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IDE to SCSI Converters?

Posted by Cliff on from the how-well-do-they-work dept.

ericdano asks: "Addonics has announced a pair of SCSI solutions, which convert common ATAPI devices and IDE hard drives to high-speed SCSI devices on all Windows, Macintosh, and Linux-based computers: the IDE-SCSI converter ($100) for hard drives and the ATAPI-SCSI converter ($110) for ATAPI-based CDRW, DVD-R/RW, DVD-ROM or CD-ROMs. The company has also announced a high-performance single-channel Ultra160 SCSI PCI host controller ($170) with 160MB/sec. data throughput. How safe are these products?"

1 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Curiosity. by Ashurbanipal · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I don't know where in the hell I'm going to find a case to happily hold 30hd's though.


    I've been running lots of SCSI drives under linux for a long time now. I started out with a single Adaptec SCSI controller, changed over to a pair of DPTs, then went back to Adaptec when I figured out that the Adaptec boards need lots of extra cooling. The drives have been scavenged from dumpsters of local companies; over the last eight years the insatiable corporate hunger for server disk space has driven them to denser platters, so they toss out the older 1 and 2 GB drives.

    Then a friend gave me a case of 9 GB IBM ultra-SCSI drives (new, unused) he got as a going-away prezzie when the dot-bomb he worked for collapsed. Like you, I couldn't figure out how to case 'em.

    Then I went to the local Mega-Mart (Where Shopping Is A Baffling Ordeal (tm!) ) and got some of that heavily perforated sheet metal that people pop-rivet to their screen doors to keep dogs from busting them. It comes in several patterns; if you choose carefully, you can get something that folds easily along straight lines, and has holes that line up reasonably well with hard drive mounting points.

    I use tin snips and old case screws to make what I call "drive blocks", which are seven drives sitting vertically separated by half-inch gaps. I attach old screen-door handles to the top middle, and I make power cables with one female and eight male connectors. I have a bunch of large surplus 12 vdc fans that are ganged together two fans per power connector, and I repin them from 12v to 5v and attach them so they blow through the slots in the drive blocks.

    Nowadays I am running linux soft RAID (RAID 5 across six drives with one spare, except for the boot partition which is just mirrored) on two drive blocks. I have CPU coolers on the Adaptec controllers, though, because they run so damn hot.

    Unbelievably fast disk storage, and I have all the drive LEDs hooked up so it looks really cool when you do a large file copy or an fsck. The blocks sit happily on any flat surface, with their own small AT-style power supply, connected by SCSI and a ground wire to the rest of the server.