Good hard drive network enclosure....cheap!!

[dave_s13]

Now then, I relaise Good + Cheap often = No but it's worth asking.

I have 2 hard disk drives 1x 500GB SATA job and 1x 350GB IDE jobby, they both contain lots of my music and also blu-ray rips as MKV files. I see you can buy IDE/SATA connectors which should render the older drive still useful.

I want to remove them from my HTPC in the name of silence and mount them in an external network enclosure that will live in another room and connect via the network. I also want to able to chuck NZB files at the server for it to magically connect to my newsgroup service.

It there a cheap/easy way of doing this please chaps?

[Nimbus]

dave_s13 said:

It there a cheap/easy way of doing this please chaps?

I dont think so... cheap NAS enclosures normally only give you access to the disk, and thats it..

you're going to need a proper NAS... depending on how much configuring you want/can do, this will mean a qnap/synology pre built unit, or a hp proliant microserver and some variantion on freenas..

you can then install sabnzbd or similiar on it..

To be honest, for the size of disks you are talking about, I'd just buy a new 2 or 3 Tb disk, and stick it in your htpc, then chuck the old ones.. much simpler...

Edited by Nimbus on Friday 12th October 14:11

[annodomini2]

You typically get what you pay for, cheap NAS boxes are usually slow and lacking in features.

Also you won't get a NAS box with IDE support.

[va1o]

I think you'd struggle to find a NAS with both SATA and IDE support, so you wouldn't be able to use those hard drives together

I'm currently using a D-Link ShareCenter with a pair of 1.5 TB drives in RAID 1, works very well. Can access all the files via my PC, HTPC, MacBook and Apple TV. Has a built in downloader. Performance is fast over Gigabit Ethernet. Costs about £50 from most places http://www.amazon.co.uk/D-Link-ShareCenter-Network...

[mikef]

Nimbus said:

To be honest, for the size of disks you are talking about, I'd just buy a new 2 or 3 Tb disk, and stick it in your htpc, then chuck the old ones.. much simpler...

If noise is an issue, how about a 60GB SSD as the main drive for system and music and a 2TB "green" HD for video that only spins up when it's accessed? And take a hammer to the old disks. You should be able to do that for £120.

[dave_s13]

Thanks for the info chaps.

I already have the htpc set up with a 120gb ssd, 1st time I've used one and they are fecking awesome.

The easiest way is probably to get a large capacity drive as mentioned. Any advice on links to one that is super quiet?

[mikef]

Some recommended drives at http://www.silentpcreview.com/article29-page2.html


I use WD Green drives: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-wd-wd20earx-cav...

Edited by mikef on Saturday 13th October 14:05