Oshunluver, and anyone else with experience in ...

[GreyGeek]

replacing CDROM drives with HD caddys?

I am debating with myself the idea of getting another HD that will fit inside a CDROM caddy that would replace my DVD burner/player, which I haven't used in a year. I have a USB CD/DVD ROM that I can use in an emergency.

I'm looking at this caddy.

The HD specs give a transfer rate of 3Gbits/s while the DVD gives 11Mbits/s. Will the HD in a caddy be able to transfer at close to the rate as the internal HD?

Also, both the HD and the DVD appear as block devices under /dev/disk, but the DVD is referenced as "sr0" and the HD as, of course, "sda.

Will the caddy transform the sro to an sdb, or does the HD in the caddy do that by itself? I'm assuming the latter.

Anyone have any experience with this?

[oshunluvr]

Nice way to add a 2nd HD without big expense. Since the CDROM interface is SATA, I don't think there's any "magic" here - I'd expect the drive to be sdb and the transfer rate to be what you would expect of an SATA drive. The speed will depend on the interface.

Depending on your interface order and the BIOS, there is the possibility that the new drive might be sda and the internal drive might end up sdb, but as long as you're using UUIDs to boot (in grub) and mount (in fstab) that won't make any difference.

The "r" in sr0 is just the way the kernel differentiates CD/DVD-ROM devices from other types of storage.

[GreyGeek]

That's what I thought but I was hoping someone who's done this could confirm it, especially someone with Btrfs experience, I.e. You!
Thanks


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[GreyGeek]

If I get the caddy + HD I haven't decided how to use it. Expand my sda1 pool? Second, unmountable data subvolume? Raid1? My backup 320 Gb Btrfs pool is already holding 98Gb of @ and @home backup ro snapshots. Probably there is room for one more, possibly two backup snapshots. If I add the new HD to the pool then I'll probably install a bunch more stuff. With my increased space I've already added FlightGear, LinCity and a lot of games, besides Minecraft and my Steam games and the IQAN stuff. May even install the QtSDK & QtCreate, along with PostgreSQL. If I do that then the 320GB backup HD isn't big enough to hold more than one set of ro snapshots. Maybe two.

So, I'm leaning toward making the new HD a second Btrfs partition that I'd mount automatically in fstab and use for both file storage and backup snapshots.

Suggestions? Opinions?

[oshunluvr]

Well, backups is an obvious good choice. What are the drive sizes (or potential sizes)?

Other options that immediately come to mind: RAID0 for speed or RAID1 for redundancy. I'm thinking if the new drive is considerably larger than the current one, you could partition it and RAID0 or RAID1 with the installed drive and still have room for backups. RAID would not be a good choice if one drive was a lot faster than the other. You would be artificially restricting your access speed.

[GreyGeek]

The one I just bought is 750Gb. The caddy HD will be the same -- WD 7200rpm 750G

[vinnywright]

interesting thread GG ,,,,, I actually bought one of those ,,(HD caddy that goes into the CD/DVD drive slot) ,,with my system76 bonox8 .

BUT have never used it yet although I know (think) I have 1-2 empty slots for HD's as it is .

keep us informed of how this goes for you.

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

Is your 76 a desktop?


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[claydoh]

I have one of these similar caddies in my old-ish Dell e6420, with a 1tb drive. The main drive is an ssd so it is definitely slower but seems as speedy as a spinning drive should be (from memory). I use it basically as a home for my Steam stuff as the ssd is not roomy enough. Well worth the inexpensive cost.

The drive is seen as sdb.

[vinnywright]

Is your 76 a desktop?

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no,,,laptop/mobile work station .

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

no,,,laptop/mobile work station .

VINNY

And it has room for more than one INTERNAL hard drive?

[GreyGeek]

I have one of these similar caddies in my old-ish Dell e6420, with a 1tb drive. The main drive is an ssd so it is definitely slower but seems as speedy as a spinning drive should be (from memory). I use it basically as a home for my Steam stuff as the ssd is not roomy enough. Well worth the inexpensive cost.

The drive is seen as sdb.

Looks like there is a caddy + HD in my future!

[vinnywright]

And it has room for more than one INTERNAL hard drive?

yes yes it dose ,,,,,their are 2 in it now a 500GIB system drive and 1TB storage drive and I am sure their was the option to have 2 storage drives + the system drive AND an SSD ,,,,,,,,,,,sigh I cant find the internal schematics ,,,,I'll open it up later and see what I see,,,,,,then report back

remember this thing is a beast ,,,,,all but 10pounds 16 1/2 in across 11 1/2 in deep and 2 1/2 in thick in the back 1 in the front ,,,,,and the power transformer in the cord is 8in x 4in x 1 3/4in

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

Sounds like you need to keep your AC running so the heat doesn't drive you out of the room!

[vinnywright]

Sounds like you need to keep your AC running so the heat doesn't drive you out of the room!

LOL it dose run warm ,,,average of 130% F

VINNY