Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jun 23, 2006, at 16:12, Bill McGonigle wrote:

> #1) I seem to wind up with a strange collection of external drives  
> hooked up to my linux machines, usually stacked on top of each  
> other on a shelf (if I'm lucky), with power and data cords all  
> tangled into a great big rat's nest.  I've seen this result oft  
> duplicated but I haven't seen anybody successfully organizing this  
> particular morass.
>
> I'm thinking of something like an equipment rack, except it only  
> needs to be 7" or so wide, with a power strip down one back side  
> and shelves spaced for the typical external 5.25" case.  Build the  
> necessary USB/Firewire/fiber/eSATA hubs/connectors into the top of  
> the rack, and it would actually be movable and portable with only 1  
> cable of each media type plus power leaving the back.  Major  
> improvement.
>
> Has anybody attempted any such thing?  Better ideas?  I didn't see  
> any such racks/shelving online but I'm not adverse to fixing a  
> wider rack with a bandsaw and some welding rod.

[long latency] Followup: Took longer than I expected, but after two  
drive over-heating failures in two days, I decided to finally fix this:

   http://blog.bfccomputing.com/articles/2008/01/17/drive-cabinet

It ain't pretty but it gets the job done.

Now, if only I knew why otherwise normally performing drives decided  
to start overheating.  The ambient temperature is the same and the  
usage pattern ought not be any different.  Odd.

-Bill

-----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC              Home: 603.448.1668
bill at bfccomputing.com           Cell: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/    Page: 603.442.1833
Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/
VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf