HDD Docking station for photo storage.

[Cliff Roamer]

Anyone use one of these?



I've just bought an Icy Box Twin SATA HDD docking bay (also supports SSD's) to use mainly for photo storage, I don't use a home network or wi-fi so don't need a more elaberate NAS set up, I considered an external USB HDD but the advantage of the docking station is that drives can be quickly changed without turning the PC off, the model I bought supports 2x 2.5" and 3.5" drives and drive cloning, I have a few spare HDD's lying around so might as well use them.

The docking station has it's own separate power supply and connects to the PC with a USB lead and supports USB 3 if your PC has it, just plug in a drive, turn it on and windows finds it and installs the driver, the drives are detected and listed by windows as independent drives and files can be copied to them like any other drive, think of them as USB memory sticks.

With two drives in the station you can drag and drop files from one drive to the other and clone one drive to the other, as long as the target drive is the same size or bigger than the source drive, cloning is done independently in the station and does not need to be connected to the PC, bootable drives can also be cloned.

It's a simple, easy to use solution for photo storage and also for backing up the Acronis disc image files I make, and you can never have enough backups!
The only issue with this station is like so many products today the USB lead that's supplied is so short it next to useless, but the lead is not wired into the station so just get a decent length lead and problem solved.
The station seems quite well made with an aluminium case and fairly price at £36, I'm beginning to wonder how I got along without one

[Manfred M]

I don't use these devices and would not consider doing so. Static electricity is a major concern where I live, especially during the winter months. These devices do not offer any real protection from the risk of static damage, so in my view, not a device I would want to use. Having a "fried" controller is not something I would want.

My second issue with this device (as well as any other single disk drive storage solution) is that there is no redundancy; so unless you do a double backup, you will lose your data if you have a drive failure (I'll give you one guess as to how I know that). RAID or raid-like multi-disk mirroring is the only way to go, in my experience.

[Kodiak]

RAID or raid-like multi-disk mirroring is the only way to go, in my experience.

+ zillions!

I Have two RAID 8 TB units to contain and backup my archive:

SmartStor DAS

[JR1]

Yep been using them for years 15

Also has built in card readers

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/All-in-1-U...item43cada18e0

[JR1]

I don't use these devices and would not consider doing so. Static electricity is a major concern where I live, especially during the winter months. These devices do not offer any real protection from the risk of static damage, so in my view, not a device I would want to use. Having a "fried" controller is not something I would want.

My second issue with this device (as well as any other single disk drive storage solution) is that there is no redundancy; so unless you do a double backup, you will lose your data if you have a drive failure (I'll give you one guess as to how I know that). RAID or raid-like multi-disk mirroring is the only way to go, in my experience.

I have been building computers since CP/M, 8088s and 286s, I have never lost anything to static, simply spray the carpets in the house with anti static spray.

As for backups I have 2x 8Tb RAID setups, and they are perfect, but for the average person who can not afford this the £18 solutions of backing up your data to one of the above is 100% better than doing nothing.

They also make great use of old smaller hard drives that you replace with newer ones.

[Manfred M]

I have been building computers since CP/M, 8088s and 286s, I have never lost anything to static, simply spray the carpets in the house with anti static spray.

As for backups I have 2x 8Tb RAID setups, and they are perfect, but for the average person who can not afford this the £18 solutions of backing up your data to one of the above is 100% better than doing nothing.

They also make great use of old smaller hard drives that you replace with newer ones.

Jeremy - your computer building experience is about as long and as old as mine; my first computer was somthing I put together in the mid-1970's; remember the Motorola 6800 CPU?

Please note; I qualified my post about this definitely being a problem where I live. I have definitely lost components to static and do have to work with a grounded wrist strap during the dry winter months (especially the cold, dry months of January and February, where touching any metal surface after walking on a carpet will give you a shock). Humdifying the house is a partial solution; but one has to balance that off with condensation issues on windows (the lower the temperature, the lower the humidity has to be set); low emissivity coated, argon filled double and triple glazed windows are only a partial solution.

[JR1]

Jeremy - your computer building experience is about as long and as old as mine; my first computer was somthing I put together in the mid-1970's; remember the Motorola 6800 CPU?

Please note; I qualified my post about this definitely being a problem where I live. I have definitely lost components to static and do have to work with a grounded wrist strap during the dry winter months (especially the cold, dry months of January and February, where touching any metal surface after walking on a carpet will give you a shock). Humdifying the house is a partial solution; but one has to balance that off with condensation issues on windows (the lower the temperature, the lower the humidity has to be set); low emissivity coated, argon filled double and triple glazed windows are only a partial solution.

