Desktop case to External Harddrive

[slipd]

Hi,

I have an old, empty ATX case and a power supply with an on/off switch. The psu already has a sata power cable. If I buy a 3.5" internal sata harddrive, and maybe a $5 sata to usb cable (or sata to esata cable), can I basically use this old case as an external hard drive enclosure? Will other computers/laptops be able to recognize the hard drives as external harddrives if I just buy one of those cables?

Also, would it be possible to place two HDDs in a RAID-1 configuration with the above setup (ie without a motherboard)? If so, what else would I need to buy?

Thanks in advance.

[Sodde]

Ooof, yes I guess its 'dooable', but I'd have to question why you'd even want to? If you are going to the expense of buying a drive, either buy an external drive with USB connection or buy a drive and drive casing. Dragging a PC casing around that needs to be plugged in just so that you can connect it to other computers doesn't make sense.

The RAID question needs an answer as to what you are trying to achieve. Are you thinking about using a RAID as a portable storage device? In a network? Or is this a science project? Either way, you'll probably end up spending way more than you really need to.

[slipd]

Thanks for the reply.

Is this really that clumsy of a solution though?  What I want is two harddrives to backup my data, and most dual harddrive enclosures seem really expensive. Also, buying a external harddrive in the current market just doesn't seem smart -- too many people seem to have problems with them failing very soon, or not being recognized anymore, and all of them seem to only have one year of warranty.  Most internal harddrives on the other hand have 3-5 years of warranty.  So my question is, will my laptop have the same problems with recognizing the internal harddrives from the setup I described -- is it a USB problem?  Or would my setup be more durable?

I really don't have that much money to spend, but I'm definitely open to suggestions for other enclosures / recommendations if you guys think my solution isn't very good.  All I need is two external harddrives, so that I can back up my data to both so that if one fails, I still have my data in the other. 

As for raid-1, again I just want the same data backed up to both, so if this can be done automatically, that would be nice, but if it's really going to be as expensive as you say, then I guess I can just forget about it and manually back up both hard drives.

So yeah, I'm definitely open to any specific recommendations if you have any.

[Sodde]

If the reason for your original question is just to create cheap back up drives then I'd re-evaluate your whole scenario and go with thumb drives...unless your backing up gigs of data in which case I'd go with tape.
If you buy a drive and put it in a casing with a USB connection, it'll still carry the 3-5yr warranty!
Remember, for every person you read about on line that has a problem with an external drive, there are hundreds more that don't. I personally have a 250GB drive that I've used professionally almost every day for the last 4 years and its never missed a beat.   You won't have problems connecting this to any laptop/desktop.

Now you mention a laptop and so I'm confused as to how this comes into play.

If you're stuck on the RAID for a desktop, buy a controller card to fit an open slot and and get a drive that's the same or similar (not smaller or different speed) than the one installed and your good to go.
It's by no means the perfect solution for data backup, its more 'fault tolerant' than most but external media for me is a far better (safer) solution.