[SunRescue] Q on "optimal" OS for Sun4c machines, now that So laris 8 won't runn

[MikeHebeldruaga at pmail.net]

[snip!]
>>I keep clones of the OS HD's

Is there anything special you're using to do this or are you backing up the
drive and restoring onto the other?

>>The hardware, other than HD's, seems to run forever, but, I usually
>>wind up nuking a few HD's a year from motor/platter/powerburp bellyup.
>>The old drives are good, but, reaching their end of life.  But, at
>>a buck or two each in surplus, I find it good karma to just keep
>>a few clones handy, on the shelf, ready to load in a couple of minutes.

LOL!  I've just lost about 3 of my older PC hard drives this year but _none_
of my SCSI drives in my Sun/SGI boxen.

Seriously though I think I've had maybe two SCSI drives fail on me in the
whole 10 years I've been doing this.  I think they're just made better (for
the most part).  Although I think in recent years they've begun just putting
SCSI hardware on IDE drives - I think someone mentioned IBM doing this.
That means we _can_ expect the reliability of SCSI drives in general to go
down, maybe not fast but it will happen unless something prevents it.

Anyway the drive swap out idea is a good one.  The moving parts in the hard
drive make it far more prone to failure than anything else in the machine
although there is much to be said for keeping the case extremely cool to
prevent things like the drive spindle motor from heating up.  (The 800meg in
my SS2 generates _massive_ amounts of heat!)  If I could I'd seriously
consider mounting my Sparcs with extra ventilation holes cut into them and
fans.  If the FCC wouldn't b**** I'd run them in a rack without the covers.
I don't think the noise of one would bother the others too much.

Of course I could always talk to www.kryotech.com for a custom cooling
solution. ;-)

Sincerely,

Mike Hebel


What does the rest of the herd do?

Bob

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