Non-RAID Multi-IDE HD Firewire Enclosures?

Chris Jones asks: "I am finding that with all the large IDE harddrives becoming so cheap lately, I now have 4-5 nice sized IDE drives lying around my home office. Does anyone know of firewire enclosures that support multiple harddrives and are NOT RAID? RAID seems to quadruple the cost of enclosures... I just want a box with a power supply that can handle 4 IDE drives as well as the 4 Oxford 911 firewire bridge boards. On a different note, does anyone know if the Oxford 911 bridge board supports master and slave drives? If it does, then I would only need two boards for my 4 IDE drives, so if someone currently makes something like this, please point me to them! I would expect to pay $35 per Oxford board, $50 for the power supply and $50 for the enclosure... $15 for a cooling fan Does this sound reasonable?"

On the cheap

[GoRK]

Maybe it's not the solution you want to hear, but you could always pick up some old AT case and power supply and use that.. Secondhand you could probably get it for about $5. Even new, it wouldn't be very expensive.

~GoRK

Oxford 911 boards

[pjl5602]

I got my FW to IDE bridgeboard here [fwdepot.com]. Not exactly the $35/board you're looking for, but it does indeed do master/slave so you'd only need two. It works great under Linux (RH8.0) and is fine under XP. The only problem that I have is that with XP, I can't unmount the devices so there is no way for me to do a hot-unplug of the device. Not a huge issue, but it's kind of annoying.

Re:Oxford 911 boards

[pjl5602]

I stand corrected. Apparently one of the XP patches/updates/service packs fixed the FW device removal problem. I hadn't tried it in months. Sorry for the bad info.

cooldrives.com

[Pauly]

These guys [cooldrives.com] are the best source for firewire enclosures [cooldrives.com] I know of. While they don't have exactly what you describe, this enclosure [cooldrives.com] is quite nice...and on sale. I would buy one, but for some reason it doesn't work with Macs.

Re:cooldrives.com

[ducman]

I bought one just like it from compgeeks. I installed 2 80 gig drives and plugged it into my Mac. Mac OS X asked me if I wanted to format the drive. I said "yes," and a 160 gig single volume showed up on my desktop. Couldn't have asked for it to work any better or simpler.

I used Apple Disk Utilities to turn off the software RAID, since I actually intended to use one of the drives for data and the second for nightly backups, so it definitely works either way.

Re:cooldrives.com

[Pauly]

I can't find a multidisk enclosure at compgeeks.com. Can you share a link to the one you know works with OSX?

Not cheaper

[mnmn]

IDE harddisks getting cheaper?? Its lowest cost is stable at about $100CDN. Its getting cheaper per megabyte, but not just cheaper.

Re:Not cheaper

[lowtekneq]

IDE harddisks getting cheaper?? Its lowest cost is stable at about $100CDN. Its getting cheaper per megabyte, but not just cheaper.

With IDE/EIDE drives about $1 per gigabyte, prices are going "down". By that I mean for their size. Price always stays in the same field when new hard drives come out (you can see this with video cards too). So no, that 120GB harddrive isn't under $50 yet, but it the model below probably is.

Not cheaper.

[twiztidlojik]

If you've got a noisy, cheap IBM drive or something. Mine goes WEEEEEEOOOOOOEEEEEWWWW ad infinitum. At least they make an app that will let you adjust the loudness.

Otherwise, for a suitable drive, I find I'm paying about $2/gigabyte. I mean, those 200 GB maxor DiamondMax Plus 9 drives are pretty expensive. =P

Speed

[GiMP]

Just so you're aware, one firewire bus can only do 400Mbps. You might want more than 100Mbps (~12MB/s) per drive. :)

Personally, I'd go with buying an empty drive chassis with 5.25" drive bays.. then create a firewire backplane and use those ide drive caddies for holding the disks.

The only question is how many firewire controllers do you wish to have ? :)

Re:Speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not likely that he's going to have more than one or two drives transferring data at a time anyway.

Initio is Oxford alternative

[jayrtfm]

see FWDepot [fwdepot.com] ok, so the above is too pricey, but it does prove that 2 drives are fine on one board.
Another vendor of bridgeboards shows [scsipro.com] a 2 drive board. The suggestion to use a computer case is a good one, or any scsi case can be used..... or Legos.

I'm wondering, just how much time did you spend with google before you asked /. ?

