Ask Engadget: Best dual-drive external enclosure?

We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Robert, who is sick and tired of using two power supplies, two I/O cables and too much time to accomplish what should be a simple task.

"I commonly need to boot a system from an external disc and take a snapshot of the host system. I also then need to burn a copy of the image to a DVD. While I can do it with two separate external devices, and two power supplies, and two I/O cables, it'd be nice to find a small dual-drive enclosure. It would need to have USB, eSATA, and FireWire. Either slim-line or half-height bay for the optical burner would be fine, and space for either a 2.5- or 3.5-inch hard disc. Any ideas?"

Robert here is outfitting an entire school for a 1:1 laptop program, so needless to say this request is urgent. Any storage junkies out there know of the perfect solution? No short-changin', alright?

[mitch @ Jul 16th 2009 9:12PM]

I had no idea this was sponsored by Verizon.
Hmmmm...

[bk7 @ Jul 16th 2009 10:08PM]

Yeh I just noticed that too! Since when?

[DeoWulf @ Jul 16th 2009 11:49PM]

Sponsored by Verizon, eh? When do we get our paycheck?

No, seriously. The commenters below are the "Engadget" you are asking, yes?

[James @ Jul 17th 2009 2:32AM]

Leave the adds to the side where they belong so addblock can do its job engadget.

[Mohulis @ Jul 17th 2009 12:30PM]

@James

You mean Ads?

[chris @ Jul 16th 2009 9:16PM]

logo blast from the past

[dsteve303 @ Jul 16th 2009 9:20PM]

LOL sponsored by verizon.

SHADY indeed.

[Jake @ Jul 16th 2009 11:05PM]

This may spell the end of the iPhone fanboyitude around here.

-jp

[Ken Sheldon @ Jul 16th 2009 9:21PM]

I don't believe I have ever seen such a thing. The simplest way to solve your problem would be to get a usb powered dvd drive ala macbook air superdrive and a usb hard drive enclosure, which would probably have to be 2.5 hard drive.

[TokyoJerry @ Jul 16th 2009 10:29PM]

Dead wrong! Century of Japan: http://www.century.co.jp/products/pc/hdd-kit/crossc.html

[pedro @ Jul 16th 2009 9:22PM]

Wow...I dont really know, I think you may be asking too much Robert ;)

I would either backup to the network (using barts pe) or use a laptop connected with a crossover cable.

Maybe this will do the tick and save you some cash....

[Ryan Trevisol @ Jul 16th 2009 9:45PM]

Now this may be old school (but hey, that's where I work) but I use Ghostcast and ethernet connections for my non-mac imaging. Once you get it set up (you need a generic windows box with to hold/distribute the image(s), preferably with a gigabit connection, a switch, a bunch of ethernet cables, and some USB drives.

[elsamu @ Jul 16th 2009 9:23PM]

A Laptop.

[Major4Play @ Jul 16th 2009 9:26PM]

That would not logically work very well, if you use one cable to connect an external burner and a hard disk to the PC then burn stuff from the external hard drive, you will end up with many read/write errors unless you burn at like 2x even then your connected laptop will have to do alot of caching to work properly.

You would be better off buying seperate external drives but buy external devices that run off USB power. Mind you that might also kill your little laptop and end up with one device not working correctly.
Simple don't use 1:1 copies, use a server and back up across a network. And NEVER use DVD-R as back-up medium it cannot be trusted.

[moejarv @ Jul 16th 2009 9:27PM]

I would say try to do this with a different approach.
Take a Clonezilla Live CD to boot the system with CD / USB, and save the image to another laptop that comes with a DVD burner via samba. Burn the CD.

Better yet, have every laptop to boot from PXE and setup a Clonezilla / DRBL server, you only need to reboot the laptop to get a image store securely onto the server.

[Alex @ Jul 16th 2009 9:27PM]

Not sure why everyone's freaking out about Verizon. A sponsorship's a sponsorship. That's how Engadget gets paid. Move along, now.

As for the dual drive external enclosure, I've never even seen something like that. I know they sell dual-bay external hard drive enclosures, but I don't know about dual-bay external media drive enclosures.

This one looks good although it's only firewire:
http://www.getpartsonline.com/fwen-2.html?source=googlebase&code=fwen-2

[Jonathan @ Jul 17th 2009 12:36AM]

Do you not get how business works?

[IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII (BarCODE) @ Jul 17th 2009 2:36AM]

Yeah, but we're doing the work and engadget is getting paid for our advice. Give us our cut or we boycott..

[Major4Play @ Jul 16th 2009 9:27PM]

Is it just me or is this not the kind of stupid question a tech blog should be asking ?
Shame on your level of tech knowledge Engadget.

[Ualdayan @ Jul 16th 2009 9:30PM]

You can create multiple partitions on one external drive. You could buy a 2TB HD, plug it into an external enclosure (your pick of which one you want to use), allocate however much you need for your booting OS to one partition, and the rest to a backup partition.

Would that do what you want?

[DomesDGK @ Jul 16th 2009 9:42PM]

I have to say this sounds like the best solution, but to answer the question of what is the best dual HDD enclosure: I've had a Lacie enclosure for a few months now, and I love it. They make nice 2 and 4 HDD enclosures that are hot-swappable, and can be run in RAID 1 or 0, or JBOD. [more RAID options for the 4 disk one] Mine has USB, Firewire 400/800 and E-Sata, so basically everything you could ever want. Cost me about 300 for the model with two 1TB hard drives off newegg when I got it.

I wouldn't recommend the Western Digital two drive mybooks. They aren't user serviceable if a drive goes down - you have to pay for your data back if you opt to get a warranty replacement, cracking it open yourself to get the data voids the warranty.

[ishism @ Jul 16th 2009 9:33PM]

I just want to know the outcome of all the other Ask Engadgets.

[ccm @ Jul 16th 2009 9:43PM]

hello people!

[ithurtswhenipee @ Jul 16th 2009 9:46PM]

The most elegant way to do this task is use a imaging app called Acronis Truimage. If you have a network in place, you can boot the Acronis disk and create your host image directly to a network share. If the laptops support booting to a USB device, it gets even better as you can put your Acronis boot disk on a thumb drive.

[DomesDKG @ Jul 16th 2009 9:51PM]

This can also be achieved with Norton Ghost, which is a fantastic program for making images to distribute to other computers, or to back up one system entirely.

[f14tomdog2 @ Jul 16th 2009 9:48PM]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817387033

i put 2 one Tb drives in it, only like $70, has e Sata, and usb 2, works great for me

[Justin D @ Jul 16th 2009 9:50PM]

Anything from the IcyDock folks.

Specifically:

http://www.icydock.com/product/mb662ueab-2s.html

http://www.icydock.com/product/mb662us-2s.html

Solid as a rock, both functionally and in terms of constructions. RAID options on the backplane. Thumbs up!

[Maeztro @ Jul 17th 2009 12:16AM]

Agree...Icy makes some nice enclosures...

[nighttime__ @ Jul 17th 2009 12:28AM]

Thanks for the recommendation! this is my next external hdd when i get some spare money :)

thank you!

[ithurtswhenipee @ Jul 16th 2009 9:53PM]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that if you don't have a network setup, once you are booted into the Acronis GUI, you don't need to access the disk any more. You can then inset your blank DVD and put your image there. --- No I don' t work for Acronis.

[Josh @ Jul 16th 2009 10:02PM]

So he wants an external device that has both hard drive and burner? Am I understanding correctly?

I know Macs can boot into 'target disk mode' which basically turns it into an external hard drive, but I don't know if the burner is available in this mode.

This enclosure is Firewire & USB (no eSATA), you could put a drive in one bay and a burner in the other.

Or am I just not understanding the request?

[Rajarshi Nigam @ Jul 16th 2009 10:13PM]

little known fact: hard drives are really just dvds inside. just get a bunch of cheap refurb hard drives and take out a platter each time. there's a bunch of platters in each one so it's probably more cost-efficient.

[Alex @ Jul 16th 2009 11:05PM]

... What?

[My Name is Matt @ Jul 16th 2009 11:31PM]

I thought there were blu-ray discs in my hard drive, not standard DVDs.

[Mike @ Jul 17th 2009 9:05AM]

Little known, yes. Fact, no.

[zcubed @ Jul 17th 2009 12:19PM]

Please don't believe this rubbish. i hope the OP was joking. hard drive platters are far more sensitive and complex than a DVD or BluRay, don't ruin drives by opening them.

