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9213
April 7th, 2005 13:00
Removing the SCSI backplane and using IDE drives instead.
Has anyone ever pulled off the backplane on a PE2400 and just used the front cradles for IDE drives?
Since SCSI drives are so expensive (and running 3 x9 gig SCSI drives isn enough anymore) I was planning on pulling all of them out with the exception of the boot drive (this I can move to a 5.25 tray for now) and add an additional PromiseUltra100 card. From the two Promise cards I can install 6 x 250gig IDE drives in the front cradles and I still have room for a DVD Rom and DVD Burner.
If this works I may just yank the remaining Boot drive and rebuild the system.
Any suggestions or comments before I start pulling my machine apart? This machine is so solid, I want to upgrade it as much as I can.
Ken
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KenLangendock
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April 13th, 2005 11:00
I thought the drive bays clamped into the front of the tray. I'll have to look into that one. Thanks.
As for Power. I can always buy a power splitter(s) for the existing connectors.
Thanks for the feedback
speedstep
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April 13th, 2005 11:00
Also there are no power connectors for the drives inside as they get power from the backplane.
speedstep
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April 16th, 2005 22:00
With no backplane board the drives will go in and fall into the case as there is nothing at the back to keep them from going all the way thru.
You could cut a piece of blank circuit board and dremel out slots for the ide and power cables to fit thru. Too much work IMHO.
KenLangendock
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June 4th, 2005 21:00
Sorry Speedstep, but your information was incorrect.
This week I pulled apart my PowerEdge 2400. The back plane removed without any issues and the drive bays mount on the front. I have installed a WD1600JB drive as my 'C' drive and a WD2500JB drive as my secondary. I still have 4 bays left for more drives :-)
My task now is to reintall the O/S and get the machine back up and running without any SCSII hard drives installed.
BTW, If anyone is interested, I now have 2 (soon to be 3) 9 gig SCSII drives for sale.
Ken
speedstep
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June 5th, 2005 21:00
Correct or not I think it should be premised with the Idea that Not all servers in a series are the same. There are 2U and 6U versions with different mechanical configurations. What you are saying then is that the drives mounted on the trays do not slide all the way thru on the mounting trays. Thats interesting information.
Power connections could be had via Dell Precision 410 power supply connectors. This is because the 2300 and the 410 use the same power supply. The 2300 has the backplane, and the 410 has an adaptor cable to convert the backplane power back to 4 pin molex drive setups.