keeping your PC powered on helps maintain HDD life by keeping a slightly more contact temp (this used to be to avoid chip creap in the old days, but now it's about the PS and HDD).

Also, 300G shocks are within the "normal" range for a non-spinning disk. Shock absorption is not a requirement unless you plan to ship it. I think it was Seagate who used to have a commercial where they froze a HDD in a block of ice, played hockey with it, then thawed it out and it worked...