Cheap servers are nice, but...
You get what you pay for... And why I hate IDE.
You live by the sword, you die by the sword. I’ve been running these cheap second hand servers for almost three years, and what was bound to happen, well, did. One after the other, the Seagate 160 Gb, 250 Gb and 500Gb IDE drives gave up the ghost on two of my four recycled P3 servers. Since these were two of my three web servers, I had to move my sites on the remaining (and still holding) box. I somehow forgot to move this one (man, I feel stupid!).
Fortunately, there is a large amount of real servers hitting the market on the cheap these days. Therefore, funds permitting, I will replace my EMC and generic boxes by Proliants, since they have true hardware raid capabilities, hot swappable redundant power supplies and, well, for the G3 and G4 generations, parts are plentiful and quite cheap.
I’m thankful for corporate tax laws and practices; everybody leases stuff for three years, and when it comes back from leasing, it floods the market and sells for next to nothing. I might even take a drive out to get some, since the biggest expense on these things is usually shipping, and there are a few suppliers within normal driving distance.
Also, it’s easier to find server LVD SCSI drives than IDE drives these days. I was looking for drives recently, and most places I usually hit only carry some legacy 80 Gb models. Might as well switch to some used enterprise-class stuff, then...
Fortunately, there is a large amount of real servers hitting the market on the cheap these days. Therefore, funds permitting, I will replace my EMC and generic boxes by Proliants, since they have true hardware raid capabilities, hot swappable redundant power supplies and, well, for the G3 and G4 generations, parts are plentiful and quite cheap.
I’m thankful for corporate tax laws and practices; everybody leases stuff for three years, and when it comes back from leasing, it floods the market and sells for next to nothing. I might even take a drive out to get some, since the biggest expense on these things is usually shipping, and there are a few suppliers within normal driving distance.
Also, it’s easier to find server LVD SCSI drives than IDE drives these days. I was looking for drives recently, and most places I usually hit only carry some legacy 80 Gb models. Might as well switch to some used enterprise-class stuff, then...