[ilm1]

Atm, I have an usb hd attached to my wireless router. Which works fine but over the last year I have been pondering to get myself something better. The two most important features are energy efficiency (I have to turn on the hd manually or keep it running all day) and some backup functionality.

I have read up on the most popular NAS methods and devices (unraid, etc.). Just to come to the conclusion that, unlike most threads I read, I don't need that much and, hence, can do it much cheaper and more energy efficient. I came up with the following:

Ideally, I'm looking for an usb enclosure that has 2 bays and either hd can be powered down automatically when it is not accessed (either by the router or by the enclosure logic using some timer).

Hence, I have one hd that is for primary use, and only turned on when needed (e.g., watching a movie in the evening). The other hd is for backup purposes, I would have the router (using some scripting) turn the backup hd on once a week to sync itself with the primary hd.

What do you think ? I think the point is that I don't need a separate cpu running day and night as I already have a router that is on all the time. And for my purposes (and usage) the router's cpu is more than enough to do what I want.

I think the problem is finding such a usb enclosure, does anyone know of such a thing (one bay is fine too) ? A long time ago I already saw something like that (but only with one hd) so I know it exists. Thanks.

Edit: After some extra googling. To give you an idea of what I'm looking for:
http://www.cnet.com.au/being-suspended-i...279036.htm
Is exactly what I want (powering down is also gradual), but I need 2 bays, that are powered down 'independently' from each other

[hmsdexter]

Iomega provides an easy to use solution that might suit your needs

http://iomega.com/nas/us-nas-comp.html

[ilm1]

Iomega provides an easy to use solution that might suit your needs

http://iomega.com/nas/us-nas-comp.html

I took a quickly look, but it seems that they provide more than what I need (they include a DLNA server, ethernet port, etc. => in short, they probably are running their own linux distribution, which in turn requires a full blown processor, memory, cache, et.). I really would like to stay with simple usb enclosures.

There are basically 2 approaches to what I really want (powering down of hd):
- spin the hd down. However, this is not fully supported by all enclosures and/or the functionality may be disabled when turning the device on and off.

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FAQ/Spin...BHarddisks
has a nice overview. The 2 existing usb enclosures that I have don't support it...

- the other approach is to use enclosures that have specific circuit logic to power down the hd, which I prefer. Though, I have found only 2 such products so far:
http://www.vantecusa.com/gl/product/view_detail/292
and
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/green/740pss.html
None of them provide >=2 bays.

I'm a bit picky, I know :-) Will look further until I find it. I probably will go with the vantec enclosures, unless I find a 2 bay usb enclosure (maybe http://forcom.be/?product=306544 ? ) where I can power down the hd's for sure (lots of confusing information on that).

[blackadaberry]

google PogoPlug

[ThickHead]

It kinda depends on how deep your pockets are. In the past I used various NDAS USB/ethernet enclosures, the last one I bought was an IoCell 2 bay model that can run RAID 0 or 1, has a GbE interface, and you can specify how long before it spins the drives down to save energy. Here's their latest lineup, the current 2 bay unit is $99, and they have a top-of-the-line 4-bay NDAS/NAS box for $799...

http://www.buyalldisk.com/

About 2 yrs ago I built a 3TB Raid-5, Linux NAS from parts I had laying around, just had to buy (4) 1TB drives. I still keep the NDAS attached to my LAN for backing up files.

[ilm1]

google PogoPlug

I know about those :-) However, my (wireless) router can already take of all the extra functionality.

Apparently, many dual bay usb enclosures supports spinning down the hd's in some way it seems. So I guess I'll take that route, only need to find a good one. I've read that sometimes the fan keeps running even if the hd's are spinned down. Coolness, quietness and energy efficiency are crucial for me if you hadn't already noticed. ;-)

It kinda depends on how deep your pockets are. In the past I used various NDAS USB/ethernet enclosures, the last one I bought was an IoCell 2 bay model that can run RAID 0 or 1, has a GbE interface, and you can specify how long before it spins the drives down to save energy. Here's their latest lineup, the current 2 bay unit is $99, and they have a top-of-the-line 4-bay NDAS/NAS box for $799...

http://www.buyalldisk.com/

Thanks for that link! My budget would be around 100 euro (=130 dollar?) for the enclosure alone (and 150 euro maximum). So I'm looking at the $99 model.

Do you have any information on the quietness of the fan (and does it run cool?). Am I wrong to assume that whenever an enclosure supports an ethernet port it will run hotter as it needs a (relatively) more powerful processor ?

Does anyone know other good companies that produce such cheap dual bay enclosures ? So far I looked at the line-ups of lacie, synology and conceptronic.

[magnetik]

I've had varying degrees of success with this - cheapie USB bays with 1TB/2TB SATA disks in them on my Shuttle XS-35 setup.

Using the hdparm utility and setting the spindown time on the drive itself works a charm with my new 2TB segate drive (one of the 'green' series), but won't fire correctly with an older 1TB drive (WD from memory - it will always spin).

Once I get to the max of my 2TB drive, I'm going to swap out the 1TB drive for a new segate drive and hopefully can have two drives in two bays - each spinup/down as required. Failing that, I will just bit the bullet and get either a QNAP or Synology NAS (4-bay probably) and let that handle it all.

So it seems it's drive dependent too and it's ability to support the spindown feature. But this is probably of little use to you, since your router would need to send the same series of 'spindown' commands to the drive itself.

[ilm1]

I just found out my two usb hd's also spin down properly (in contrast to what I reported in one of my previous post) using hdparm (though sdparm, sg_start and hd-idle don't work). I have no idea why hd-idle won't work, perhaps because both hd's are old IDE ones.

In any case, it is of much use to me :-) I will be installing openwrt on my (rather powerful) router, hence, I can install any software/scripts I want. Actually, I need to call hdparm -S 241 just once (whenever an usb hd is connected), piece of cake. No daemon such as hd-idle needed :-)

For now, I will be testing this setup to see if it works okay. And later on (if it works okay, don't see why not) buy me a 2-bay enclosure that supports the spin down. If you find something good in the meantime, let me know. A full NAS (synology, QNAP, etc.) is overkill for my usage, don't need raid either. I will be installing the great rsnapshot on my router for making backups (http://www.rsnapshot.org)

ps: after some extensive googling. A buffalo diskstation duo is my current choice for & 2-bay usb enclosure