Ok, I forget to look where people are from, and you are right of course, so you must have major problems when you want to upgrade or re build, I have never even worn an AS wrist band.

I think the best invention ever was the mouse, I still have my first BBC Computer and a ZX81

[Manfred M]

Ok, I forget to look where people are from, and you are right of course, so you must have major problems when you want to upgrade or re build, I have never even worn an AS wrist band.

I think the best invention ever was the mouse, I still have my first BBC Computer and a ZX81

Not a problem, so long as you take proper precautions; i.e. being grounded before opening any computer or peripheral case.

[JR1]

Not a problem, so long as you take proper precautions; i.e. being grounded before opening any computer or peripheral case.

And leaving the mains cable in but turned off at the mains.

I use this all the time

http://www.bondline.co.uk/product/?c...productref=633

[Cliff Roamer]

My second issue with this device (as well as any other single disk drive storage solution) is that there is no redundancy; so unless you do a double backup, you will lose your data if you have a drive failure (I'll give you one guess as to how I know that). RAID or raid-like multi-disk mirroring is the only way to go, in my experience.

Never had a problem with static but don't have the issues that you have, I actually do a triple backup, C drive is on a SSD and is backed up incrementally daily as is the internal D drive and both will now also be backed up to external drives via the station, if I acquire TB's of pictures I might set up RAID but I don't need it at the moment and I understand that RAID does automatically what requires me to click a few buttons but I can live with that.

[dragon76]

Anyone use one of these?



I've just bought an Icy Box Twin SATA HDD docking bay (also supports SSD's) to use mainly for photo storage, I don't use a home network or wi-fi so don't need a more elaberate NAS set up, I considered an external USB HDD but the advantage of the docking station is that drives can be quickly changed without turning the PC off, the model I bought supports 2x 2.5" and 3.5" drives and drive cloning, I have a few spare HDD's lying around so might as well use them.

The docking station has it's own separate power supply and connects to the PC with a USB lead and supports USB 3 if your PC has it, just plug in a drive, turn it on and windows finds it and installs the driver, the drives are detected and listed by windows as independent drives and files can be copied to them like any other drive, think of them as USB memory sticks.

With two drives in the station you can drag and drop files from one drive to the other and clone one drive to the other, as long as the target drive is the same size or bigger than the source drive, cloning is done independently in the station and does not need to be connected to the PC, bootable drives can also be cloned.

It's a simple, easy to use solution for photo storage and also for backing up the Acronis disc image files I make, and you can never have enough backups!
The only issue with this station is like so many products today the USB lead that's supplied is so short it next to useless, but the lead is not wired into the station so just get a decent length lead and problem solved.
The station seems quite well made with an aluminium case and fairly price at £36, I'm beginning to wonder how I got along without one

+1.....I'm also using docking station. Mine is Thermaltake dual Black X which is not the cheapest but it's one of the best in the business (btw, it came with 1m USB3 Cable). Although docking station is not a disk mirroring data copied as the RAID 1 (for most home users) but it is a cheaper alternative as I don't have to double up in storage devices considering how large the RAW image file of today's 36mp DSLRs are. I have lots of old/good SATA drives over the years and I fill them up with every set of photos that I loaded into my PC and pack them away in anti-static cover. Sure, these drives can fail but so can RAID which just has a better probability. Also, failed drives are not the end of the world, in most cases, they are still recoverable by the pros. The other important thing is to always back up the comp regardless whether you have RAID or Docking drives.

[Manfred M]

Also, failed drives are not the end of the world, in most cases, they are still recoverable by the pros.

I suggest you check out the prices that these "pros" charge. I suspect you will be rather shocked; their clientel tends to be large corporations with deep pockets; far outside of what most people would consider paying to recover a few images. Corporate data that is worth large amounts of money; well that is different, isn't it?

[dragon76]

Manfred

I know it costs an arm and a leg but it's quite complicated when it comes to replacing parts on PCB board or head re-assembling or even firmware issues of hard drives. But if one must recover image for clients then perhaps they can pass on part of the cost. Or insurance if it covers this sort of things.

Cheers

Dean

[JR1]

Manfred

I know it costs an arm and a leg but it's quite complicated when it comes to replacing parts on PCB board or head re-assembling or even firmware issues of hard drives. But if one must recover image for clients then perhaps they can pass on part of the cost. Or insurance if it covers this sort of things.

