I was dreaming about an IDE external expansion unit, tried to search
for it with no satisfied result. Hopefully someone have seen this
dream of mine in reality.

My PC box is full with internal IDE devices. I then dreamt about
expanding my IDE devices to external box. Let me try to specify it
better:

1. An external case unit, with multiple internal and external drive
bays.
2. Has its own PSU unit, but no CPU/RAM/OS
3. Some internal IDE connectors, or preferably just some PCI slots,
able to accept my IDE RAID PCI card.
4. PCI (or better) connection between my PC box to this external case
unit to maximize bandwidth.
5. Preferably, this external case would be BIOS friendly (transparent
installation to the OS)
6. Preferable, this external case would be 'hot' pluggable (I don't
know how to word it. What I meant is, I can turn it on and off, and
the OS will pick it up as necessary.)

I dreamt that I will put my rarely used IDE drives on that external
case (such as CDRW, DVDRW, Zip drive, Back Up storage, A/V RAID
storage) with several internal fans. This way, I will reduce heat,
power consumption, noise from my PC box, allowing me to add some
internal hard drive for work, but I still have access to the other
drives quickly and transparently. Right now, I have 2 PC connected
with 100BaseT, where the second PC kind of acting like my 'dream'
external expansion, but it still need OS and RAM, so it might crash on
me, and the start up take awhile, and the speed is not good for big
file transfer.

Anyone with idea/info about the existence of my 'dream' external
expansion box?

Hi Robbienewbie,

I found the following products that closely match your requirements.
It was a fairly hard search probably because of the rare need for this
particular item. Please understand that the details for these products
are limited and are not completely displayed in their websites and as
such, I cannot provide you more information than what is published on
the site. You will need to verify with the supplier regarding the
details of each product. Also, please understand that not all of your
requirements were met - probably due to engineering design
limitations. Not all dreams are realized I guess. :-)

To view the details, simply press the "Shift" key before clicking on a
link so it will open a new window or right-click on the link and
choose "Open in New Window" for your convenience.

CalOptic
FireWire, USB, USB2.0, SCSI, CD Tower & Enclosures
13-Bay CDROM/Hard drive tower - $175.00

5-Bay CDROM/Hard drive tower - $85.00
"For All Types of 5.25" DVDROM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW. DVD-RAM, CDROM, CD-RW
devices. Metal Body with Streamlined Plastic Front Panel to Meet
FCC/FTZ Regulation. Built-in 3 inch x 3 inch Cooling Fan. 250W
Universal Power Supply with UL, CSA, TUV, CE Approvals."

9-Bay CDROM/Hard drive tower - $99.00
"For All Types of 5.25" DVD/DVD-RAM/ CD-RW / CD-ROM Devices. Metal
Body with Streamlined Plastic Front Panel to Meet FCC/FTZ Regulation.
Built-in 3 inch x 3 inch Cooling Fan. 300W Universal Power Supply (AC
Input 90V~264V) with UL, CSA, TUV, CE Approvals."
http://www.caloptic.com/enclosure.html

CalOptic contact information
http://www.caloptic.com/co_info.html

Here are some products I found from Raidsys Technology Corp.: 

RAIDSYS Polaris Series IDE RAID Subsystems
http://www.raidsys.com.tw/english/scsi-ide.htm

RAIDSYS POLARIS Disk Array Enclosures
http://www.raidsys.com.tw/english/enclosure.htm

You may need to inquire for dealers near your area. here's their
contact information:

Raidsys Technology Corp.
Contact information
http://www.raidsys.com.tw/english/contact-info.htm


As I said, it was a fairly hard search. However, you can probably find
more by sifting through the 3,060 results of the link below.

Search strategy:

external ide expansion "storage device" - in Google Web search
://www.google.com/search?q=external+ide+expansion+%22storage+device%22&cat=&hl=en

I hope this helps you. Should you have any comments/questions, please
feel free to post your clarification before rating this and I'll
attend to you as soon as possible. I hope I was able to find your
dream and make it a reality for you. Thanks for asking.

Best regards,
Feilong

Good enough answer, 4 stars rating, but in regards of how difficult my
'dream' is, so one extra star is given. As he was pointed out, it's a
bit tricky to find a specific enough keyword to get a good result
because this 'dream' is pretty rare. However, the results given gave
me some insight to further my own search. Thank you for the effort!

Thanks for the great rating Robbie. I hope you use our services again next time.

I wouldn't say this is rare.  I'm looking for the same thing to store
the growing number of hard drives that I'm adding to whatever boxes I
can find.  I'm looking for a drive enclosure with 5, 10, or 15 bays,
one power supply, case cooling fans, and then some kind of interface
to a network or computer like, ethernet, firewire, usb2, sata, fibre,
etc.

Another similar thing is www.sancube.com except I want to be able to
use my own mixed sized drives.

Addonics has some cool stuff that is close with their Disk Arrays for
SATA connections: http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/
but not perfect.

I'm still actively looking for my "dream" setup so if you can, post
any other information you come across here, please.

oh man, for the past week i've been searching the internet allllll
over trying to find something like this.  I have a laptop and I want a
decent sized case to put a few hard drives in and a DVD burner or
something like that.  So I pretty much needed 3 things.  Something to
convert IDE to USB/Firewire, a power supply for the drives in there,
and something to put it all in.

First there's the IDE to firewire converter.  You attach this to two
devices, and you can connect it to your computer thru firewire.
http://www.shop4tech.com/item2121.html

same deal as above, only its a board so you have to be more careful.
http://store.yahoo.com/drivecase/i13toidebrid.html

this one is the same but also has USB 2
http://store.yahoo.com/fire-wire-1394-ilink/fi800i13usb2.html

Now, these would be great (except they are a little expensive), but I
would have no way of running power to the devices.  I'd want a little
power supply that i could put in that has a few outputs for a few
devices.  I couldn't find one anywhere.  I considered taking a
computer power supply and chopping off the mobo connectors and
anything else I didnt need, but that sounds kind of risky and I dont
want to mess up anything by sending too much power to it.


This comes with something that would be useful, but it only has one
power output.  Could I use a splitter to draw two sources of power
from this?
http://www.bcd2000.com/itemdesc_campaign.asp?ic=29301

This looks cool too... not exactly sure how it works.
http://store.yahoo.com/directron/dcp401.html

Now, in terms of a case, I really don't know.  I went as far as
thinking about buying a small computer case, but I think that is too
much.  I might even make one myself out of wood or metal or something,
still not sure.

I hope this helps, if anyone has anything new to add, let me know.

Thanks,
-Adam