Replacement SCSI Drives for Semiconductor Fabrication Equipment
Solid State Disks Ltd
Dependable Data Storage Solutions
We design and manufacture solid-state-based, form-fit-function replacements for failing electromechanical SCSI drives for semiconductor fabrication equipment.
The expected long service life of the high value tools used for semiconductor fabrication, and the fact that many are in almost continuous use, is creating significant challenges for maintenance engineers.
Data storage devices used in the fabrication of semiconductors – in etchers, deposition systems and lithography tools, for example – are often old-tech, such as early generation hard disk drives (HDDs), magneto-optic (MO) and floppy disk drives (FDDs).
With their moving parts such drives, which are long obsolete, are becoming increasingly unreliable, and are putting operations at risk. Indeed, with the window for equipment maintenance in fabs so short and the cost (in terms of lost production) if a tool is unexpectedly offline so high, a legacy drive failing can be extremely disruptive and expensive.
Our SCSI drives for semiconductor fabrication equipment use industrial grade memory and can be used to replace a wide variety of electromechanical drives that may have installed decades ago.
We also make solid-state replacements for:
- PATA/IDE drives,
- ESDI drives, and
- SMD drives.
All of our drives are direct swap-in replacements – so no modifications need be made to the host system.
Scroll to the bottom of this page for examples of host systems we support.
Wide Range
We have more than 80 swap-in modern replacements for legacy drives that have either internal hard disk drives (HDDs) or use removable media such floppy disks or tapes.
Our replacements employ latest technology electronics, and the storage media is either a Compact Flash (CF) or CFast card. Other than switching over to our hardware, you need make no other changes to your system or its software.
We can also duplicate your existing data so that the switchover is seamless, or you can do it yourself using our DuplicatorPlus (see below).
Once your new drive is in place, your system will interface with it as if it’s always been.
The easiest way to find a replacement for your legacy drive is use our Flash Memory Product Selector. There you will be able to filter by form factor (e.g. 3.5”), type (e.g. fixed disk), interface (e.g. SCSI 68-pin), max read/write speed (e.g. 10MB/s), CF storage (single or dual), and whether or not you want the new drive to have an Ethernet port.
Note, if none of our 80-plus solutions meet your requirements, we can make a drive for you: reverse engineering your legacy drive and building a solid-state-based, form-fit-function replacement. Indeed, we pride ourselves on our ability to reverse engineer a variety of yesteryear electronic devices.
DuplicatorPlus
This can be used to copy just the data or a full image of most SCSI-1 and -2 interfaced drives – such as hard disk drives (HDDs) and digital versatile disk (DVD) drives – on to a CF card, which itself can then be copied or duplicated.
Benefits include:
- Ease of use.
- Compact and portable.
- Minimal system downtime to clone or copy.
- It is not always necessary to remove the legacy drive from its host in order to make a copy or clone.
Touchless Removable®
Where legacy drives use removable media such as tapes or floppy or optical disks, our drives use CF or CFast. These cards can be treated in the same way as the old media, i.e., removed and replaced as desired.
However, all our drives are available with an Ethernet port, enabling them to be accessed via your local area network (LAN).
This allows you to:
- Copy/backup CF card images to other devices on your network.
- Restore an earlier CF card image to your local drive.
- Connect remotely for any other drive maintenance issues.
Adding a drive to your network is simply a case of ‘plug & play’, and a major benefit of using Touchless Removable is that you can greatly reduce the need to physically access your drive.
Project & Obsolescence Management
Replacing a legacy drive often involves more than swapping hardware. Ideally, the replacement should be timed to coincide with scheduled maintenance. Also, there might be safety and compliance issues with which to contend.
We can produce and manage the project to synchronise drive replacement to meet your business goals.
By engaging with us early we can determine when your legacy drive will be nearing its end-of-life and schedule its replacement so that your operations experience minimal disruption.
Also, once your new drive is in place, we can manage any obsolescence issues it might face, and we can guarantee the availability of functionally equivalent devices.
Don’t delay. It is not a case of ‘if’ your old electromechanical drive will, rather a case of ‘when’. Unless your prepared you could lose valuable data, and your host system could be out of action for a long time.
Maintaining Lease
You can contain costs and avoid capital purchases entirely under our Maintaining Lease service.
The cost of repairs, software updates and provision of compatible products (in the event of obsolescence) can be covered for up to seven years.
Our service is available as a full maintaining lease or a maintenance lease for the solution that best meets your business needs.
Or, to put it another way, any data storage device is a ‘means to an end’. You are primarily interested in having the ability to store and access data reliably and securely. Accordingly, let us take care of providing the ‘means’ so that you can focus on your operations.
Host Systems Supported
Our experience to date includes making SCSI drives for semiconductor fabrication systems including:
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Our CF2SCSI™ SCSIFlash™ drive can be programmed to replace the behaviour of the data storage drive in any system. We also offer a full custom service. Contact our specialists to discuss your requirements. We’re here to help.