Elegant additional storage for EEE Box?

December 12, 2008 12:16 PM

Is there an elegant way to equip the EEE Box with massive storage?

I have a recent Dell desktop that sits under my desk and wastes plenty of space and power. It's a 24/7 usenet fileserver for my home.

I am looking to downsize a bit, and the EEE Box seems like the perfect solution. It's small, has plenty of processing capability for my purposes, and does not consume a whole lot of power. However, it is only equipped to take 2.5" hard drives, and I need to have at least a terabyte available.

I considered building my own small form factor PC, but it would end up being slightly more expensive and I really don't have the time. I also like the fact that I can mount the EEE Box on the back of my monitor to keep it completely out of the way.

Is there anything short of an external hard drive that I could use to get add more storage to the EEE Box?

posted by mr.dan to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Perhaps you could tuck a network storage appliance somewhere out of the way?

This probably does not fit the notion of "downsizing" very well.
posted by brennen at 12:34 PM on December 12, 2008

I considered just buying a Linux-based NAS to use, but they are roughly the same price as a full blown small form factor PC. Also, I wouldn't mind having another PC around.
posted by mr.dan at 12:41 PM on December 12, 2008

You could rip out the hard drive in the EEE box and use an large external eSATA drive, or even just use external USB 2.0.

For the price of the EEE, you could easily build a SFF machine. I used a Shuttle KPC w/ a low power Intel Celeron 430, which cost around $130. Add some cheap ram and a 1 TB hard drive and you're still under $300.
posted by wongcorgi at 1:09 PM on December 12, 2008

I've been considering the same sort of thing. The MSI Wind pc costs about $150, has similar specs and I believe you can stuff two SATA drives in the thing if you drop the dvd drive. That said, I was looking to replace an aging dell monster too. I calculated the cost savings and determined that it would take six years for the new machine to pay for itself in electricity savings. I did think with a kill-o-watt meter. It's a nice idea to save electricity, but it's worth considering exactly what you're saving.
posted by roue at 2:39 PM on December 12, 2008

You don't need a full-blown NAS, just get one of the many consumer-grade devices available. I have an NSLU2 ($79 when I bought it) hooked up to two 1GB USB external drives.
posted by me & my monkey at 9:16 PM on December 12, 2008

Is there anything short of an external hard drive that I could use to get add more storage to the EEE Box?

The answer to this question seems to be a decisive "No," at least not for another year or so, when 2.5" HDDs achieve 1TB capacities. It's hard to see how you could fit a 3.5" HDD in the case without an extensive case mod. A second 2.5" drive looks like a tight squeeze too, and there would be nothing to hook it up to.

For $250, which looks like less than the cost of the EEE Box with a much smaller drive, you could get an MSI Wind from NewEgg, add a GB of RAM and an internal TB HDD and call it done. It isn't as sleek as the EEE Box, but would actually hold a terabyte, and you might be able to squeeze in another TB too.
posted by Good Brain at 1:49 AM on December 13, 2008