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$699 TOO MUCH FOR SCSI RAID KIT?

A

Alex

Diamond Member
$699 includes a hardware raid card and raid software.

It will allow me to have 2x hds in raid 0 and a couple other devices (1 hd, 1 cdrw, 1 dvd+rw) just scsi with no raid.

I'm a total scsi newb... is this too expensive? Am i being ripped off?

thx for any feedback!
 
I don't know much about SCSI but if you paid $699 for that, weither it is a good deal or not, you would be a moron. Those SCSI drives are around $300 each. Dude, you could build another budget PC for $699.
 
yah i see where ya comin from but i dont think anyone gettin scsi, let alone scsi raid WANTS yet another budget pc...huh? no i dont have the cash but ill work for it. im sick of durons.

my pc right now is a tbird and its pretty sweet. for my next one i want the friggin best ever and scsi raid is that! so like yah i could build my mom a duron with 4mb onboard video but i think the money would be better spent in gettin something sweet like that... dude my speakers are gonna be $400... i know it hurts to spend that much but its sooo worth it! 😀
 
Heh, I wasn't implying he should build the budget PC, just saying he could😉

But with the $699 you could buy a GF3 Ti200, a faster CDRW, an Athlon XP 1600+ and a new OS (ME sucks😉).
 
Hardware SCSI raid is not that much faster, especially compared to software SCSI raid.
Hardware SCSI raid cards are mostly for Raid 5 - where you need to compute a lot of parity info.

Honestly, I'd go get a nice SCSI U160 card (Symbios/Tekram has fast and reasonably priced) and a very nice 15kRPM SCSI harddisk.
That's gonna cost you plenty and it makes much more sense if you ask me.

SCSI is cool, and it costs very little CPU cycles. I'd really not go raid though.

To answer your original question, a hardware SCSI raid card's probably not gonna be much cheaper than the price you gave... So, I think you found your winner if you go that route.

Check this page, they sometimes have cool and reasonably priced surplus items...
 
I have to disagree on the software over hardware idea. I have found that hardware always performs better as long as you have a good RAID card that is set up correctly. Additionally , if you have major OS failure you will be more prone to break the array with software solution.
What RAID card are you currently looking at ? how many channels? 32 or 64 bit ? 33 or 66 PCI ?
 


<< I have to disagree on the software over hardware idea. I have found that hardware always performs better as long as you have a good RAID card that is set up correctly. Additionally , if you have major OS failure you will be more prone to break the array with software solution.
What RAID card are you currently looking at ? how many channels? 32 or 64 bit ? 33 or 66 PCI ? >>



Not always. In RAID0, the ATTO UL3D ($300-500, "software" or rather firmware RAID) gives you much more performance than the Mylex ExtremeRAID2000 ($1000+) or the Adaptec 2100s, both of which are hardware solutions.
 
I second what RSMemphis said. Don't even consider SCSI RAID. In some benchmarks, scsi raid has actually been shown to be equal to or a bit slower than non-raid and should only be used for reliability/redundancy.

Don't worry, switching to a U160 controller (might I recommend the tekram DC-390U3W) and 15k hard drive is gonna drop your jaw... even if you're currently running ata-100 IDE raid.
 
$699 is alot to pay for a workstation or entry level server SCSI RAID card. You can get a very good Ultra160 RAID card like the Adaptec 2100s w/32MB cache RAM for about $350. You could get the card and a couple of 10K IBM/seagate drives for less than $699.

The adaptec 2100s is a single channel card so if you ran your scsi CD/DVD/RW stuff on it you would force the channel to run at a lower speed such as 40MB/s instead of 160MB/s. Unless or course you can find an ultra160 SCSI CD-ROM, but I have not seen any yet.

Your best bet would be to stick with IDE for your optical drives since they don't benefit from such high bandwidth anyway and IDE CD/DVD/RW stuff is much cheaper and up to date right now anyway.

Basically, I would look into some other solutions before you spend $699 on a RAID card or before you give up on Ultra160 RAID all together.
 
hmm tekran, eh? ill look into it... how many channels btw? so i can have the hds on one and cdrw on the other....
 
I would stick with IDE cd drives also, at least with the CDRW. You can get a nice good IDE cd burner for very cheap and I dont see any disadvantages to them. Or a dvd drive I dont see any disadvantage to one either.
 


<< $699 is alot to pay for a workstation or entry level server SCSI RAID card. You can get a very good Ultra160 RAID card like the Adaptec 2100s w/32MB cache RAM for about $350. You could get the card and a couple of 10K IBM/seagate drives for less than $699.

The adaptec 2100s is a single channel card so if you ran your scsi CD/DVD/RW stuff on it you would force the channel to run at a lower speed such as 40MB/s instead of 160MB/s. Unless or course you can find an ultra160 SCSI CD-ROM, but I have not seen any yet.

Your best bet would be to stick with IDE for your optical drives since they don't benefit from such high bandwidth anyway and IDE CD/DVD/RW stuff is much cheaper and up to date right now anyway.

Basically, I would look into some other solutions before you spend $699 on a RAID card or before you give up on Ultra160 RAID all together. >>



You do know that the Adaptec 2100s is perhaps the lowest performing u160 SCSI RAID card currently available?
 
Hell.. i'll sell you one of my AMI Express 500 RAID cards for much less than $699.. that's way too much for a RAID card when you're only using it for your desktop... if it was for a server.. then maybe...
 
Yes run quickly away from the Adaptec RAID cards, they are awful.

Yes maybe in RAID 0 software will perform better, ( I have yet to see real world proof of this).
Let's be honest though, RAID 0 is not RAID anyway , best to call it AID.
Hardware solutions still avoid any software glitches within the array itself.
 
http://www.athlonmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=58

That article compares the following:

Mylex ExtremeRAID 2000 ($1300 2 channel hardware based RAID controller)
Adaptec 2100s ($350+ 1 channel hardware based RAID controller)
ATTO ExpressPCI UL3D ($420+ 2 channel software based RAID controller)

To sum it up, for those lazy (kinda like me), the ATTO beats the stuffin' out of the other two.

BTW, I have a RAID0 setup with three Seagate X15's and an ATTO UL3D. Yet, I would NOT suggest getting a UL3D.
 
Seriously, do not opt for a scsi raid array. THt would be a waste of money unless you are serving quite a bit of data(YOu are not hehe)

If you have the money to blow, by all means get the Cheetah 15-36lp and ateckram card, and then upgrade your pc. I have a friend who has scsi raid on his SGI machine, but he handles loads of data that border along the rediculous.


Just get a 36lp cheetah so I can tell you to shut up :|:|once you start bragging.😉
 
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