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Mixed SCSI/IDE drives?

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7 replies

by mike o 1 view

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I've got a couple of NT servers that are using SCSI drives. However, I've got a 25GB IDE driver that I'd like to install in one of them for backups.

Has anyone mixed and matched before? I haven't seen anything that says I can or cannot do this, and I just wanted to doublecheck before I just install it and the whole system goes meltdown on me.

7 replies

by rsoft

As far as I know, thsi should not be a problem. Be sure to check every setting involved with boot settings (BIOS, ...)

There could be a problem with the drive-id's (c:, d:, etc.) So be carefull...

On the other hand, NT can redirect drive-id's with its Diskadministrator (Administative tools)

Just one question: What good is an IDE drive for backup of your building burns down? Just a tip...

by mike o

I'll doublecheck that.

We only have one site anyway, we're a small high school district. We do use tape backups for the servers and the important machines, but we're also going to be using Veritas NetBackUp Pro for our administrators' machines. We use Ghost for all of our lab workstations, but it's not quite what we'd like to be using for the office workstations.

by tbradley

It'll work, but the hoops you will have to
jump through, and the problems it will cause
should make you think twice.

By default, MOST systems demand that the IDE hard drive become the boot device. With the proper SCSI Bios, you can overcome this, but
then, you have to look at your Network OS to
ensure that it doesn't consider the IDE drive to be the first logical storage device.

Advice, don't use it. 1 - you're going to have to play with your storage volumes, and murphy's law will apply. 2 - the performance of the drive will be less than that of the
SCSI, and will drag the system down.

Better to install the drive in a workstation, and do selective backups of data. From what I gathered from your post, you don't intend to use it for Raid, which it wouldn't work, nor for mirroring, which leads back to points 1 and 2 above. Selective copying on the server itself is best done with a tape device designed to handle that chore.

by mike o

No, it won't be for mirroring, etc. It's simply in addition to our current backups (tapes, Ghost) and solely for the Veritas NetBackup Pro setup.

by mtnsqs

It will work - I have had a number of systems this way - BUT the hardware is going to see the IDE drive first - so it will be the primary boot drive - thus it needed to be in the system when you built it.

A Hard disk is onyl good for hot backups - unless you put the drive into a pull -out disk bay so you can easily take the drive out and take it offsite.

25Gb is a reasonble size hard drive - why not build a new server with it and make use of the space.

use a tape system for yourbackups - thye are a lot easier to take offsite

by mike o

We already use tape and unfortunately I can't afford a whole new machine for this year (the school district thing, see above). I might be able to talk my boss into a motherboard upgrade for the machine it currently resides in, however... (the current setup doesn't have the processor power required by Veritas's software, and right now it's just a simple web server).

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