Drive speed [was: Re: [rescue] What sucks.]

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Greg A. Woods wrote:

> 5400 RPM with that many platters gives decent transfer speeds,
> esp. given that most such drives are only on an 8-bit bus.

Funny.  Every 3GB and up 5.25" SCSI drive I've had has been wide.  I
suppose there are narrow versions floating around, but I've managed to
avoid them.

> I've got a Trimm tower chassis with four such drives installed (2GB
> units made by HP, IIRC), but I need a standard mini-AT-style 400 watt
> power supply to fire them up....  The 300W unit won't even drive them
> when they're spun up separately.  I've found a few manufacturers who
> list such supplies, but they only sell to OEMs or distributors and I
> can't find anyone in Toronto who even knows how to order one through
> their distributor.  :-(  I had planned to use it for RAIDframe tests.

Find an old IBM RT or similar power supply, they'll spin up most anything.
I have one out of a tower RT as my "bench" computer supply and it's truly
one of the most rugged pieces of "PC" gear I've seen.

Failing that, it's probably +12 that you're lacking in quantity.  This
should be easy to obtain from all sorts of sources, and hard drive power
doesn't need to be exceptionally clean.  You certainly don't need over
300W (my 6-bay Sun 5.25" rackmount chassis drove 6 Elite-9's with a Zytec
269W p/s).

Come to think of it, I wish I'd kept one of those.  6 Elite-47's in 4U
would make for nearly 300GB of space.

-James