I currently am doing nightly backups of my server onto two USB hard
drives that are rotated weekly.  A nightly backup only takes 30-45
minutes on average, but the USB drives are left plugged in and running
for a full week.  The USB enclosures are usually quiet warm during the
entire time they are plugged in and I am concerned that this is causing
a high rate of failure.  I have lost 4 hard drives in 2 years while they
are still under warranty, at least.  It appears that USB does not offer
any mechanisms to power down the drives when they are not in use.  I
only have the drives mounted during the 30-45 minutes they are running,
but this hasn't helped.  I am curious on what ideas you might have for
external hard drives that only need to run for a short time at night.
Either a cooler enclosure or alternatives like Firewire or E-SATA if
they can power down drives.
-- 
Loren M. Lang
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.alzatex.com/


Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc
Fingerprint: 10A0 7AE2 DAF5 4780 888A  3FA4 DCEE BB39 7654 DE5B

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

_______________________________________________
Dirvish mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.dirvish.org/mailman/listinfo/dirvish

Reply via email to