About SMD's and IPI's, again.

[Bruno Pape]

In response to my recent posting about the differences between the 1.2GB
SMD and IPI drives I received the following two replies from people at
SGI Mountian View.

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as far as i can tell, all you need to do is change the controller
  and the cables.  I believe the drive will stay the same

It's a Sabre V

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SMD and IPI drives look the same, but are actually quite different.  The only
areas which might be similar are the power supplies, but I don't know for
sure.  In general, we are treating them as completely different drives, much
as we treat a 780 and 380 from the same manufacturer differently.

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Would someone like to submit a third opinion?  I could use it as a tie breaker,
if it is not radically different.

Do we know what we will need to do to upgrade a machine with SMD disks to
IPI disks?

How about spare parts numbers for IPI disks and controlers?

Thanks again,
Bruno