[LUNI] What to do with lots of ATA drives [was: External chassis suggestion]

[Martin Maney]

On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 10:58:52PM -0500, Jay Strauss wrote:
> So I have to get a big case, and probably a motherboard to match and
> build a new box with a lot of drives?

New motherboard?  Why?  Unless you have something non-ATX it would drop
right into that.  I've never seen, myself, external drive bays other
than pricey rack cases designed to complement pricey servers.  And
those would have been designed for SCSI anyway... all of which was part
of the motivation that led me to the Norco case to begin with.

But now that you mention it, perhaps it was in the back of my mind that
if they're PATA drives then by far the simplest approach would be to
put them along with the motherboard and controller(s) into a single
box.  The SCSI bigots are absolutely right on one point: SCSI was
designed to be used outside the confines of a single chassis, while ATA
never was.  Even eSATA seems more like an afterthought...

-- 
Then I can figure out what the information-support needs are and
build a prototype for people to respond to.  This works, because
people generally don't know what they need, but they can tell you
with certainty when you get it wrong.  -- Paul Murphy