More IDE to 1394 adapters

[Anonymous Coward]

CalOptic makes their own IDE to 1394b adapters and enclosures using the Oxford chipset.
http://www.caloptic.com

Ask Froogle

[splattertrousers]

Does anyone know of firewire enclosures that support multiple harddrives and are NOT RAID?

Don't ask Slashdot, ask froogle.google.com [google.com]. The first item in the result set: a 4 bay FW enclosure.

WARNING! Avoid Florida Computers/CoolDrives/et al

[pagley]

OK, I know this is offtopic, and will probably be modded down as offtopic or flamebait, but it's still worth the time of putting out a word of warning (and bad reference) to those who obviously deserve it.

Normally I wouldn't even think of posting anything quite this strongly put, but if you do business with Florida Computers, or it's web portal aliases, from my (and others' experiences), you could experience some of the poorest business practices I've personally witnessed yet.

Their online portals span several domains, some of which are:

APDrives.com
QualityCables.com
USBMax.com
USB Gear.com
FloridaComputers.com
CoolDrives.com
ut wo.com
firewiremax.com ... and probably others.

First, do yourself a favor and visit the Clearwater Better Business Bureau and check their record -

http://www.clearwater.bbb.org/commonreport.html? co mpid=62002265

Florida Computers is the "parent" company of all of those web portals, with the same owners, shipped from the same place, with the same customer service and support.

Secondly, check out an extremely unprofessional rant by Rad Rozycki directed at a specific (named) customer over a service complaint at APDrives.com -

http://www.apdrives.com/apdrives/press-news.html

Makes you wonder about the overall calibre of company you're ordering from when they publically post a personal rebuttal to a specific person, with personalized information as well, onto the PRESS section of their website. Sorry, but it's wholly inappropriate in any venue or circumstance.

Lastly, check out a couple Googled references on Mr. Royzcki -

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rad+rozycki&hl =e n&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=kioskshawaii-23060103 00330001%40news-server.hawaii.rr.com&rnum=2

and

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rad+rozycki&hl =e n&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=thorax2-1007011008220 001%40news-server.hawaii.rr.com&rnum=1

Of course, all of the above information came too late for me to avoid trouble.

I personally had a run-in with them a year ago over a FireWire enclosure that was utterly DOA, zero response via email ([e-mail] actually bounced - and was eventually fixed after I pointed it out), and of course the problem was with my hardware (of which it didn't work on three different systems, three different 1394 cards, three different cables, and three different OS's), NOT with their product - which incidentally they claimed to personally on site 100% test every single product they sell before shipment. Riiiiiight, everyone pulls their product out of the shrinkwrap, plugs it in, tests it, re-shrinkwraps it, and then ships it out.

It was eventually returned for replacement and instead it was considered a "return" and was charged 15% restocking fee. On defective merchandise!!! Can you say fraud?

He has positively the WORST customer relations and communications skills I have ever experienced when doing business with someone. Downright childish and accusatory in all respects, with no help whatsoever in resolving the matter and nothing but exaggerations, lies, and innuendo in response to my communications.

Do yourself a favor and avoid them AT ALL COST. I needed an enclosure fast, and I ended up ordering a Pyro enclosure from CDW. Even though it wasn't the cheapest one I could have gotten, I know CDW would have at least stood behind the product and helped resolve any warranty issues, not try to stand ON the customer like Mr. Rozycki does. And ultimately the CDW approach would have been cheaper as it turned out.

Brad

Linux "target mode" available?

[no_such_user]

Firewire Macs have this neat feature where you can boot them into target mode [apple.com] - which essentially turns your Mac into a really expensive firewire enclosure. Is there anything like this available for Linux?

Is USB 2.0 available for this?

[Ssolstice]

Not to try to change the original poster's mind, but USB 2.0 is faster. I would love an external USB 2.0 enclosure that holds more than one drive, be it RAID or otherwise. I've done some searching along the lines recommended here, but have come up with nothing. Does anyone know of a working solution?

Re:Is USB 2.0 available for this?

[Ssolstice]

Shining Technologies [shining.com] is releasing [applelinks.com] a Firewire (400 Mbps AND 800 Mbps (IEEE 1394b)) and USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) bridgeboard. This would allow connection for a variety of host controllers, if that would interest anyone. The kit is going by the model number of FUIDE900.