Cheers

Dean

As I say I have been into computing since CP/M, google it, I have had just ONE hard drive fail, yes just one, I always re use old drives for storage and put them away, I check them once a year and have quite a collection now.

[ajohnw]

I use a Sumvision docking station from time to time that has a decent built in card reader - not the easiest of things to find. It also has 2 locally powered USB ports in it that are often useful.

The only problem I have had with this type is when a red odd brand one failed and the fact that when there is no drive in it dust can collect in the disk socket I put up with that for the card reader.

I'd guess Manfred's static problems are mostly in the winter. I've often spent a few weeks working in Arjeplog in Sweden during the winter and the air can be incredibly dry. Any moisture that build up in the day can be seen falling out of the air when the sun starts to go down. It can be a rather attractive sight. My record shock from static - around 2in from a filing cabinet. For some reason I don't seem to be as prone to the problem as others and hardly had any apart from this one.

John
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[Manfred M]

Jermey, you are lucky. I've had a good 5 or 6 drives fail over the years including two of my backup image drives on a RAID array; a few months apart; these were both from the same manufacturing batch, so hardly a surprise. The RAID fix was easy as the swapped out drives (replaced on warranty) were rebuilt by the system, although that process did run several days.

John is correct; static is primarily a winter problem and the effect you saw in Sweden is likely something we call "ice fog"; which occurs when the days are warm enough for there to be a reasonably high relative humidity and then the temperature drops rapidly causing the moisture to condense as ice crystals. A fairly rare phenomena around these parts; it rarely gets warm and humid enough for those conditions.

I worked in the consumer goods industry for about 5 years quite some time ago, and static issues with the high speed packaing equipment was always a problem as resin packaging films would stick to the machine guides and not wrap properly in the winter. All kinds of different solutions were tried and eventually we ended up going to a hot glue rather than plastic wrap solution to seal the boxes.

[Cliff Roamer]

I have lots of old/good SATA drives over the years and I fill them up with every set of photos that I loaded into my PC and pack them away in anti-static cover. Sure, these drives can fail but so can RAID which just has a better probability. Also, failed drives are not the end of the world, in most cases, they are still recoverable by the pros. The other important thing is to always back up the comp regardless whether you have RAID or Docking drives.

That's pretty much my thinking, backup, index the contents and store the drives, I don't require daily access to all my images but obviously some people with large collections, especially businesses, will need quick access and RAID would be the way to go.

I've tried cloning a HDD with the station but not surprisingly it's quite slow for big drives but if the drive is not bootable then you don't need to clone it sector by sector, it's quicker to just drag and drop from drive to drive and if a C drive with the OS on fails then it only takes about ten minutes to copy a C drive image file to a new drive, Acronis true image, worth every penny.

[Mike Buckley]

I've also never had a drive fail. That statistic is especially important because it means that I'm closer than ever to having one that does fail.

[Manfred M]

I've also never had a drive fail. That statistic is especially important because it means that I'm closer than ever to having one that does fail.

Mike - if you look at the failure curves; these devices (mechanical hard disks) fail rapidly when new (first 12 to 18 months) and then the failure curve stabilizes and the failures increase fairly slowly. The studies I saw had a 5-year limit and were looking at servers.

What I found interesting is that the failure rate for all classes of drives was pretty well identical; i.e. the supposedly high end server drives had the same failure curve as the less expensive consumer drives. But you are right; they all fail eventually.

[ajohnw]

Touch wood I haven't had many drives fail but until very recently I have only used enterprise types. One scsi failed after many years of use in a PC down to changes made to a linux filing system - wont go further into that I was a bit annoyed but a utility I used to see what was going on wrecked the drive. The linux problem - checking the health of unused space was fixed.

I generally go for a well ventilated case. One for instance that had several machines built into it over 10 years plus had a drive bay which I never filled up and a filtered fan just to cool that.

All changed when I bought a NAS. Cramped for space and the disks didn't last long at all even though they were enterprise types. Heat in a nutshell plus another aspect. I have worked in an office where people are using PC all of the time. Prior to most machines being towers some people used to stand them on their end so that the disks were not horizontal and it was pretty obvious that people who did that had disks go down far more quickly that others.

I also had a 5 drive set up in bay from a server for a while. 2 drives failed rather quickly so as I suspected heat down graded it to 3 and all was ok.

John
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