# I assume @systems is already initialized and full of data.
# the important thing is that you do this loop for each 
# system.

my @drives;

#loop over the systems

foreach (@systems) {
    while ( THERE ARE MORE DRIVES ) {
    #get drive info
    push @drives, {system=>SYSTEMID,
                    make=>MAKE,
                    model=>MODEL,
                    capacity=>CAPACITY,
                    status=>STATUS
                   };
 }

##</code><code>##


# prepare once, execute often

my $sth= $db->prepare("INSERT INTO drives (system_id, make, model, capacity, status, last_update) VALUES (?,?,?,?,?,NOW())");

foreach my $drive (@drives) {
    $sth->execute($drive->{system}, $drive->{make}, $drive->{model}, $drive->{capacity}, $drive->{status});
}

##</code><code>##

perl -e 'print "How sweet does a rose smell? "; chomp ($n = <STDIN>); $rose = "smells sweet to degree $n"; *other_name = *rose; print "$other_name\n"'