EIDE hard drives in ML370?

[Dan Mahoney]

We've got our ML370 G3 configured pretty much the way we want, aside from not being able to use an external USB hard drive. However, we still need to add some high-capacity short-term storage. I see in the bootup messages that the ML370 has an IDE controller.

Has anyone successfully added an IDE hard drive to an ML370? The documentation on Compaq/HP's site makes it look like they support only SCSI drives, but I still wouldn't mind plugging in an IDE drive if I had reason to believe that it'd actually work.

[Sunil Jerath]

Hello Dan,
The EIDE channel is for CDROM only. If you do plug in the HDD it wont work unfortunately.

Regards,

[Dan Mahoney]

Oh, bummer - I was afraid of that! So it sounds like if we want to add some additional storage for short-term use we're going to have to bite the bullet and install more SCSI drives.

Well, thanks for the info. It would have been an even bigger bummer to have gone to all the trouble of fighting with an IDE drive just to learn that it won't work!

[Sunil Jerath]

Hello Dan,
In the past I did come across someone who had installed an IDE controller and then attached the IDE HDDs to that controller. Apparently that must have worked since I never heard back anyone complaining about it. The IDE controller I had recommended was made by Promise. You can always go and visit their web site at www.promise.com

Regards,

[Alex Christofides]

You could always instead add a USB2 external drive, lots on the market at present - will not be massive performance as probably high processor overhead, but might do job. USB2 PCI cards can be got for around £20, using one at present for external dvd write