External E-SATA

edgedemon

edgedemon

edgedemon

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Im going through an upgrade to my HTPC this weekend which will involve switching to microATX and only 2 HDD's in the smaller case which means I lose 3 HDD's:mad:
My new MB has an e-sata port, which led me to consider some sort of external storage box? Is there a way that I can utilise my soon to be spare 3 hard drives into some sort of external caddy and attach them to my HTPC as additional storage with the E-sata port? The drives are mixed sizes from 160Gb - 500Gb

Not sure whether this is possible, if not I might have to build a storage server and connect it in to my network :D
 
eSATA is one way to go although the fine details will depend on what you want to do. First off remember that you're going to be limited to a 2m cable from the PC so the drives are going to need to be close to the HTPC, if you need them further away then a NAS will be required.

Do you need all three disks attached at once? If not then something like an IcyDock MB559US-1S and a couple of extra spare trays will do you. There are multi disk enclosures with port multipliers in them which will let you run all three simultaneously - the Stardom ST5610-4S-SB2 for example but it might be costly.
 
I'm running a WD 1000GB Green from an external IcyBox enclosure. Performance is very good, not really any difference from my internal drives although I haven't benchmarked it.

Be careful what drive you put in it though if you buy one. I previously had a Seagate 750GB 7200.10 in the same box and it was overheating continually at 60C+ as there's no fan in the enclosure.
 
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