SCSI hard drives in compaq proliant 5500

[twiggy]

hi guys and girls,

sorry for double post i was adviced to move it here by Mel Burslan, previous post at:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1040531

i am new to here so sorry if i make a faux pas.

i have a compaq proliant 5500 (old version nothing sexy and new :P). i am running ubuntu (dapper) on it as a server. all is grand. it came with 4 scsi drives. 3 15k 9.1gig ultra3 wide drives and one 10k 9.1gig ultra3 wide drive.

what i want to do is add more.. i saw on ebay some compaq drives that came with the casing to insert them in (hot swap drive thiings). they seemed pretty cheap all in all compared to new scsi stuff (just finished uni so buying uber stuff is way out of reach). but i dont know if i have 160 or 320 or another type of ultra3.. to be honest i dont know a lot about scsi and raid stuff and am trying to learn, but its going slowly.

is there a way of finding out what i have? i posted on ubuntuforums.org but no reply as of yet. will different scsi's work together? i presume i should stick to ultra3? also i presume i can get different size drives, ie i would like to get a couple of 36gig or maybe 3 of them.

at this point i have 24gig available (according to gnome in ubuntu). but the 4 disks i have at present equal a touch more than 36gig. i presume this is becuase its running in a raid and has redundancy in it?

sorry if there is not more information i am not sure what else to put.. any and all help is more than appriecated.

Thx

Twiggy

P.S. this thread has been moved from Linux based to ProLiant Servers - Netservers - HP Forums moderator

[Alan_152]

If equipped with a stock controller, your p5500 is using ultra3 wide disks with a trasfer rate of 80, as apposed to the newer U160s and U320s. Slow, but that doesn't stop me from having a whole pile of these in use in my garage.

AFAIK, the ultra3 got as big as 36Gig. You could install a 300Gig U320 drive, but you won't get full speed out of it (and you might not get full capacity either, depending on the condition of the the controller).

Depending on your RAID setup, you could expect to lose about 40% of your linear capacity to redundancy and crc data.

Lots of these units, drive slides, drives, external raid cabs, etc., can be found cheap on eBay -- if you don't mind paying for SH+H. Fairly upgradable too, if you keep the firmware up to date. I'd grab a few spare CPU voltage regulator boards, if I were you, because they are never cheap when I need them and are cheap when I don't.

Last note -- early proliants were in service for many years. They are like old 727s or DC-9's -- not good enough for 1st tier airlines like United and American anymore, but there are plenty of charters, cargo carriers, and puddlejumpers who use them every day and will for years to come. Good luck!