The Anatomy of a Server - The Hard Drive

There are a few common types of storage devices: hard drives (the most common), DVD-ROMs, CD-ROMs, floppy drives, and tape backup units. The most common of the hard drives is referred to as Integrated Device Electronics (IDE), based on an old industry standard; but most of the computers sold today use Enhanced Integrated Device Electronics (EIDE), which is a faster version of IDE (see Figure 11).

Figure 11 The IDE (bottom) is more popular hard drive technology among PCs, with a 40-pin connector, while the faster SCSI drive pictured includes a 50-pin connection, but can go as high as 80 pins in the ultra-wide SCSI high-speed drives.

The more popular is the standard electronic interface, used between the computer motherboard’s bus (communications path) and the computer’s disk storage devices (including CD-ROM, tape backup unit, and DVD-ROM drives).

The other choice is the SCSI drive. An IDE drive may go up to 7200 RPM (revolutions per minute) when reading and writing to the hard disk. The SCSI can reach over 10,000 RPM and is typically in high-end enterprise servers and workstations that demand more speed. I’ll discuss the various types of SCSI, hot-swappable hard drives, and RAID controllers in Chapter 6.

I found a generic-quality 20GB hard drive running at 7200 RPM for $37. You’ll need at least one good-sized hard drive for the system to hold any backup files. A 20GB hard drive may be adequate, depending on your plans for backup, but you can always expand if you need more. In a file sharing server, with automated backups, you’ll fill up those drives sooner than you think.