Edwin,

> Or should I really just break the bad news and tell them that we need to
> spend lots of $$ on SCSI drives and a SCSI raid controller?

No comment on the raidframe side of things, but I can report good
results with a SCSI raid system using IDE disks. Pedestal systems
presenting as a single *large* SCSI disk come in at around GBP 3000 for
75 Gb of RAID 5, using commodity 25 Gb IDE disks.

Our source was http://www.zero-d.com, but they all seem to use similar
boxes/controllers/...

HTH,

D.

--
Daniel Brown, Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, 12, Union Road,
Cambridge, UK, CB2 1EZ.  Tel. +44 1223 336014  Fax. +44 1223 336033