[Dirvish] Ideas for cool running external hard drives

[Loren M. Lang]

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
lorenl at alzatex.com
http://www.alzatex.com/


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