Running out of USB ports! Help!

alphaniner said:

But, since all yankleber's external drives are USB I'm not sure hot-swap enclosures are appropriate. Some USB enclosures can be disassembled and contain a normal SATA drive inside, but that's not always the case.

Two of my drives are those cute 'ready to go' ones (one Seagate and one Samsung that actually is a Seagate LOL). The other ones are simply notebook 2.5" drives that I bought empty cases and threw them inside so I am sure that THESE I could hot swap.

But really now after all this discussion I am really leaned to stick with the USB solution. :)

alphaniner said:

One thing that hasn't been mentioned: you (yankleber) may have unused USB headers on your motherboard, and all you need to access those is something like this. Check eBay, USB 2 stuff is practically being given away these days.

I should say that I am a complete idiot. I didn't even check this and you are right, there is a BIG chance that I still have an unused spike in the mobo. Nonetheless I already count on 8 USB ports (six in the back and two in the front) so I am not absolutely sure about that. How many native USB ports modern computers comes with???



By the way, I am a double idiot. In my first post I told that I had 5 ports in the back and now after to check it again I noticed that there are 6, so actually I still have one free in the back that can be used for the new coming HD. So theoretically I am still not running out of USB ports (will be after the new HD).



Oh well... I don't think that to obtain 4 extra USB be such a big sin, is it? LoL! And if I confirm that I have an extra lazy spike in the mobo there will be SIX ports! LoL! LoL!

OK, My new Seagate 1 TB USB disk is here and I am right now transferring all the contents of one of the 500GB for this. USB to USB. Guess what:

Speed... 15MB/s
Time remaining... about 7 hours.