new hardware suggestion...

[thefunnyman]

Hello all..

I have an old beater laptop that I've turned into a server...It runs ubuntu server quite well, but it has almost no storage. I have a 320 gb ide drive and a 320 gb sata drive i would like to use to expand the server's storage. Both are 3.5" drives.

The server does have an s400 firewire port on it and I was wondering if anyone has seen a dock with a firewire port that will accept ide and sata drives. I do not have much with firewire and was wondering if anyone could also offer insight about performance with this interface compared to usb?

thanks for your insight..

thefunnyman

[Wee_Guy]

I think firewire is a bit faster than USB 2.0, but I don't think it would make a massive difference on an old laptop.
Do you want to connect the IDE and SATA drives simultaneously? You can buy USB drive adapters like this one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/IOMAX-SATA-Adapter-Power-Drive/dp/B001A5SK56), but I'm not sure if it could support 2 drives at once.
If you need to run both drives at once and are bothered about looks, then you could just buy a couple of external caddys (although unless theres a fan the drive will probably run hotter).

[thefunnyman]

I don't really care about looks. The laptop is just sitting on a shelf in my office. The screen doesn't even work. I was just looking into some alternatives to add some storage to this laptop without spending a bunch of money...I would prefer to use the extra storage as a network drive, but marginally better performance than usb 2.0 doesn't sound too promising for my uses.

Looks like I'll have to explore a different route.

Thanks again...

thefunnyman

[Ginsu543]

Just to give you another perspective, I run a Dell Vostro A90 netbook as a file server for my home network. It has a 4 GB SSD to run Ubuntu 9.10 and a 1.5 TB external USB2.0 drive for storage. Despite the rather humble hardware, it works great as a file server. I can serve 1.4 GB video files on the external drive over wifi to the PS3 in my living room and watch it upscaled to HD resolution on my 46" Samsung LED TV. Everything is fast enough for uninterrupted playback. I can also serve all my mp3 music files on the external drive and play them on the PS3 or on my iPhone. The USB2.0 interface has proven fast enough for me to do what I want without any problems.

[cascade9]

Fireiwre is a fair bit faster than USB 2.0 for some things (like reading data), and very similar for others (writing data).

USB 2.0 tends to hit a wall at about 30MB/sec reading, Firewire goes up to about 40MB/sec. See a lot more data on the subject here-

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-firewire-esata,2534.html

Edit- some tests have shown a lot more differnce than that, see here-

http://www.cwol.com/firewire/firewire-vs-usb.htm