Hard drive problems looking for a solution

[Little John]

I am upgradeing my server with one I have aqquired.
The old one has 7 IDE hard drives in, 2 80GB in raid 1, the other 5 are 250GB drives just shared for me to store "stuff"

The new server is better speced (dual xeon3Ghz) and curently configured with 4 160GB sata drives configured as raid 1+0 striped and mirrored giving 320GB of space. one of them has gone and needs replaceing which I will sort as I have a spare drive ready for it.

Now I want to retain the 1.25GB of space I have on the 250GB drives just as they are but the new server case can't fit them in. they curently sit in a 3 bay chasis holding 4 of 5 drives so I could just stick that somewhere it just isn't tidy and would need to cut holes in the new server for cables.

I could try find a NAS box to take the 5 drives but they seem stupidly expensive. I don't really want a stack of external USB drives either

I do have a few spare SCSI controlers if they could be used maybe an external scsi case thatw ill hold the IDE drives? I have only ever seen scsi chasis but maybe someone has seen something else?

The new server only has 2 x 5.25 bays so the drive holder I have cant go in there, I have no problem removeing the optical drive. so maybe a multi bay that takes 2 5.25 bays maybe? the other 2 drives I could balence inside somewhere.

I don't really want to go out and buy new drives and scrap the 5 x 250GB drives but that is the only real solution I can come up with. they are nice quick and reliable western digital drives.

So does anyone have a solution for me keeping costs low please.

Any sugestions will be considered and the winner will get a keyring if you want see my other post

[blacksheep]

try get a drive cage and make a little box for them all - get some rounded ide cables which can be fed through some piping/tubing and into the server (with power coming the other way). Should look neat enough and if you don't have enough ide channels shove a pci ide card in.

[TotallyRandom]

Ive got a PCI card with 3 sata ports and one IDE port if you want it

[Over Carl]

I have an idea with definite pros and cons. Get a crappy pc for nothing, Get TotallyRandom's card, then you can add the 5 ide devices to a pc. Then you could run something like FreeNAS on the pc. I'm guessing this will be technically superior to most other solutions, only problem being you need to hide the pc somewhere and consider the electric.

[Little John]

Well the temporary solution


I need to cut a few holes in the case and get some longer IDE cables or maybe run the cables out through the back of the case if they are long enough but I'm sure I will work it out.

Network is now 1Gbit and running on a 1200VA UPS