On Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:33:59 -0800, "W"
wrote:

"Maxim S. Shatskih" wrote in message
...
What is the need in this?

SCSI drives are much more expensive.

I have existing servers that use SCSI drives. I want to make mirrors of
those existing SCSI drives to identical SCSI drives for backups, without the
hassle of having to prepare those backup drives into a hotswap tray, then
remove them from the tray later.
How often do you expect to do this and how many devices do you have to
deal with?

I have used one of the "internal" SCSI cables that came with an
Adaptec 29160 to connect to the external connector of the card.
I then used that connector on a SCSI drive that I put in a typical
external SCSI disk box, but I didn't bother to use screws to
fasten the drive in place and I didn't bother to put the covers
back on the external box.

This arrangement worked fine for backing up drives, but it
wouldn't work in a data center environment where you can't leave
loose pieces of hardware lying around. Also, stacking the external
boxes was a bit iffy in terms of physical stability - electrically
things worked OK.

ALSO: I have tried several of those external SATA things where you
just push the drive in and all of them resulted in drives running
hot enough so that I jury-rigged a fan to blow over the drive.
Again this resulted in an unstable physical arrangement that I
wouldn't trust if other people had access to the area.
(The heat probably wouldn't be a problem with SSDs.)

You should also ask yourself why you don't want to mount the
drive in a compact external box. For me the only reasons we
1. save space when I stored the disks that weren't online
and
2. being able to temporarily be able to switch the location of
with less work.

For reason 1, I decided that it wasn't worth the effort since I
would have to but the drives in foam for storage.

For reason 2, I used the physically shaky arrangements above, but
was nervous about knocking things over.