Hard drive shopping

[Nigel123]

hello,

I'm in the market for hard drives. I usually just go for the cheapest 7200 portable drive but now I'm at the point where I think I want to start using my hardware more efficiently.

I was looking into daisy chaining. found out you can do up to 36 chains! wow! but then I discovered FireWire hubs. and got me thinking.

if I chain with a hub I need an ac adaptor. if I don't use the adaptor, then there is no ac. will the electricity draw be the same? is my Mac going to start feeling it if I don't use a hub?

additionally, if anyone knows of cheap 1 or 2tb thunderbolt 2.5" hard drives I'd probably daisy chain those..

so yeah, you guys and gals have been the best community so far, got any advice?

 

[velocityg4]

If you don't use an AC adapter your computer simply will not provide enough power for devices that depend on it for power. In the case of FireWire that would be mainly portable hard drives. This assumes the hub can function without the AC adapter.

Unless you are using SSDs or RAID 0/5/10/&c I doubt you'd see much improvement over FireWire.

 

[Nigel123]

sorry I forgot to mention that I'm purely looking at portable hardrives. so ac power for those wouldn't be an issue.

what I meant was would the Mac be able to power 36 daisy chained bus powered devices normally or would it lag?

 

[AcesHigh87]

sorry I forgot to mention that I'm purely looking at portable hardrives. so ac power for those wouldn't be an issue.

what I meant was would the Mac be able to power 36 daisy chained bus powered devices normally or would it lag?

It certainly wouldn't run at optimum level, that's for sure. I don't know the exact numbers but even a bus as strong as thunderbolt would suffer if it has to power 36 separate hard drives.

If you're looking into daisy chaining that many drives why not just get a larger RAID system hooked up through thunderbolt? Have it AC powered instead of bus powered and get all the storage you need.

 

[velocityg4]

sorry I forgot to mention that I'm purely looking at portable hardrives. so ac power for those wouldn't be an issue.

what I meant was would the Mac be able to power 36 daisy chained bus powered devices normally or would it lag?

No there would be no lag there would be no response at all. You'd be lucky to operate two BUS powered portable hard drives. Neither Thunderbolt or FireWire provides much current. From what I can find Apple lists FireWire at 7w and Thunderbolt at 10w. So depending on the drive you might be able to squeeze out three on Thunderbolt.

You would have to use an AC adapter to provide the hubs with enough Amperage. You would also need to be sure the hub and AC adapter are of sufficient quality to handle the draw.

With 36 portable hard drives you'd be looking at over 100w.

 

[Giuly]

This might be a little bit off topic, but the most efficient, fully portable storage device are the Pegasus J2 and the Zotac RaidBox, both of which contain two mSATA SSDs in an enclosure the size of a Magic Mouse.

 

[Nigel123]

Well I guess you have all answered my questions and pointed me to other options. I didnt really want to NAS it up, but after this thread and speaking with people who have been in my position, in the long run i'd be wasting money if I go down HDD-HDD-HDD-NAS rather than NAS from the beginning.

So thanks