# Drive bay with timer; is there such a thing?



## supers05 (May 23, 2015)

If it's a sata drive, I'd use a 12v timer relay kit. I've only used 120v ones, so I don't have a part number for you. (although the 120v one would work, I'd be cumbersome within this setting.)

Cheers!


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## Bob Sanders (Nov 10, 2013)

Yeah, it's sata alright. I thought of paralleling in a timer on the power switch, but as you say... it's all a bit cumbersome.


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## Deja-vue (Mar 24, 2013)

Bob,
I use a NAS made by Synology, Model # DS1815+ and it may be a bit overkill for what you are doing, but it can be turned on and off via it's Web Control panel, using the Schedule Task manager.
This thing has more options than I can list here, and the Storage is tremendous.
The Sky is the limit with what you can do with them, I store a large Blu-Ray Library on one of them, and Customer Backups, Programs, etc on the other.

You can even expand them easily by adding larger Hard Drives later on, or even connect two NAS together via Cable.


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## Bob Sanders (Nov 10, 2013)

Deja-vue said:


> Bob,
> I use a NAS made by Synology, Model # DS1815+ and it may be a bit overkill for what you are doing, but it can be turned on and off via it's Web Control panel, using the Schedule Task manager.
> This thing has more options than I can list here, and the Storage is tremendous.
> The Sky is the limit with what you can do with them, I store a large Blu-Ray Library on one of them, and Customer Backups, Programs, etc on the other.
> ...


Well, I have somewhere around 20TB of movies on hard drive (haven't done an actual count lately), but I don't bother backing them up. If lose them, I lose them. It's the personal stuff (family movies, pics, and videos as well as personal documents) that I want backed up and that can be done on a smaller backup system. I don't really want to go with a full backup system.

As for NAS, my daily computer was specifically built to act also as a sever for the rest of the house (5 tv's in the house with a streamer box at each tv). It didn't make much sense to me to have a central computer AND a nas if a central computer could do it all. I will admit though, backing up is not as much of a hassle with nas.


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## Deja-vue (Mar 24, 2013)

Bob,
Remember a NAS is redundant, (if you configure the Drives redundant) if I loose 2 Drives at the same Time in one of my NAS Servers, the Data is still safe.
Now I've never seen two drives fail at the same time, but every 3 years or so one of them fails. Very Easy to rebuild.

Sooner or later you will see that there is no way around one of these Boxes.
I have been playing with Servers since the early 90's, and am stuck with the Synology Devices.

The smaller NAS Servers are way cheaper, they start at or around $300, if I remember correctly.

For most important personal and/or Business Files, I use Cloud-backup such as Crashplan.com.
Just my 2 cents.
:smile:


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## Bob Sanders (Nov 10, 2013)

Deja-vue said:


> Bob,
> Remember a NAS is redundant, (if you configure the Drives redundant) if I loose 2 Drives at the same Time in one of my NAS Servers, the Data is still safe.
> Now I've never seen two drives fail at the same time, but every 3 years or so one of them fails. Very Easy to rebuild.
> 
> ...


But you don't need nas to set up redundant drives. You can set up for redundancy, mirroring, raid, etc in just about any system (with the right mobo). I can set up for redundancy on my existing system right now if I wish, but it's not really what I'm interested in though.

I'm not really sold on cloud backup systems either. It's just too inefficient. My backup (just personal pics, family videos and documents) is now sitting at about 2TB compressed. It takes far too long to upload that volume of info.


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## supers05 (May 23, 2015)

Bob Sanders said:


> ... about 2TB compressed. It takes far too long to upload that volume of info.


About 23 days for my slow connection, (cause I'm cheap), or about 5-7 hours on my friend's connection...then incremental updates are much quicker. 

I would use a NAS too. However,I lean towards freeNAS, but that's cause I like DIY stuff. [emoji6] A single PC can do this, if you want, by using a VM. (also can be free.) 


Cheers!


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## Bob Sanders (Nov 10, 2013)

supers05 said:


> About 23 days for my slow connection, (cause I'm cheap), or about 5-7 hours on my friend's connection...then incremental updates are much quicker.
> 
> I would use a NAS too. However,I lean towards freeNAS, but that's cause I like DIY stuff. [emoji6] A single PC can do this, if you want, by using a VM. (also can be free.)
> 
> ...


Well, nas is essentially a pc built to do a specific thing. But unless you use thunderbolt technology (which is very expensive) it'll always be slower than a straight pc in transferring data. With a straight pc and direct sata connections I can transfer data from pc drives to other drives at a faster rate. For example I rip new Blue rays to my "New movie" drive then after I watch it I transfer it to my "watched" drives. This will always be faster through direct sata. If I had to transfer a 30 gig movie through a comm line it would slow things down pretty good.

Now I do have thunderbolt technology on this mobo but the price for thunderbolt drive bays and such is pricey. Thunderbolt cables aren't exactly cheap either.


