Multi Lane Serial ATA whoes

[olly]

Hi everybody,
i have the following problem : a customer of mine is using a 3ware 9500 8-MI Serial ata controller with multilane connectors in a fileserver. He ordered a new case (standalone / no 19'') and i did not pay attention to the multilane sata connectors - so his new case has instead of backplanes with multilanes hdd-bays with 4 single ata connectors.
Now my question :
is there a connector multilane -> 4 single sata ports and if so, where can i buy it ?
if no connector, is there a HDD internal enclosure fitting in standard 5,25'' drivebays to take a multilane connection that works with maxtor hdd's?
Thanks in advance,
Olly

 

[blakerwry]

You're probably best off calling 3ware, I'm sure they've encountered this situation before and can provide you with recomendations.

 

[olly]

Yep, i already contacted their support, but i am still waiting for a response.... and, after a further look into the controllers manual they do explicitly mention a "break-off" cable for use in my special case. only problem seems to be that i did not find a single reseller of that cable.
Olly.

 

[blakerwry]

yeah, I couldnt even find a picture of it with some light google saerching...

 

[olly]

so - let's wait what their support has to say. Seems as they've gone already to dinner (at least here in germany) so i'll try to contact them again tomorrow morning.

 

[Howell]

Hey, Let us know how it turns out.

 

[olly]

Back again with a short update....
Just called 3ware support germany and they told me that this was "wrong" in the manual and this cable will not be available at all - support is trying to investigate the possibilities in this case...
Olly

 

[olly]

next update ....
Support told me that 3ware does not have this cable in its catalogue and advised me to go for another manufacturer for these "octopus-cable" but could not tell me who is producing them.(sigh!) But he promised me to contact amcc (the new mother company) in us and bring up a solution till tomorrow.
Olly

 

[olly]

another day, called support again,
got the following link explaining my pain, but without a solution:
http://info.serialstoragewire.com/mk/get/AMER_STA_062904_5
Olly.

 

[olly]

Finally we've come to an end :
3ware support did not contact me again neither come up with anything usefull and -because i'm short on time - decided to give the 3ware controllers back and instead go for the adaptec ones with single sata lines.
Thanks all.
Olly

 

[Buck]

Finally we've come to an end :
3ware support did not contact me again neither come up with anything usefull and -because i'm short on time - decided to give the 3ware controllers back and instead go for the adaptec ones with single sata lines.
Thanks all.
Olly

Let me know how you like the Adaptec cards olly, my distributor has been pushing me to buy a few.

 

[mubs]

This blog at InfoWorld is worth checking out.

 

[Bozo]

The one BIG item that has me looking at Adaptec rather than 3Ware is 3Wares problem reporting. 3Ware uses e-mail and Adaptec uses alerter service.
Our network is isolated from 'the world' and contains no e-mail at all. If there is a problem with a hard drive on the 3Ware system, we woulldn't know it unless someone was at that particular box. With Adaptec using the alerter service, it can be set up to broadcast a message to multiple computers.

Bozo :mrgrn: