External Enclosures

[entropy]

Gonna finally get a big 500gb drive to back all (or, a lot of, anyways) my stuff up. However, I don't have any ports left in my computer, so I'm looking for an external (plus it's nice to have it separate if my computer goes up).

I need an enclosure that will provide good enough ventilation for a 500gb harddrive that basically won't be turned off (as I don't really see any need to). I'll probably set up some system to do weekly (at least) backups of any updates to any folders backed up. Low noise, light and heat are must-haves. Also, the drive is a SATA II drive. Technically this should work with any SATA enclosure, right?

What do you guys suggest?

Man, what a boring Saturday night. Anyway, I think I might get this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817121185).

[gibbonsl]

PATA or SATA?

[Leonardo]

Cooling capability is big factor for an enclosure if you will be handling a large volume of file transfers, backups, or defragmenting. Here's a link (http://www.techimo.com/articles/i82.html) to the enclosure I use. I'm not pointing it out, saying you should buy this exact one, but merely to point out a good unit. Each main plate is aluminum and radiates the heat away very effectively from the hard drive. If you're into eye candy, this unit also has multicolered LEDs under the mesh that light up during hard drive activity. In the upright position, this enclosure is excellent for cooling. I've seen it under probably three different brand names.

[entropy]

Alright, I ended up going with the Kingwin enclosure, and it came today. Looks pretty good so far. I thought it looked goofy from the picture, but it actually looks pretty nice. The LEDs aren't real bright so far, but I guess I'll find out later tonight.

Would it be worth it to get this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815102102) card to use with it? I mean, it'd be MUCH faster than the USB 2.0 I'm using now. I'd also have another internal SATA (in fact, I have no more ports left for harddrives on my board).

Finally, does a 3ft SATA cable lose any quality over that distance?

Also, about the actual backing up. I'm playing around with Cobian Backup (as mentioned in another thread), and it sounds great for what I need it for so far. Now, is a "Differential" backup one that ONLY backs up information that has changed? What about an "incremental" backup? Heh, also, can I get Winrar to RAR "My Documents" once a night? I can't seem to find that anywhere.

What I really want to do is this:
Set up a task in XP to have WinRAR RAR all My Documents to a file.
Cobian backs this file up to the external later on.
Cobian checks the folders I specify against the already-backed-up folders on the external - if it finds any changes, it updates the external.

...I think that's all. I'd like it to happen every night (there'd be very few changes each night, but still).

[Leonardo]

From what I've read, you won't lose much data throughput with only a three foot SATA cable. If I'm correct, the slowdown would start at around five or six feet.

The SATA card is a great idea. You'll get MUCH faster data transfers than USB 2.0.

From the picture, I can't tell what the cooling efficiency will be with that unit. If it bogs down on large transfers or defrags, you will know what's happening. Hope it works well for you.

[entropy]

Well, it's got a small, very quiet fan in it. After formatting for the last hour or so it's just warm to the touch - nothing at all to worry about so far. Thanks for the info on the card/cable - probably a smart move.

Do you know anything about the automated backups, though? What do you do for yours?

[Leonardo]

After formatting for the last hour or so it's just warm to the touchYou'll probably be in good shape.

My backup regimen is crude, but effective. I just do full system backups once every two weeks using Symantec Ghost. Eventually, I may move on to incremental backups. If I have valuable data that I don't want to risk while waiting for the next full backup, I manually copy the files/data to the backup drive.

One thing I really enjoy about an external backup is that you can easily move it from one computer to another. With a large capacity drive in the enclosure, you can back up multiple computers. If each of those computers has a large volume of data, then you can have multiple drives for the enclosure and quickly swap them out as necessary.

[entropy]

Leo, can Ghost sync things (in one direction)? Like, I want my backup to exactly reflect my original folders. With Cobian, I can have it do incremental/differential... but it won't delete any files that have been deleted in the main folder. It keeps everything as is. It'll add new files no problem, but if I delete something I do it for a reason - I don't want that file backed up anymore.

[Leonardo]

Yes, you can set Ghost to do complete disk backups, which is what I do. The destination drive or partition becomes an exact image of the source drive/partition. There may be other backup softwares out there that are better. I've been using Ghost for years and I just have no need to switch at this time.