2 PC's connected to the same drive possible?

[mrth]

Hi guys,

 

Need your brains for a sec, I'm looking to buy a big powerful computer to replace my old one, but I will only need to use that power and the electricity it drains when gaming or editing music/videos. I don't need it for web-browsing and watching youtube. With the interest of saving electricity for the 85% of the time my PC is on I want to hook up a Raspberry pi and a KMV switch to it. That way I can boot the raspberry pi up for browsing and watching 720P vids, save a bit of leccy and then if I fancy a game fire up the beast.

 

I used to have a tablet for "browsing", but got rid because I just ended up either using my phone for a quick google or fire up the computer anyway. So this seems like the best thing for me. one issue I know there will be a file I'll need or something I will want save locally. I don't want to fire up the PC and network to the local HDD. Is there away of connecting 2 PC's to the same drive via a cable.

 

The Banana Pro (the Chinese knock off PI) has a SATA port, so may get that.

 

Any thoughts?

[Zedders]

The best you could do is get a USB powered HDD caddy, unless you want to get a network drive unit.

[alchresearch]

Do you have a router? If so then maybe a NAS box could do the job. Some routers have this feature built in so you can plug in a cheaper USB external hard drive.

[Cyclone]

NAS drive as people have suggested. Many modern routers support just plugging in a USB drive and provide basic NAS functionality themselves.

 

That said, I'd question the basic premise. A modern PC will not use the high powered graphics card unless it's needed and a modern CPU will shut down parts of itself if not needed, so will the PC really be drawing significantly more power than a raspberry pi?

 

---------- Post added 27-04-2015 at 11:46 ----------

 

http://powersupplycalculator.net/

 

This site calculates an idle draw for my PC (high end gaming PC) of 83 watts. Including the screen.

 

A Pi is significantly less power of course, but the difference is still like having a single light in the house turned on, and running the kettle for about 5 minutes would power the difference for about 2 hrs!

[anywebsite]

The newest Raspberry Pi can't possibly use more than 10 watts at full load with stuff plugged into the USB ports. The older model uses a maximum of 5W.

 

If your PC is idle then you should turn it off.

 

Single (compact fluorescent) lights are usually between 8 & 20 watts.

Edited April 27, 2015 by anywebsite

[mrth]

Thansk Guys, Yes NAS is a way to go! If My router is already on all the time makes sence to Plug a USB drive into it and use that as a file server. It was midnight when I posted so wasn't thinking strait.

 

Cyclone, your talking sence, It may seem redundent, but I also want the fall over machine of a second PC I could use in a pinch. I plan to intergrate the PI in a spare HDD bay and mod the KNV swith to have the switch buttons on the frount of the tower. Basically like duel booting, but booting to a seprate device.

 

Thanks again for the Ideas

[Cyclone]

The newest Raspberry Pi can't possibly use more than 10 watts at full load with stuff plugged into the USB ports. The older model uses a maximum of 5W.

 

If your PC is idle then you should turn it off.

 

Single (compact fluorescent) lights are usually between 8 & 20 watts.

 

If you're browsing the web then your PC is basically idle.

 

A halogen spotlight is most likely 50 watts, and a kettle or vacuum is probably 2000 watts.

 

The amount of power to be saved is trivial, which was my point.

 

---------- Post added 27-04-2015 at 14:36 ----------

 

Thansk Guys, Yes NAS is a way to go! If My router is already on all the time makes sence to Plug a USB drive into it and use that as a file server. It was midnight when I posted so wasn't thinking strait.

 

Cyclone, your talking sence, It may seem redundent, but I also want the fall over machine of a second PC I could use in a pinch. I plan to intergrate the PI in a spare HDD bay and mod the KNV swith to have the switch buttons on the frount of the tower. Basically like duel booting, but booting to a seprate device.

 

Thanks again for the Ideas

 

Sounds cool.

[AlexAtkin]

Even the latest Pi 2 is REALLY slow for browsing the web compared to the cheapest PC. Heck, the top-end smartphones are only slightly faster than the slowest PCs.

 

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/2536540/2549739

 

Its really not a good choice for saving electricity as the time wasted due to its slow speed will more than offset it.

 

If its all about electricity, a cheap laptop/Chromebook/2in1 should be more favourable. My PC monitor alone uses more than my Asus T100. (which is what is compared to the Pi 2 in the bechmark link above)

Edited April 27, 2015 by AlexAtkin

[anywebsite]

So, a PC at only 10x the price & power consumption is twice as fast (for some meaningless benchmarks, others it loses on) as a £30 hobbiest board, who'd have thought it.

 

I've no idea how you found out the Pi 2 is slow for web browsing from that.

[Obelix]

The Pi is OK assuming you are not using large datasets that wont fit in memory or need a lot of IO. Step outside what it does well and it suddenly becomes very very bad.