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## supers05 (May 23, 2015)

Bob Sanders said:


> Well, nas is essentially a pc built to do a specific thing. But unless you use thunderbolt technology (which is very expensive) it'll always be slower than a straight pc in transferring data. With a straight pc and direct sata connections I can transfer data from pc drives to other drives at a faster rate. For example I rip new Blue rays to my "New movie" drive then after I watch it I transfer it to my "watched" drives. This will always be faster through direct sata. If I had to transfer a 30 gig movie through a comm line it would slow things down pretty good.
> 
> Now I do have thunderbolt technology on this mobo but the price for thunderbolt drive bays and such is pricey. Thunderbolt cables aren't exactly cheap either.


Since a regular HDD can barely saturate a gigabit connection, if your connection is significantly slower, then your controlling hardware is the bottleneck. Although it's not as popular (because the public need isn't there,) you could use one of these if it really was a concern of yours. 

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ...79&cm_re=10gigabit-_-9SIA90R48T3679-_-Product

I have built a few NAS boxes. I try to use "green" motherboards, with decent CPUs. (to save power, since they are always on. You can use less then 1/2 the power with the same performance when you're careful about this.) They are relatively cheap compared to a regular power workstation. 

Cheers!


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## Bob Sanders (Nov 10, 2013)

supers05 said:


> Since a regular HDD can barely saturate a gigabit connection, if your connection is significantly slower, then your controlling hardware is the bottleneck. Although it's not as popular (because the public need isn't there,) you could use one of these if it really was a concern of yours.
> 
> https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ...79&cm_re=10gigabit-_-9SIA90R48T3679-_-Product
> 
> ...


All my Ethernet boards are gigabyte boards as well as my switches, router... etc. Comm is still slower than sata. There is a (big) difference between gigabyte's theoretical throughput and its actual. Tom's hardware indeed did some tests on gigabyte and under ideal conditions they found that gigabyte lived up to its name and it's the drives themselves which become the bottleneck. But network speed is dependent on how busy the newtwork is, and with 2 kids, the wife, 5 tv's in the house, an ethernet alarm system, ethernet heating system, all the wifi devices... etc, it's always pretty busy.

As for power saving, the computer goes to sleep when not in use, and it's trained to wake up on ethernet activity.


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## ddawg16 (Aug 15, 2011)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought HD's would spin down and park when not in use?

On a less 'complicated' scale, I have a HTPC I built up. Uses a 250G SSD for the os and a 1TB for movies and such. Additionally, it powers down into 'sleep' mode when not in use but will wake up and record any timed programs. 

Additionally, I could set it up to wake up on commands to the Ethernet port. 

The amount of 'juice' they use in standby or sleep is minimal compared to other devices in the house


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## supers05 (May 23, 2015)

Bob Sanders said:


> ...There is a (big) difference between gigabyte's theoretical throughput and its actual. .....


Same goes with sata and any other protocol. (typically protocols are advertised based on theoretical maximum throughput.)

The link I posted was for 10Gbps BTW. 

You could always run either a VLAN, separating the rest of the house from your connection. Or use QoS if your router supports it on the LAN side. Or physically run a second cable, making a dedicated link. (all my computers have at least 2 Ethernet ports. I use them for trunking. I don't use crap oem router software.)

Anyways, back to your OP. 

If you want to do this programically.... 

Use Devcon.exe (it's a Microsoft dev tool) 
I use it to reset my finger print reader after a suspend/resume. 
For you, it'll be disable on some trigger, I use task scheduler. I use batch files to call the command. 


> @echo off
> devcon disable "usb\vid_(rest of Hardware ID)


Then enable... 


> @echo off
> devcon enable "usb\vid_(rest of Hardware ID)


hardware IDs are found in device manager, right click on the device and left click on properties. In the properties page, select the "details" tab. Then select "hardware IDs" from the drop down menu. It's the shorter of the 2. 

Call the batch files however you want. For example before and after your backup. 

Reference :
How to get the correct version of devcon without installing the whole dev kit. 
https://superuser.com/a/1099688

Description of devcon with links to examples. 
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/drivers/devtest/devcon

Cheers!


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## Bob Sanders (Nov 10, 2013)

supers05 said:


> Same goes with sata and any other protocol. (typically protocols are advertised based on theoretical maximum throughput.)
> 
> The link I posted was for 10Gbps BTW.
> 
> You could always run either a VLAN, separating the rest of the house from your connection. Or use QoS if your router supports it on the LAN side. Or physically run a second cable, making a dedicated link. (all my computers have at least 2 Ethernet ports. I use them for trunking. I don't use crap oem router software.)


LOL!
Yes I suppose I could rewire the entire house, or I could just go with what I have got which I'm more than happy with. :smile:



> Anyways, back to your OP.
> 
> If you want to do this programically....
> 
> ...


Thanks!
I'll check into that.


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