drive trays on xSeries (x345) - U160 / U320 difference?

[dmgoss]

I'm trying to populate a RAID array on an IBM xSeries 345 that came with no drives or trays. The machine is U320 so I am searching for various U320 15k drives and so far it looks like I'm buying the drives in various makes w/o trays to be able to afford this (if I buy the IBM part number w/tray the cost is too high for this personal project).

My question is that leaves me buying trays. So far some of the cheapest I've seen are older 9GB and 18GB drives that have trays with them. The drives are usually U160. I bought one and it fits fine, I intend to remove drive and install the U320 one.

The tray is the style that has four silver tabs in the front (I've seen others with many and others w/3). It also has the included connector plate on the back (the drive does not mate directly w/backplane).

Since this is an 80 pin SCA connector, will this work fine w/U320? My understanding is that it will but I see so many IBM variants of this tray that I'm getting foggy now. Before I buy more trays I'd love some help.

Also, even if this tray works fine I've seen others that I think might be newer, they have many silver tabs and no back plate between the drive and the backplane. Is there an advantage to this style (other than it eliminates a place for a bad connection?)

THANKS!

d.

 

[Njetscreamer]

dmgoss,

the difference in the drive trays is that you will notice on a u320 tray there is a longer 'tab' on the right hand side of the tray as you look at it front on, as well as there being a sca-2 extension on the rear of the u160 tray.


The reason for this is to allow for backward compatibility with older u160 drives but to prevent u320 drives being placed in older u160 systems, mainly if i understand correctly to prevent overheating of the drives.

Hence you can purchase u160 converged tray drives and utilise these in the x345, it is however adviseable to update everything first.

Recently a new version of updateXpress was released, which ought to bring the system up to pretty much latest of everything, it would be worthwile downloading this from

http://www.pc.ibm.com/support

and run a search on updateXpress.

Kind regards

Njetscreamer

 

[itsp1965]

Check out this following recently released technote regarding this

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0569.html?Open

 

[dmgoss]

Thanks! I appreciate the info Njetscreamer and that link with the photo from itsp1965 is exactly what I needed.



d.