The Drive Way - Additional Hard Drives
(Page 9 of 10 )
Unless the computer chassis you purchased has built-in space for more hard drives, the only other option that you have available (for a standard midtower chassis) is to use one or two of the unused 5¼-inch bays. You can pick up from most computer retail outlets bracket adapters (see Figure 6-6) that enable you to install a laptop drive into a desktop and a typical hard drive into a 5¼-inch bay.
The drives you install within your server will provide different levels of value based on how you’re planning to use your server. If a file server is what you have in mind, then the more hard drive space, the better. A print server will have very little use for two 20GB hard drives, but you can most likely fill up the space quickly as an FTP or web server, providing outside access to data and documents. Overall, it would be a good beginning. Whatever your choice, these are my suggested absolute minimum drive requirements for your server:
- A floppy disk drive, for better maintainability
- A single CD-ROM or CD-RW drive
- A minimum of two 20GB hard drives: one for your content, and the other for backup and system recovery (see Chapter 10)
Figure 6-6 -- Bracket adapters (about $8) can convert your extra laptop drive into a desktop drive and prepare your extra desktop hard drive for insertion into a 5½-inch bay.
If an extensive file server is your plan, you may want to pick up a few larger hard drives; but also keep in mind that the larger the drives, the hotter they may operate. We’ll cover keeping the system cool, and a few other final touches, in the next chapter.
 This chapter is from Build Your Own Server, by Tony Caputo (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004, ISBN: 0072227281). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now. |
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