SUMMARY : Best Option for Duplicate 70 GB Hard dRive

Folks,

A little late with this summary of a query posted a few days ago...
anyway thanks to all responders. Original query is appended and the
consensus in the replies was that the best way to get around this
problem was to buy an external SCSI from some of the more
reasonably-priced online vendors (approximately $170 to $180) or else
use an old PC running a PC-based UNIX (Linux or Solaris 8 for x86) with
a 70GB IDE drive attached. It's proving difficult to get any of the
vendors to ship internationally (Ireland) so I will probably go with the
PC option. This obviously has the added advantage of giving further
redundancy if the server itself (i.e. not the HD) fails. Another
possibility is to buy an IDE to SCSI converter. Also interesting to note
that if we bought an internal 70GB SCSI, there may be problems from a
thermal perspective.

Thanks again for the many prompt and very useful responses.
John Kelly.

Original Post :

Hello,

I've seen parts of this question answered on the list before but haven't

found a comprehensive solution, so I hope somebody can provide one as a
response to this mail

We have a 70GB external SCSI hard-drive which we use for relatively
important project and application data. We back this up to tape with a
pretty standard backup regime. We are now trying to select a 70GB hard
disk onto which we will copy the backed -up data in the event of the
original external SCSI drive failing. This would only be used for a
couple of weeks while replacing the original drive. The obvious solution

from a technical perspective is to buy an identical external SCSI
hard-drive but the cost of this is prohibitive.

We have access to a couple of SUN Ultra 1's, an Ultra 2 and an Ultra 80.

From what I can see from the architecture documentation for these
machines, none of them support IDE hard-drives (which are obviously much

cheaper). Hence, we are left with the options of using an internal SCSI
hard-drive (giving a minimal price-reduction because of not needing SCSI

cable, enclosure etc) or using an IDE drive in a PC in combination with
SAMBA, so my queries are...

(i) Am I correct in saying that the above Ultra's don't support IDE
drives?
(ii) Since SUN Ultra's running Solaris 8 support an external SCSI HD of
70 GB, I assume there won't be any problem with an internal SCSI HD of
the same size?
(iii) Is there any blindingly obvious solution to this problem that I
haven't thought of?

Thanks in advance for your help,
John Kelly.
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