Harry Oldenhuis wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
 MB> In general, IDE/EIDE drives on NetWare servers should 
 MB> be avoided.  They tie up the CPU while doing I/O, and 
 MB> cannot offload processng as SCSI drives can.
 HO> You will find that there are a lot servers running ide
 HO> systems I also have a 386dx  25 mhz  8 megs of ram with 
 HO> a RLL controller card running 2   72 meg hard disks (110
 HO> megs each) using novel 4,1 server    and it works very well.
I never said it would not work, but that it should be avoided.  By the same 
token, 386DX-25 NetWare servers should also be avoided!  These things are all 
just speed penalties, but they will work.
On the other hand, I would start to think about replacing that server by now. 
The life of a hard drive, especially an older one, has an upper limit of 
about five years, and anything past that is running on borrowed time.  Given 
that 486 motherboards are almost free on the surplus market, and I can buy a 
1 GB IDE drive for $100 and 32 MB RAM for $40, a little preventative 
maintenance now could save you a day or two of downtime when that server 
fails.
You have struck one of my pet peeves in networking: the principle that you 
should not mess with anything that works.  I can guarantee you that your 
server will fail, and that it is only a matter of time.  If a couple of days 
of downtime while you replace the machine and restore from backup is not 
important to you, then running it until it fails is a reasonable strategy. 
However, I have never yet seen a NetWare server where no one cared if it was 
down for a few days.
The fact that you are running NW 4 rather than NW 3 clearly implies that you 
are no stranger to the idea of upgrading when it makes sense.
 
-- Mike
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