Old PC as eSATA storage tower

[treppenwitz]

I'm upgrading and configuring an audio workstation which is optimized when it has a non-RAID array of read-only disks to store and stream orchestral sample libraries from (EWQL Symphonic Orchestra, for anyone interested).

I had a brainstorm. If I understand correctly, eSATA is simply a way of giving you additional external SATA drives. If I put a PCIe eSATA host adapter card in my host machine, could I then route the eSATA cable to an old PC tower case filled with HDD's, containing nothing else but ATX Power Supply and fan?

In other words, I'm considering four SATA2 drives used externally, connecting to a PCIe eSATA host adapter in my audio workstation.

Would this work? I think it would, but I'm mainly concerned about the bare-bones tower case + PSU.

Thanks!

 

[chookman]

Yes you could but why wouldnt you just get a cheap internal SATA card (or use onboard SATA if any free) and add extra drives internally?

First you would need to rig up the PSU in the other case to a "switch" that would short the power on (not to difficult if you know a little about electronics and do some reading on PSU pinouts)

Second you would need to grab some eSATA to SATA cables. I havent seen any cheap controller cards with more than 2 external ports. Your other option would be to get a RAID controller card with external SAS port (should support 4 drives usually and get a fanout cable) although these are fairly expensive and would be more costly than 2 eSATA cards.

 

[treppenwitz]

Thanks chookman. I've used up my internal drive bays, so I need to go external. I do have some unused internal SATA/150 ports, and it may be that those will work. Reading a bit more about the transfer rates, it seem that the average transfer rate is not much better on SATA/300, unless you use a RAID array. I won't be RAID striping these, since it won't be useful for my purposes (audio workstation like this).

Couple more questions:
Can I route those interal 150 ports externally with eSATA brackets?

Is there any danger of damaging the HDD when the power is cycled independently of the MoBo control, i.e. if they are housed in an external PC tower? I know about the paperclip mod to enable the PSU, and it sounds harmless. But I do worry about turning on/off the power in the right sequence for external drives like this.

 

[chookman]

Something like this might be useful if you have some 5.25's free...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999141

One or 2 of these would get your internals as externals fairly neatly... Keep in mind SATA has like a 1m limit on length.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812191091

If you setup your eSATA cards correctly the drives should show as being "removable" as with USB flash drives you will get a safely remove hardware option in windows. This will help if the PSU on the external casing dies or is turned off it wont cause your main system to lockup or freese because the drives are no longer there. However if this does happen you do run the risk of data corruption on the external drives as windows maybe writing to them. In the same instance if they are setup as removable then turning them on after the system is online is a non-issue. This removable option will depend on the controller (onboard or not) and on the drivers installed for the controller in windows (eg. onboard AHCI will need to be enabled in the BIOS and correct drivers.)

 

[treppenwitz]

To close the loop--I put this together today much as I originally planned. Thanks for your help, chookman. I also consulted a friend who used to engineer HDDs at HP and he told me this would work. I picked up a 10 year old tower PC from someone on freecycle.org. I will get a SATA bracket though, since I'm just running it out the case at the moment.