On Sun, 15 Jul 2007, Bill Schwab wrote:

> Yes, I could simply buy a machine (and might do so soon anyway), but I
> hate to scrap perfectly good computers, especially given how well they
> run Linux.

I've run 160 and 250GB drives in what some would consider some really old
clunkers (PII-333 using Promise Ultra100TX2 since the built-in IDE was
only ATA-33, and I currently have two old Tyan PIII (~1Ghz) systems
running pairs of 160s using the built-in Promise controllers (but not
Promise's softRAID). In those, I did need a Promise BIOS update to get
proper support for drives larger than X...can't remember if it was 128GB
or 137GB.

If a BIOS update won't solve your problem, you might look into getting an
IDE (or SATA) interface card, which will likely solve the problem. If
your machine is old enough, the IDE interfaces may suck anyway. If they
are ATA-100, I'd be surprised if a BIOS update wouldn't be all you need.

You really want one interface per drive though, so if you want 3 500s, I'd
suggest a 4 (or more) port SATA card and SATA drives.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis | I route
  Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are
  Atlantic Net |
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