I've just bought some raq's off ebay, got them home but I'm a bit puzzled...
I thought a raq4i was a single drive unit. Is that correct? I've never owned a raq4i, I've always gone for raq4r's however this raq4i I bought has two ide ports on the motherboard. And when this raq boots I see in the console it says:

Initializing ethernet: 2 controller(s) found
Initializing IDE: found ALI M5229 at 00:78
scanning ide0: master
scanning ide1:
IDE: stabilizing spinup: 30%


does this mean I have a raq4r and not a raq4i? It clearly states raq4i on the rear sticker but I've used a raq4r many times and this raq4i is behaving exactly the same way as a raq4r. Thanks if anyone can shed light.

All the RaQ 4's (be it i, r or cache) have the 2 IDE ports inside.

You can easily turn any of these into RaQ 4r's with the Software update and a second sled (some even have the sled and cable in them already).

The Cache model will not have the PCI expansion port though.

wow c0op3r you're right, all this time I never knew. I fudged a 2nd drive into this raq4i, installed the OS and now it's behaving like a full blown raq4r. I'm very pleased indeed and thanks for your help.

No Problem what so ever, did you already have the Sleds? I have got the machine that came both ways some with them and some without, but they are cheap on eBay if needed.

Next thing I want to try; I got old 200gig Seagate HDs at work the other day on a pull-off job, I am going to look up the specs and see if I can get them to work in a 550, I know I will only get 130'ish GBs of use, for for the low low cost of nothing, what do I have to lose.

If they have a jumper for LBA24 I think they might just work!

yeah I had a faulty raq4r gathering dust behind the table since a year ago, I bricked the rom chip on it (red faced). But it's been a godsend for spares like sleds and fans and ribbons and even drives.
I use 200gb drives in my raq4's as well, I favour the WD2000JB's. It doesn't matter that they only use 130gb, the drives are cheap anyway and great for network storage.

In there day these units made great servers. They're still decent for some stuff. The only problem with the IDE interface the software RAID slows things down for i/o intensive stuff. Uses ATA100 I believe.