Installing Ext HD in loft for security reasons

antonioconte

Registered
Hi, I'm a freelancer and I work from home and I'm getting a bit paranoid about my backup Hard Drive ( Maxtor firewire) getting stolen ever. If it did, It woul seriously be a nightmare, know what I mean? All those clients artwork etc gone!

Anyway, I'm thinking of purchasing a 10m 6pin firewire cable and positioning the drive in the loft, above my office. Ok, I know in the summer it'll get hot and in the winter it could get really cold but it is insulated up there.

Also, my concern would be dust getting into the drive, or am I being too cautious?

I also might have to run the firewire out of the room through the wall, on the outside of the room and back into the loft.

My other concern is that I will need to install a socket (no problem) for the power and would install a switch so I could switch the drive off and on as I would not want to constantly have to go up in the loft to switch it off/on. Is this a problem with Hard Drive? I woul dhave to leave the switch on the back of it constanly in ON position and rely on my socket switch to switch it on and off. It would be a fused switch though which I suppose would be a good idea?

Anyone got an idea if I'm doing the right thing?

thanks in advance!
 
I would say that if the loft wouldn't be comfortable for a person to exist in, then it wouldn't be a good idea to store a disk drive there. If you would get too hot or too cold up there, then a hard drive would get too hot or too cold up there.

Hard drives are sealed pretty good, so my only concern would be dust getting in the FireWire case (not the actual hard drive), hampering airflow.

Also, the length of a FireWire cable between the computer and a device or a device and a device shouldn't be any longer than about 15 feet (4.5 meters):
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=firewire&_requestid=415303

My suggestion would be to purchase another backup hard drive which you store somewhere off-site (a relative's house, a trustworthy friend's house, a safe deposit box, an actual safe in your house, etc.). One backup drive is good, two is even better.
 
Looks like they're using some fancy shielding to get around that limitation, as they say on the right-hand side.

Exceeding the 4.5 meter cable length!
Unibrain firewire cables do not only achieve a very controlled 110 Ohm impedance but also provide high performance for skew, attenuation and crosstalk.
These latest features were not prerequisites when the
first IEEE-1394/1395 specification was issued, at the time limiting the maximum cable length to 4.5 meters.
Therefore we can now secure safe operation of our
Firewire cable lengths up to 10 meters!

For backing up, I would not trust it, but that's just a personal preference.
 
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