Chris Mauritz <chrism at imntv.com> wrote: > You're playing with fire. You're not doing your client any > favors by "keeping it cheap." I have to partially agree with Chris here. You're now talking about an integrated SCSI controller on the mainboard, not my idea of "ideal." So now you're putting more constraints on yourself. > Any money you save will be spent by someone like yourself > spending hours to make sure this cobbled-together solution > actually works. Agreed. Until the system has an _off-mainboard_ storage controller, then you're not going to be able to replace 1:1. At first, I thought you were just talking about having a "light mainboard/CPU/memory" as a backup. You would then have an extra storage controller on-hand as well. That would work. But now you're got hardware dependencies in the mainboard itself, especially the storage controller. _Not_ good. That makes it difficult to bring up a replacement system by merely putting in the exact same storage controller, and moving the disks over. > You DO plan to actually test this at some point? Agreed. That's why I suggested you have the "emergency hardware" _on-hand_ in the first place, to verify you can replace it out. Again, it's worth the $200 to do it _if_ you have an extra storage controller on-hand (which you should anyway) *AND* you can move over the storage itself. -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance b.j.smith at ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------------------- *** Speed doesn't kill, difference in speed does ***