300G or not

One of the engineers needed a Windows Server 2003 32 bit system with at least 300 gigabyte free spare for a particular requirement. This doesn't sound like too much to ask. I didn't think so anyway.

I was handed a Dell 2950. These are capable servers. They have multiple drive bays in the front. The drives can be hot-swapped, but this design requires a special drive rail system that leasts the drives pop out without screws or taking anything apart. You don't even have to slide the server out of a rack. Nice design. It has but one flaw. You need the rails. There are no drives available so I get two 160G drives. That adds up to 300G, right?

After turning the company up side down and and shaking vigorously, there were no rails that would fit my needs. I found out later some rails may have been tossed last week. figures.

I get another box that hadn't been turned on in a year. This should be a good use of old equipment. It has two drives in it. It has a bunch of drive bays. It even has the version of the OS I need. But no. It only has two SATA connections on the motherboard. This means I must put the two 160G drives in the system, partition 10G for the OS and the rest for the software.

One more day in the life of IT. Something that should take an hour takes all day. By the way, a 1TB (1000G) drive is around $100 and readily available just about anywhere. Par for the course.