Lota hardrives! o_O

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 6:58 pm

I have two external hard drives connected to my computer that I use for editing, and I want to put more but don't know if that's safe, like I don't want any over heating if you know what I mean. I know with my laptop it would just shut off if it got over heated, and the computer I'm using right now is very new so I'm sure it's advanced enough to turn off by itself when it gets too hot. Anyway I don't know if it would be a prob connecting more.. I'm wondering what someone else thinks that knows a bit about this stuff. Is there something to be worried about when connecting multiple external hard drives? Thanks.

oldwrench · Post by **oldwrench** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:57 pm

The only problem I can see is if your drives use the usb link for power. I don't know of any that do. As for drives, you can stack as many as you want, or as many as the link will accept anyway. The computer doesn't work any harder with more drives, just has more storage space to look through.

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 8:04 pm

oldwrench wrote:The only problem I can see is if your drives use the usb link for power. I don't know of any that do. As for drives, you can stack as many as you want, or as many as the link will accept anyway. The computer doesn't work any harder with more drives, just has more storage space to look through.

That's good to know. My laptop would heat up if I hooked any thing to it. o_O Well yeah, they got there own power source so I don't see why there should be a problem. I'm just being cautious just in case since my laptop would act funky whenever I hooked anything to it.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 2:52 am

Harddrives themselves won't (generally) create enough heat to cause problems, especially external ones. It's the heat inside your case building up that would cause any over-heating, but that's what cooling fans are for, of course. In Laptops, everything is stuffed into a small space with poor ventilation and an ineffecient fan.

So, unless your stuffing your external HDD's behind your computer case or under stacks of paper or somthing, you should be fine. All they really need is plenty of room to breathe. But just out of curiosity, are you getting more becuase the two you have are smaller ones? Why not just get one big one?

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 8:46 am

Just a genaral piece of advice; invest in a laptop cooling station if your laptop is used more like a desktop replacement. Essentially, it's just a raised platform with fans built in, but it does wonders for cooling if it's made correctly.

Coderjo · Post by **Coderjo** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:43 am

oldwrench wrote:The computer doesn't work any harder with more drives, just has more storage space to look through.

Both USB and Firewire use CPU time during all transfers. If you have more drives, and are accessing them all concurrently, like by doing some crazy raid setup, your CPU usage during any disk access would skyrocket.

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 3:06 am

gangstaj8 wrote:But just out of curiosity, are you getting more becuase the two you have are smaller ones? Why not just get one big one?

I didn't even know people were replying to this thread.

I just checked a second ago.

Anyway to answer your question, I have really big hard drives, but I do fill them up pretty quickly. I want some extra space for some box sets I want to use for editing. I like to have a lot of space, all together internally I have 570gigs total, and the two ones I have connected to my computer are 279gb each.. and the one I want to hook up is about 200 gbs.

So yeah, I don't want my computer to blow up or anything, I run all these hard drives together when I'm editing since the VOB files are spread on each one of them. Anyway thanks for the help everyone.. if what I'm doing with the running of all the harddrives at once while editing sounds pretty dangerous to you, please tell me. Doesn't seem to be a problem, my computer never over heats, and if it does it has a mechanism to shut itself off if it gets too hot.

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Wed Nov 02, 2005 3:36 am

x_rex30 wrote:all together internally I have 570gigs total, and the two ones I have connected to my computer are 279gb each.. and the one I want to hook up is about 200 gbs.