On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Michael C. Robinson <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm a little tight right now and have noticed that my hard drive in > one of my servers is dying. The problem is, that hard drive is ATA > 100 and the motherboard doesn't support serial ATA. I don't need a > more powerful server, but the Serial ATA push does pose a problem. > > I bit the bullet and bought 2 ATA 100 250 GB drives on EBay. I > figure I can keep one sealed for when the other drive wears out. > How long do I have to stock up on ATA 100 drives and as needed > 80 wire cable? Is there a cheap way to refurbish working drives > that are starting to have trouble? What thoughts can people offer > on adding PCI cards that support SATA to older PIII systems?
Locals ENU and Iguana Micro have New ATA drives. Also Newegg and Mwave both still carry new ATA devices. > > What I'm looking at is sinking maybe $100/month into ATA 100 > hard drives to stock up for when the drives I am using now > wear out. I figure if I keep a drive in the sealed anti > static bag that it shouldn't wear out. As long as you really have a sealed bag not just taped shut. Also you need to control your storage environment. The shipping boxes for them would be better than the raw anti-static bag. Storing them flat is not recommended. Side or end. > > Should I stock up on ATA 100 hard drives for when my current drives > wear out, or is there a Serial ATA PCI card I should get that works > well under Linux? Do I have to get new power supplies if I purchase > PCI SATA cards? If you can find any, use the SAS cards. They are more expensive but would allow you to handle both SATA and SAS drives. As far as SATA plug in cards that work with linux. Highpoint, Marvell and Silicon Systems are the controllers that I have used in the past. > > This problem goes beyond just my servers. I have a mixed environment > of computers where many of them use PATA hard drives exclusively. This is were it starts to be cheaper to think about moving the computer services onto one machine running virtual images unless you really like tinkering with old equipment. Just the savings in power might save enough on cooling requirements to make the switch. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
