2-Sata Raid 1 USB External enclosure.

[Folkboat]

Just had my backup USB drive die from heat. Gets kinda warm here in Arizona.

Anyway I sent back the 500gig drive to Western Digital under warranty!! Waiting for replacement!!

Soo here is the current thinking - buy a dual bay USB Raid 1 enclosure to replace my current single bay. Raid 1 would cool, but frankly not a critical requirement.

The real need is for dual bay USB enclosure with a BIG FAN. My current enclosure does not have a fan, nor does it power down the drive when not in use!! The backup occurs nightly at 4:00am.

I've looked at Sans Digital, Galaxy, Rosewell, AMS, Istar, Vantec and a few others.

Any recommendations???

[Folkboat]

Hmmmmm

Anyone using a USB External disk enclosure that goes into sleep mode when idle??

thanks

[jerryt]

The spin down (idle) is either controller by the motherboard when a drive is connected directly to the MB or by way of the raids controller. Areca raid controllers ARC-12XX have spin down.

Each small exclosure that I tried alway kept the drives running. There are a couple of 4 bay enclosures which have fans.

[Folkboat]

Just wanted to follow up!!

I found a USB/SATA External enclosure that will power down (sleep mode) its internal drive after 5 minutes:

"Macally G-S350SU 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure"

Newegg has it as well as buy.com - around $35.00.

Finally, I sent an email to Macally requesting additional information about the
G-S350SU they responded via email within 12hrs. Asked for additional information via telephone - had an email with manuals within 10 minutes.

..............Outstanding

Regards

[Taddeusz]

Spin down on external enclosures is hit or miss. That function is controlled by the enclosure and unfortunately not by the computer. I wish there were some sort of standard for this but apparently there isn't. Or if there is it's not uniformly used.

The three FW/USB enclosures I have at home are all the same brand/model and will spin the drive down with inactivity. I keep them powered down most of the time to save wear and tear on the drives.

[stevech]

My NAS box does spin down. I cannot adjust the timeout. It's too short. And it takes almost 30 seconds to spin up and accessible to MyComputer and the like. Maybe not as bad if it were eSata instead of ethernet.

[Folkboat]

OK...........................final post on this topic!!

The Macally G-S350SU does power down its internal drive (when idle for 5-10mins). Playback of DVD's from the enclosures HD works well thru SageTV.

Regards