Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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USB Controlled SATA power switch? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm slowly swapping my HDDs for SSDs, with the space I'm gaining in the case I want to re-use a single 18TB HDD to add an extra level of backup in the form of a basic Robocopy replica of key folders. Once a week, during the night. Just because I can.

I'm looking for a SATA power switch/controller that has the option for USB remote control. I've seen lots of manually switched controllers that fit in 5.25" bays, that form factor is fine but manual switching isn't. If there are no other options I will get a manual controller and add an Arduino + relay to provide remote control, I thought I'd ask here first.

Alternatives I've already considered are loading the disk manually into the hot swap bay I have - too much effort like manually switching the disk on. Absolute last resort would be an eSATA enclosure and a smart socket, an 18TB disk in one of those would be LOUD.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If you're strictly just trying to keep the power down, configuring idle spindown for just that drive might accomplish the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Will also help with noise. When spun down the drive is silent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I've used power plans in the past to spin down HDDs and it worked quite well. The only issue was these 18TB Toshiba enterprise disks are very reluctant to spin down and they click at idle, which is what caused me to start upgrading to SSD.

Aside from noise and power use, I would really like to properly power off the disk to isolate it from the machine, to avoid damage by malware or my fat fingers. I know that physically removing it from the machine is the best way to do this as it would also avoid power spikes and such but I would rather not have to remember to put the disk in and remove it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

"properly power off the disk", for an internal disk, isn't really a thing. I don't think that the OS, any OS, expects to regularly have disks totally lose power. Sure, hotswapping is a thing, but that's still weird to do on a regular basis.

Having it "cold" to avoid malware and power surges is a fair idea, though. You'd still be concerned about the data lines getting a surge but that's not as likely.

As a somewhat-less-cursed idea, how about an SBC like a raspberry pi on a smartplug inside your case? It can safely unmount the drive before asking the plug to turn itself off. Then there's two devices that need to get crypto-lockered before you lose your data.