Most bullet-proof drive solution?

[johnklos]

I went through many drives in my A4000 due to heavy I/O, then came up with this solution, a dual 2.5" SATA drive hardware RAID-1 enclosure:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111065&cm_re=sata_raid-_-16-111-065-_-Product

I'm using it with this SATA to IDE adapter which always works:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119257&cm_re=sata_to_ide-_-12-119-257-_-Product

That could just be connected to the IDE bus, but mine is connected to an Acard UW-SCSI to IDE adapter. With two 500 gig, 7200 RPM Seagate drives, it's been happy for a year now.

If you have size issues, you're still MUCH better off with a new drive using only part of it than going with an old drive. I'm using the full 500 gig, but only because I'm running NetBSD. Here's how it shows up in dmesg:

cbiiisc0: target 0 now wide 1
cbiiisc0: target 0 now synchronous, period=50ns, offset=14
siopng sync: siop_sxfr 2e, siop_scntl3 95
sd0 at scsibus0 target 0 lun 0: disk fixed
sd0: 465 GB, 242255 cyl, 64 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 976773168 sectors