Modify iOmega external drive with larger capacity?

I have an iOmega external drive which has two 500 GB drives in it. It
seems to simply be an enclosure with, of course the RAID and interfaces
giving it additional value.

Is it possible to simply remove the two drives and replace them with 1
TB drives to make a 2 TB store? (or for that matter, 2 x 2 TB).

The model is the iOmega Ultramax (with FW 400/800/USB RAID
0,1,JBOD,No-RAID).

I'd prefer to get a NAS, but it may be a lot cheaper to throw a couple
large drives into this one.

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Alan Browne wrote:
I have an iOmega external drive which has two 500 GB drives in it. It
seems to simply be an enclosure with, of course the RAID and interfaces
giving it additional value.

Is it possible to simply remove the two drives and replace them with 1
TB drives to make a 2 TB store? (or for that matter, 2 x 2 TB).

The model is the iOmega Ultramax (with FW 400/800/USB RAID
0,1,JBOD,No-RAID).

I'd prefer to get a NAS, but it may be a lot cheaper to throw a couple
large drives into this one.


According to this article

http://www.digitalhomedesignline.com...leArticle=true

they have an Iomega drive opened up, and the main chip is an
Oxford Semi OXUF934DSB (Figure 8). Documentation is covered by NDA.
Including a document entitled "Using High Capacity Disks",
which may have answered your questions. (PLX bought Oxsemi, which
is why the web site name has changed.) You could always try Googling
and see what experiences people have had with OXUF934DSB, or
whatever chip inhabits your enclosure.

http://www.plxtech.com/products/consumer/oxuf934dsb

The device is controlled by firmware and has an ARM7 processor
inside the main chip. There is no way to predict how large
a drive it might support. You might come to expect a
2x1TB to be the largest practical configuration, in
configurations where you might be USB booting from the
thing. So if I was filling it with disks, I wouldn't go
any larger than 2x1TB. With GUID partitioning, it might
support larger than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

In terms of power consumption, the startup current on
large drives could be quite similar (with maybe some
slight difference in how long it takes to complete
spinup). I have an enclosure here, where the power rating
of the adapter, is not sufficient based on specification
alone. So even if you were to read the numbers off whatever
powers that box, it may not aid you in predicting if there
will be power issues. The industry trend, seems to be
to underpower the adapters.

As your box is fan cooled, that is a start to maintaining
decent drive temperatures. On fanless units, again, there
is no way to predict how abusive the local environment is
for the drive.

You could always buy internal drive mechanisms, do the swap,
then test. If the test fails, buy some other external enclosure
and finish the job.

In the future, there will be drives that have such large
capacities, as to run into trouble with the limitations
of current hardware and software. You should keep articles
like this in mind, when the new disks come out. And stuff
like this is undoubtedly going to cause grief for
enclosure designs.

"Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins"
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

Paul

On 10-02-08 14:00 , Paul wrote:
Alan Browne wrote:
I have an iOmega external drive which has two 500 GB drives in it. It
seems to simply be an enclosure with, of course the RAID and
interfaces giving it additional value.

Is it possible to simply remove the two drives and replace them with 1
TB drives to make a 2 TB store? (or for that matter, 2 x 2 TB).

The model is the iOmega Ultramax (with FW 400/800/USB RAID
0,1,JBOD,No-RAID).

I'd prefer to get a NAS, but it may be a lot cheaper to throw a couple
large drives into this one.


According to this article

Paul, thanks for your reply. I'll begin delving into those. Your
points on power are interesting and I'll take care. The provided
external p/s seems pretty big for the job and but fairly warm, so it's
worth a check. (( AFAICT when I dismount one of the two drives (I have
it configured as two independent disks at present) it does not power off
the dismounted disk. There is no "spinup" sound and the disk is
immediately available on mount))

The enclosure I have is not the same as the ones in the linked article,
however. I would hope that those controllers are generic on the disk
side. (Should be, formatting was performed by the Mac, not the drive).
The data sheet you reference implies it will control just about any
disk drive that it can connect to.

I'll delve into the problems of disk size as well.

Thanks for your detailed suggestions.



http://www.digitalhomedesignline.com...leArticle=true

they have an Iomega drive opened up, and the main chip is an
Oxford Semi OXUF934DSB (Figure 8). Documentation is covered by NDA.
Including a document entitled "Using High Capacity Disks",
which may have answered your questions. (PLX bought Oxsemi, which
is why the web site name has changed.) You could always try Googling
and see what experiences people have had with OXUF934DSB, or
whatever chip inhabits your enclosure.

http://www.plxtech.com/products/consumer/oxuf934dsb

The device is controlled by firmware and has an ARM7 processor
inside the main chip. There is no way to predict how large
a drive it might support. You might come to expect a
2x1TB to be the largest practical configuration, in
configurations where you might be USB booting from the
thing. So if I was filling it with disks, I wouldn't go
any larger than 2x1TB. With GUID partitioning, it might
support larger than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

In terms of power consumption, the startup current on
large drives could be quite similar (with maybe some
slight difference in how long it takes to complete
spinup). I have an enclosure here, where the power rating
of the adapter, is not sufficient based on specification
alone. So even if you were to read the numbers off whatever
powers that box, it may not aid you in predicting if there
will be power issues. The industry trend, seems to be
to underpower the adapters.

As your box is fan cooled, that is a start to maintaining
decent drive temperatures. On fanless units, again, there
is no way to predict how abusive the local environment is
for the drive.

You could always buy internal drive mechanisms, do the swap,
then test. If the test fails, buy some other external enclosure
and finish the job.

In the future, there will be drives that have such large
capacities, as to run into trouble with the limitations
of current hardware and software. You should keep articles
like this in mind, when the new disks come out. And stuff
like this is undoubtedly going to cause grief for
enclosure designs.

"Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins"
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

Paul


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