olivetalks

I needed an external hard disk for backing up my home file server. I decided to get separately a USB enclosure supporting SATA-II disks and install a 500 GB hard disk inside. Why not get the whole package – i.e. a closed box with a USB cable and disk already inside? Let me explain. Separate enclosure means I can remove the disk when transporting it to an off-site location, that saves me over 0.5 kg of weight in my backpack. It might not be much but if you travel already overloaded like I usually do then it does matter. Second reason is that it’s difficult to know what kind of disk is inside one of those closed boxes. With my setup I know exactly what disk it is. As an added bonus I can easily connect it directly inside the file server if I need to (for example if the enclosure died) because both the enclosure and the file server use SATA-II interface.

After doing some research I decided to purchase Enermax EB307S-B Jazz. It just arrived today (thanks alternate.de for a quick delivery). As advertised the enclosure allows a very quick installation. There’s no need to use any tools. Simply unlock the enclosure, slide out the cover and lift it. Now you can install the hard disk – this takes another 15 seconds. Replace the cover, lock it and that’s it. Now just connect power and the USB cable. All this took barely any longer than if the disk was already installed.

Enermax Jazz has a very nice design. Brushed aluminum housing with steel mesh provides very good cooling and sturdiness. It also looks cool since you can see the disk inside. Because the casing is a mesh it doesn’t need a fan which makes it suitable for quiet environments. But be careful with liquids – if you spill anything on the enclosure you will probably fry your data!

After connecting the enclosure to the file server I’ve formatted it. The file server runs Linux so I’ve used ext3 file system but you could use this hardware also with a Mac or Windows machine. Then another couple of minutes to decide what to backup (more or less everything) and I’ve started the copy process. It’s been running for the last 40 minutes and so far 47 GB have been transferred to the external disk. 120 GB more to go… I’m using rsnapshot to perform the backups. It’s a really nice tool I’ve recently discovered. It creates regular snapshots of the directories you tell it to monitor. To save space it uses hard links to store files which haven’t changed since the previous snapshot. Usually that means that your backup space requirements are only about 20-30% more than the amount of data you have, even if you want to have a history of your files going back a few months.

I like Jazz.

Btw, if anybody from UK wants to buy this enclosure I’d suggest to check first if you can get it from a shop on the continent. Price will be much lower.