On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:14:17 +0100, "fred.do"
wrote:

I intend to buy a "Maxtor Atlas 10k IV 36.7GB U320 SCA" from DABS.com for
£138 (http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-in...icklinx=2CJKWS)

1) Do Maxtor SCSI hard drives come with a:

a) SCSI PCI Adapter?
Nope! A drive is just a drive. You need to get your own adapter
card. However, for a single drive, and with the possible exception of
really antique adapter cards(which will not Boot from a drive), just
about any lower end SCSI card will run your drive tho with possibly
diminshed speed; Narrow, Wide, Ultra, UltraWide, U2W, LVD, Ultra160,
Ultra320.... Thus you can get by with a $10 card for the interim if
you're buying used.

b) SCSI Cable?
Nope! You need to get your own unless it's some sort of package
deal... the chances of which are vanishingly remote.

2) Is the installation of a SCSI hard drive similar to installing an IDE
hard drive?
Nope! One long specialized long ass cable. For your drive (which
will not terminate with jumpers on the drive) you will need a little
plastic/electronic terminator on the last connector on the cable.
Some cables come with terminators on them. Make sure it's rated for
U320.
SCSI drives are differentiated from each other by ID numbers set with
jumpers on the drives. For your purposes we'll say ID0 thru ID15.
You can probably get by with a single drive setting no jumpers as the
drive will default to ID0, the first drive the card looks for by
default to boot from.
SCA is an 80pin hot swap drive. In other words there will be no other
connectors on the drive (generally) other than the 80pin connector.
That Includes power connections! The 80pin cable, connected to a
backplane supplies the drive power. You need an adapter, rated U320,
to change the 80pin connector on the SCSI drive to 68pin (some also
have 50pin) and a separate Molex 4pin power connector. It will look
like a tiny circuit board about the width of the drive with connectors
and a few jumpers.
SCSI cables have very specific rules about the spacing, lengths, and
stubs on the cable. With a single drive, they're pretty much moot.

3) Can I set the SCSI hard drive as C: drive and connect 2 other IDE hard
drives to the KT400 motherboard and have them act as D: and E: drives
respectively in Windows XP?
Dunno.... most likely you can. Motherboard should support it.
Especially if you don't have bootable partitions on the IDE drives.
Last drive I had that wasn't SCSI was a doublespaced 10meg MFM
drive...
BTW, my 15k drives are quieter than my 10k drives but a lot hotter!
Even with 10k drives you should keep an eye on the cooling....

TIA!
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