Morning All,

I have googled this question but not found much information. Hopefully somebody on here can help.

Long story short, we run quite a few home made NAS storage systems, which we built from spares and purchased components, running FreeNAS software, and with around 4 Hard Drives per unit.

However, part of a current work project needs us to format and clear around 1000 Hard Drives and my thought was to run one of these NAS storage devices and just format them through the FreeNAS program. But doing it 4 drives at a time will be quite time consuming!
So… I know you can daisy-chain the SATA power cables, but can you do it with Data cables? The maximum amount of Sata ports we have on any 1 motherboard is 4, so whats the maximum amount of extenders, and duplicators I can run with it still working?
Obviously, I could try it out, and see how far I get before it stops working. But If anybody has an answer before I buy the new components, that would be great!

Thanks all
J

Not that I’m aware of. It’s normally 1:1 port to disk.

You might be able to get away with an add in card to give you more SATA ports though. Or maybe one to push them external so you can then quickly plug and unplug the drives.

Are the drives for disposal or re-use? If the former, probably quicker to destroy the platters with a hammer 😉

No they don’t.

You could try adding a bunch of SATA cards to the motherboard. You could get an 8 port card for 50 quid. Stick a few of these in.

I was thinking of these –

I know its not going to be the easiest or prettiest of solutions, but I was ideally thinking of speed.

woody2000 – Member
Are the drives for disposal or re-use? If the former, probably quicker to destroy the platters with a hammer

Unfortunately it is for re-use, we have to completely format and provide documented proof before the whole PC’s can go through to resale.

If your NAS is hot swappable then it might not be too bad; but if it’s not and you need to reboot when you change a drive I’d do it with a laptop and a couple of cheap external sata adapters that are disassembled.

Unplug adapter from laptop; connect to drive; connect to laptop; format; disconnect from laptop; change drive; rinse and repeat. If these are 3.5″ drives you might need to supplement the power to the adapter with a wall wart – make sure you buy ones that have supplemental power jacks (the StarTech one I’ve got does)

No. You can get PCIe cards with 16+ ports though.

If it’s for disposal of old drives, there are companies that will pick them up, (physically) shred them and give you a certificate to say they’ve been securely disposed of. It may well be cheaper than having someone on minimum wage doing hundreds of batches of plugging in drives and running erase software on them.

Oh; and just be grateful you don’t have to re-image 250 PC’s that are all still on old fashioned IDE ribbon cables. That was fun (if waaay back in the day) – without fail the worst bit was physically removing and refitting the drive.

Which makes me think; if these drives are all in desktops /towers then you could use a SATA extension cable on the adapter and leave the drives in situ; just power on the system and then reconnect the drives when you are done.

handyman153 is that a port multiplier? Best check your motherboard supports port multiplication on the SATA port.

http://www.ebuyer.com/708948-usb-3-0-esata-6-bay-hard-drive-duplicator-dock-1-5-hdd-satdock5u3er

The NAS is Hot-Swappable, we checked that before thinking of this solution, so that’s a slightly positive!

stevehine –
That’s a really good idea actually, coupled with ‘Simon_g’ mentioning the 16 port PCI cards, I am thinking 16 (max) PC’s at a time, all powered on with extensions running into the PCI card, will mean taking the HD out isn’t needed.

Could be an interesting weeks work!

Thanks for all the replies!

Perhaps suggest that it’s cheaper to buy 1000 new drives than it is to pay you to work for a week pointlessly erasing your existing ones? SATA multipliers aren’t that cheap to begin with, even when they do work.

Flaperon,

I have suggested exactly the same as you, or alternatively selling the base units without a HD in place.
However I have been told that isn’t an option, despite trying to persuade otherwise!

Thanks for all the replies..
We have decided to just buy a port multiplier like the photo above, and see what happens.
It’s only a cheap bit of kit, so no big loss if it doesn’t work!

Are you just quick formatting, whole drive formatting, or running drive erase software? I’m sure you’ve done the math but how long will each cycle take?