Hi there,

I run a notebook (Dell Vostro 1400) with Ubuntu 10.04.

I have a large amount of data and have this on a number of smaller external (USB) drives.

I recently came across the Icy Dock external hard drive boxes that can take multiple drives (specifically the MBB662US-2S).

I am considering two 1.5 or 2.0 terabyte drives, either Western Digital (Green or Black Caviar) or Samsung Spinpoint F3 or F4.

I am aware of the 4K per sector problem, but it seems that both WD and Samsung offer drives that also use 512b per sector so that this should not be a problem.

Can anyone give any recommendations regarding the hard drives and any experience with the Icy Dock.

As this is a rather expensive set up to buy, I would like some degree of certainty that it will actually work

Thanks in advance.

Jac.

While not the same product, I have an internal 5 bay Icy Dock SATA (removable drives - hot swap) currently populated with 4 drives, albeit of smaller size (250Gb to 500 GB).
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=48
I've had it for around 5 years and never been a problem. Disks don't overheat, easy to use ...

I couldn't vouch for the external dock if it has a software controller, but their products seem solid.

Thanks Smoker, problem is that the multi bay external housing has a controller.

The box is capable of being used in RAID-0, RAID-1, BIG or JBOD modes. I have read a review for one of the single bay external boxes on Phoronix, but I would guess that the controller is quite different.

Anyway, maybe I will just get the box and see how it turns out... Now I need to think what to put inside it...

Cheers,

Jac.