Neat HD storage product for those on a budget

[usayit]

from

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Products.aspx?C=1346

There has been a lot of talk about storage and how much storage various members use for their archival of digital photographs. I purchased this product a few months ago and found it very useful. Small SATA (even used computer pulls) are getting cheaper and easy to acquire (ebay) as people upgrade to larger models. I've even seen auctions for bulk purchases of several smaller (80gb in my case) drives for very little cash. The problem:

* Buying darn external cases for all those SATA drives gets expensive (remember budget)
* All those external hard drives create a rats nest of a wires at the workstation. Even worse if the cases are different brands that don't share the same power supplies
* Just how many shelves, powerstrips, USB hubs do I need to keep adding?

So far, I've been happy and it fits nicely as a suppliment to my routine of backups (mag tape/CD-R golds). Mine is only equipped with the USB 2.0 version which is noticeably slower than my external firewire 800/400 drives. Fine for just the sheer extra space... They do make eSATA version for those that need more performance. Just be careful handling the drives as their controller electronics are exposed... keep those anti-static bags and boxes for storage.

I know this is not photography related but I figure there might be enough interest here that someone might find this thread useful. I definitely can see some TPF members rotating SATA drives offsite as part of their backup strategy..... and this would make it a little more cost effective. We've already seen a few members loose their data so we know backups are necessary.