Quick question about older server level SCSI drives

[Koharski]

A local business was chucking out an old compaq proliant server with dual PIII 500mhz cpus and a gig of ram. I asked the manager there if I could take it and he said it wouldn't be a problem but they'd be wiping the drives so i'd have to reinstall with my own disks.

I said that would be no problem since I was gonna put linux on the thing anyway.

what I didn't realise was that "wiping the drives" involved drilling a hole in them.

so now i've got 6 duff compaq proliant 9.1gb scsi drives. The drives enclosures are perfectly fine, but what drives can I replace them with? Will any 9.1gb scsi drive do? Can I use a higher capacity drive, like something upwards of 120gb?

 

[Nothinman]

You need to find out what SCSI connector is in there, that'll be the main deciding factor.

 

[Fear No Evil]

What do the drives say on the outside of them? And are they the old 'white' drives or the newer black and silver type ones?

 

[Rubycon]

What's the model?

Are they hotswap drives? Most likely they will be SCA 80 pin drives, U160 SCSI variety. Those can be found cheap but the performance is not so great and the power consumption will be high.

 

[Viperoni]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
What's the model?

Are they hotswap drives? Most likely they will be SCA 80 pin drives, U160 SCSI variety. Those can be found cheap but the performance is not so great and the power consumption will be high.

QFT

Also, the RAID controller in older boxes I've found is a limiting factor in performance as well.... don't expect to get much more than 30mb/s transfer rate.

 

[Aeridyne]

Hey Koharski, I've got some 9.1 scsi drives laying around! lol. I know they work too! Hit me up if you want to talk. I have a bunch of them, i've got a few spares and I have 2 compaq proliant 5500s each running 10 drives in a big arse raid 5. They both have server 2k3 on em and run like champs.

**btw, the capacity is limited by the drive controllers, I'm familiar with some of the older compaqs, I imagine it's a proliant model, what exactly is it?