scook
You could buy a single Toshiba DT01ACA300 and backup your entire environment on one drive for ~$100

That scares me. I really don't know anything about this and like I said, I have never portioned a drive before. Murphey's Law will surely be at work... it makes me nervous but I'll look.
Newegg has the 1tb drives for 50.99 each and the 500gb drive for 44.99. A single bay docking station on sale for 14 bucks.
162.96 total for the dock and three drives, all Toshiba DT01ACA drives.
 
In cart... will look a little more, wait a few, then buy.
 
Thanks again!
J

Yeah... the DT01ACA300 is only $89.00, that is quite a savings. Is it hard to make partitions or would I just need to make three folders?
 
EDIT>> Yeah.. I think this will work and I think I can do it, unless I am missing something. I may get the 300 to backup everything then get another 500 and clone my C drive so I'll have backups and also have a drive I can just swap out if my OS drive ever fails. That sounds good to me. I would NOT want to go through reauthorizing everything. 44+ bucks is well worth not having to go through that.
Is my thinking sound?
 
J

I don't believe you will need to partition (which is easy). Why not give Jim a call? He has offered to help you understand how it all works.

scook
I don't believe you will need to partition (which is easy). Why not give Jim a call? He has offered to help you understand how it all works.

I think I've got it now, thanks to your help. You saved me some money!! Thank you. I don't want to bother Jim unless I need to. It looks to me like the 300 will work great, just make three folders and back up three drives. I'll call Jim if I run into trouble.
 
Thanks! Happy!
 
J

I love this warning on the bottom of the cart page:
 
WARNING The products listed on this page contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, or birth defects or other reproductive harm.
 
Isn't it wonderful how much the state of California knows, lol! I'm sorry, I can't help myself.

DONE... DT01ACA300 and docking station.
 
Thank you Scook. You helped me go from spending 168 buck to 113 bucks. You are a gentleman and a scholar!
 
Julien

Thanks to both of you for talking this thru in the forum.  I've been able to follow along and get my solution spec'd.
 
 

My dock arrived a few minutes ago, but it doesn't have the eSATA interface.  It is strictly USB3/2.  I called Amazon to **** and they processed a refund and told me to keep the unit.
 
I guess I'll try it with USB.  I wanted eSATA because I have so much USB stuff connected I'm concerned about USB overload.  Now I need to get a drive somewhere ...