SGI: Hardware

Unfortunately my ancient 2gb drive in my Indy died. I want to replace it, but the prices for 50 pin scsi drives right now on ebay are crazy.
However, 80pin ultra320 drives are dirt cheap. Will a Ultra320 80pin drive work on the indy with an 80 pin to 50 pin adapter or is this drive too new for the scsi bus in the old indy?
If not the 80pin ultra320 what about the ultra160 or perhaps 68pin drives. Im looking for any alternative to having to pay what people are asking for 50 pin drives right now.
From what i read the drives should be backwards compatible but it isn't always the case...

A few of the newer Ultra320 SCSI drives eliminate the ability for them to work on the older SCSI buses. It is however almost assured though that any 16gb drive will be old enough to work and still provide plenty of space for an Indy. The only thing you will then need is an SCA 80 pin adapter.

Really? When did this happen? I could use a boatload of 146G 10 or 15K for my Sun boxes.

I bought several 300GB Seagate 10K.7 disks (both SCA and 68pin) @ EUR 25 each last year, I consider that cheap. I also got a dozen or so 300GB 10K FC disks for my SAN for even less (I think it was a little under 20EUR each, the proper IBM/Hitachi parts, including the brackets for the IBM DS4300). Maybe I'll get another dozen, max out the thing

The world moved on to SAS/SATA, everything else is unloaded at scrap prices if you look around. This doesn't stop others from asking way too much, of course. No shortage of people dreaming to get rich off of other people's waste.

It helps to buy in quantity to keep the overhead of shipping costs per disk low.

That's a good price. I haven't seen anything less than 75 bucks for the 146G plus another 20 dollars shipping each and most seem to be over a 100 dollars each. Last time I checked the prices on the 300G were nearly 200 dollars a piece. Where are you guys finding this stuff? ebay or somewhere else?

In my case, the DS4000 FC disks came from eBay DE or FR, the SCSI disks from our local Dutch market place (marktplaats.nl). Saves shipping

I'm considering THESE or THESE for my TP9100: 146GB 15K, @9EUR. That's FC, of course

Wow that's a great deal. Do the FC drives work in place of Ultra320? I have no idea what the difference is and I don't have a storage array.

Nooooooo!

FC != SCSI, like SATA != SCSI

Ok thank you.

Blue, a couple of months ago I bought a brand new OEM Fujitsu 72 gig 15k rpm scsi drive for $15 with a one-year warranty. They had 146 giggers for about $25 but I wanted to see if they were a fraud first. (Here is China, the Assistant used to insist on plugging in light bulbs in the store to make sure they worked before we took them home. And yes, they were set up for that because so did everyone else. Ah, the good old days ) So far so good.

You should be able to find something ...

You can do that where I live too. Of course the Dutch are even cheaper than the Irish, maybe that's why

About the disks: it helps to figure out the exact part# of what you want. For example, the 300GB Seagate 10K.7 w./ SCA interface is part# ST3300007LC.

If you feel like bidding, here's two, current bid $15: http://www.ebay.com/itm/360707650819
Or here, BIN, two for $60: http://www.ebay.com/itm/130959232995
Or brand new for $80: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321129728092

It sometimes helps to search for the HP or Dell part# of these disks. You'll find the super expensive people targeting the sysadmin looking for a specific HP part (on eBay, really?) but also the 'I don't know what this is but it says this on the label, start bid $0.99' auctions that might go under the radar.

Since this was for an Indy (which has narrow SCSI, which can be problematic with U320 disks), I'd google around to see if the device of your choice is going to work in the first place.

Thanks guys. Last time I did search on my part numbers because I realized I don't know enough to tell whether anything else will work and everything I found was $$$$$$. When I have more cash I'll look into this again.