[TokyoJerry @ Jul 16th 2009 10:30PM]

Firewire A and B, USB, eSATA all-in-one from Century, Japan
http://www.century.co.jp/products/pc/hdd-kit/crossc.html

[superflush @ Jul 17th 2009 12:55AM]

where can you buy this?

[kopas @ Jul 16th 2009 10:17PM]

I would start looking at http://www.addonics.com/

But their solutions may not be a portable as your looking for.

[KazO @ Jul 16th 2009 10:35PM]

To answer the device question, one problem is that eSATA can only support multiple external devices on a single cable if either 1)the enclosure aggregates the devices (i.e. RAID, which you can't do between a HD and DVD) or 2)the eSATA initiator has a multiplier built-in (rare). I say boot imaging SW from flash or CD, image directly to DVD. I've never seen anything that can make 2 image copies simultaneously, so if you need a HD AND DVD copy, image to HD, then dump to DVD as a separate operation.

[Tim @ Jul 16th 2009 10:42PM]

Easier than all this. (Thought the 'ask engadget' didn't really cover enough details for a definitive answer unfortunately)

What you need is a laptop with an esata port (or USB -> sata if you're in less of a hurry). Said laptop to include...oh...a hard drive, burner, and host OS.

Virtually every laptop designed for large scale deployment (business, enterprise, k-12 targets) has a single screw to remove the hard drive. Pop it out, plug it in, image.

Plan B - PXE server, network boot disk/USB FOB/CD + 100MB or GB lan + NAS or file server

Oh. Except for Mac. You have to bleed for them. Now before someone mods me down as a MS fanboi or something...take into account I'm currently, actively managing the project to deploy Apple into a global enterprise. Seriously though, for mac, get the budget for a server and be done with it.

[rothgar @ Jul 16th 2009 10:51PM]

I would agree that the best solutions would be either to buy 1 external drive and partition it twice or to PXE boot the computer and take/restore the image over a network.

If you ARE still looking for a dual HDD enclosure though. I have really liked my Vantec NexStar MX. The new ones come with eSATA but I am not 100% sure on firewire. Here is a quick review I wrote a while ago about the enclosure. http://1n73r.net/2008/12/26/vantec-nexstar-mx-enclosure-review

[Alex M. @ Jul 16th 2009 11:57PM]

Try if you need a dual just drive bay
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995008

or the one I use (but no firewire :()

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707118

[jkpaye @ Jul 16th 2009 11:35PM]

Addonics make portable multi drive external enclosures with a number of connection options. I believe you can choose the configuration of the connection, for single USB, eSATA, firewire for all dirves in the enclosure, or have separate channels for each. Definitely worth a look.

http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/

[SoulinEther @ Jul 16th 2009 11:31PM]

Some of these questions seem to need clarification. "Nettop" resulted in people posting about "netbooks" and here we have people talking about partitioning a hard drive when a DVD drive is also clearly required.

I don't believe this exists. However, some external hard drives that use USB bus power also have power adapter inputs like my acomdata drive, so that could take some load off the laptop's power. You could just physically attach a slim DVD burner to a portable hard drive (though I imagine it would heat up). Use the power adapter to power the hard drive. Plug both devices into the computer using two I/O cables.

You'd eliminate one power cable.. Uhh. yeah.

[RyanTV @ Jul 16th 2009 11:36PM]

I'm not sure why on earth you would do it this way, you should use either an enterprise version of Ghost or Altiris and PXE boot to pull and deploy images over your network. It's a much more time effective way to image a large number of machines.

[nerd1 @ Jul 16th 2009 11:42PM]

http://www.cooldrives.com/two-drive-usb-enclosure-dual-bay-enclosure-usb-case-ide-drive-enclosure.html

dual 5.25" drive bay enclosure with USB, buy a DVD RW drive, a 3.5" HDD & a bracket to mount the 3.5" drive in this baby

[trinergy @ Jul 16th 2009 11:52PM]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&q=inoi+media+tank&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2

http://www.inoi.com/English/dw567b.asp

This is exactly what you are looking for but it is not manufactured anymore. I bought one back in 2006. 3.5" HDD, 5 1/4" ODD, 5-1 Card Reader, and front mounted USB port.

[drumdbeat @ Jul 17th 2009 11:05AM]

Looks exactly like what the request says! You, sir, may be a winner.

If of course the chap can get one...

[drumdbeat @ Jul 17th 2009 11:09AM]

Take it back, infi further on down found a better one, $30 too.....