[ale] SATA PCI card or external USB enclosures?

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Alex Carver <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:

>On 3/4/2013 12:19, Calvin Harrigan wrote:
>> On 3/4/2013 3:04 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>> I don't have any experience with PCI cards for this.  For
>enclosures, I
>>> like the Vantec brand.  Quality seems to be good.  Some of them have
>>> fans for cooling.
>>>
>>> Ron
>>>
>>> On 3/3/2013 2:47 PM, Alex Carver wrote:
>>>> Anyone have a suggestion for a good but not too expensive SATA PCI
>>>> (not express) card and/or external USB-SATA enclosure?  The
>enclosure
>>>> for my backup drive just died (the drive seems fine...I hope).  I
>just
>>>> need to pop it into a new box or just slip another card into the
>case
>>>> (mobo has only IDE, no SATA).
>> +1 for Vantec
>> I have several, all several years old, none have failed to date.
>>
>
>Do you have any issues with the drives spinning down?  It seems that's
>a 
>frequent event for some of these enclosures.  I just want to leave the 
>drive spinning at all times.
>

I know this was a reply to Calvin, but I'll throw in my $ .02 as well.

If I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (with Gnome) or Mint 13 (with Mate - fork of Gnome), I go into the power configuration settings and find all references to "spin drives down" and uncheck  those.  I haven't noticed any problems.  "Green" drives may decide to shut down on their own anyway.  When I'm backing up, I'm usually booted from a CD like Acronis and I'm beating the drive to death for 5 hours, so it doesn't shut down.  I detach the backup drive when not in use in case malware or an electrical problem happens, it doesn't affect the backup.  Flood, fire, or theft could affect it.

For many years, I've thought the best thing to do was to leave the drives on all the time.  However, I just replaced 3 HDD's less than 3 years old.  It's possible that bearing failure or some other mechanical thing is making them wear out too soon.  I recently did a maintenance check on my Dad's machine.  He turns it on once or twice per month.  His drives are fine although they are of similar age.  I still think cycling power all the time is a problem, but it's hard to know where the balance point is.  For now, I'm still running most of my machines, and drives, all the time.  If does slow down access time, a bit, if the computer has to restart the drive.

Sincerely,

Ron



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Ron Frazier
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