Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Bill McGonigle]

#1) I seem to wind up with a strange collection of external drives 
hooked up to my linux machines, usually stacked on top of each other on 
a shelf (if I'm lucky), with power and data cords all tangled into a 
great big rat's nest.  I've seen this result oft duplicated but I 
haven't seen anybody successfully organizing this particular morass.

I'm thinking of something like an equipment rack, except it only needs 
to be 7" or so wide, with a power strip down one back side and shelves 
spaced for the typical external 5.25" case.  Build the necessary 
USB/Firewire/fiber/eSATA hubs/connectors into the top of the rack, and 
it would actually be movable and portable with only 1 cable of each 
media type plus power leaving the back.  Major improvement.

Has anybody attempted any such thing?  Better ideas?  I didn't see any 
such racks/shelving online but I'm not adverse to fixing a wider rack 
with a bandsaw and some welding rod.

#2) I recently put together a new linux database server with 8 SATA 
II/NCQ drives hanging off a couple 3Ware controllers and it's 
double-plus good, but neither the case nor the card came with hard 
drive indicator light cables to patch into the front LEDs.  And, it may 
be that my Google Fu is weak today, but I just can't find anybody who 
sells such cables or even what the little connector (that's been the 
same for at least a decade) is called.  I figured I could just go grab 
a bag of such connectors from DigiKey or the like and a spool of wire 
and be in business.  I'm sure somebody here knows.

Thanks,
-Bill

-----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
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