John McGaw wrote:
> Bennett Price wrote:
>> My backup device is a USB 2.0 250 MB Iomega Hard Drive.I'd like to put
>> it in my garage, requiring about 20 to 25 feet of wire. The official
>> USB specs say 5 meters max; if further use a hub/repeater.
>>
>> I'm wondering how realistic the 5 meter spec is. I recall that parallel
>> printer cables were supposed to be limited to 10 feet or so; 75 foot
>> cables worked just fine. Same thing with the specs for RS-232 cables.
>>
>> Does anyone have any real world experience with long USB 2.0 cables?
>> I'm thinking of building mine using unshielded CAT5 cable, one twisted
>> pair for power, another for data. Wise? foolish?
>
> Probably the least troublesome way to do this would be to purchase one
> of the devices which allows a USB storage device to be utilized as
> Network Attached Storage (NAS). Once the device is network-aware the
> distance limitations become less troublesome -- 75-100 meters for wired
> Ethernet and probably 50 meters for wireless. Do a search for "USB NAS"
> (without the quotes of course) and see what pops up.
>
> Out of curiosity, why would one want the backup drive in the garage? I
> have three 200gB backup drives I built from spare hard drives and keep
> one of them in my safe deposit box at the bank and one in my neighbor's
> safe and one in use and I rotate them every couple of weeks. But the
> garage really baffles me.

Thanks for your suggestions.

NAS is overkill for what I want to do. Active hub/repeater cable will
do what I need more cheaply. What I'm wondering about is whether I even
need to spend any money. I've got USB A parts and lots of CAT 5 cable.
Or at some more expense, I could buy a couple of shielded A-A cables and
use them as extension cords.

I back up my RAID 5 array to a separate disk inside my PC and
to the USB external HD. I want to put the USB disk in my detached
garage. If my house burns down, my garage will probably remain intact.
Ditto, theft of stuff within the house. I also put occasional images
on DVD and store them in a small fire-resistant safe in my house. If I
were sufficiently worried, I'd rotate bu's far off site - I'm not.

I'm in California - earthquake country. When the big one hits, nothing
is safe.