Anyone running all SCSI? Is it worth it?

[John]

Yes Brandon, a full SCSI subsystem is worth it (if you have the $$ to blow). If you are just an "everyday" user that doesnt do video editing or heavy 3D "stuff" you really don't need a SCSI HDD. However a DVD & CDRW w/ an IDE HDD is a solid move.

John's SCSI machine

 

[Bryan]

My last SCSI rig was an Adaptec 29160, Plextor 12x4x32, Toshiba 5x SCSI DVD, and a Quantum Atlas 10k U160 drive. I ditched it, and I'm glad I did. Here's what I went with instead:

2 IBM 75GXP 30 GB drives in RAID 0
Plextor 12x10x32 (for BURNproof)
Toshiba 5x IDE DVD
Kodak DC290 Digital Camera (bought with excess savings from going back to IDE)

The system runs much more quietly, with a faster boot time (no SCSI BIOS screen), and burning coasters is no longer an issue.

Not sure if I'm the first all-SCSI user to go back or not, but I doubt I'll be the last. So, to answer your question...from an experienced SCSI user, I can say that for me, no, it was not worth it.

 

[dl]

I'm basically just looking at going with a SCSI HD first...IDE RAID is still an option

which scsi drive(s) are u looking at now? what size? do u have a scsi card? what's ur selection?

 

[NFS4]

I'm open to suggestions...what can I get in the 30GB+ range? And what card would you recommend?

 

[NFS4]

Ouch, the cheapest 36GB is $450

 

[Hardware]

I was a scsi only user
now my lasi device is a dvd
the only problem with ide is the 4 devices limit on the mb

 

[dl]

ouch is right! hehe, 36 GB will set you back plenty...looks like no GTS Ultra for U seriously though...for that size, you're looking into storage more than speed. In that case, get 1 of those 50GB SCSI II drives for a real cheap price on e-bay or onsale...

If you want a speedy HDD for your OS and applications, then you should look into the Quantum Atlas 10K/10KII/Seagate X15s...get the 9GB, that's all u really need.

As for adapter card, I recommend the Adaptec 29160 retail box for the best support in the wide cariety of SCSI interface and cables. Meaning you get lots of cables to support all kinds to interfaces

However, I do suggest that u make a decision on the HDD b4 u make a decision on the adapter...unless u want to go all SCSI...then it's a no brainer, the 29160 is your choice. why do I say this? if you're only looking to upgrade ur HDD, then the cheaper Tekram(sp?) cards should do fine.

 

[BoberFett]

NFS4

Think of it this way. When playing online, every second you're on a new map before others are is just time to hoard the items.

 

[NFS4]

<< 10K/10KII/Seagate X15s...get the 9GB, that's all u really need. >>


I'm already using 7.7GB on my 27GB drive and I am expanding at about 1GB a month :Q

 

[*kjm]

NFS4
I'll vote with Red and dl. It sounds like you would be better off with a fast main 9gig drive for your OS and programs. Then you could get a low end SCSI2 disk for your storage. That sounds like it would fit you to a T.

 

[Radboy]

ide raid does *nothing* to improve access time - which are a function of the HDD. You can stripe a million ide drives together in RAID_0 config, and ur still gonna have sucky access times.

ide_raid is good for things like video_capture, &amp; audio_recording, where ur focusing on *sustained* x-fer rates. ide_raid sux at running an O/S &amp; swap file (cuz it has sucky access times).

ppl who say 'Windows loads x seconds faster with ide-raid' don't get it - it's not about loading windows - it's about running the OS, apps &amp; swap - that's what a boot drive does 99% of the time.

Have read countless horror stories about ide raid at storagereview bbs. The stability/reliability of ide-raid vs LVD SCSI is orders of magnatude lower. If ur value reliability, ide-raid is not the way to go (for running an OS).

Soccerman was on the right track a couple pages back. He got long-winded, but shows that he understoof how access times affect how (efficiently) Windows operates.

Here is a copy-&amp;-paste of a post I ripped from a guy at Ars bbs. Forget his user name - RP I think. Sounds like he knows what he's talking about. I found it interesting. See here:

1) In general, real-world performance of a modern disk drive under a modern OS using a modern file system is far, far more dependent on data access time (RPM and seek) than sustained transfer rate (density), regardless of whether the system is a workstation or a server. You gain very little improvement in performance as density increases. In modern OS such as Windows 2000, multiple threads do I/O independently and virtual memory system accesses paging file in stochastic manner. In addition, modern file system such as NTFS does fragment, and it uses transactional logs, permissions, etc. All these leads to disk access pattern that is random in nature.

2) Because of #1 above, IDE drives do not scale well as load (number of I/O requests) increases. Meaning that - if you put a non-trivial load such as multitasking on an IDE drive, your system will crawl.

3) The improvement in density far outstrip the improvement in access time. In 3 years, density increases by about 800% (double every year), while data access time improves by less than 100% (far less for IDE drives - seek time improves very little for IDE drives). The difference is so large that a modern disk spends most of its time seeking and not actually transferring data.

4) Winbench is largely a lightly-loaded, single-tasking benchmark. And it does not really represent a real-world condition where people do non-trivial tasks. As such, it biases heavily against SCSI drives. Go to storagereview.com, compare the latest Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 40 against the 2-year old Seagate Barracuda 9LP under Winbench and under Intel IOMeter. The Maxtor beats the Barracuda in Winbench by a large percentage, but the 2-year old Barracuda beats the Maxtor decidesively in Intel IOMeter workstation test.

5) It's cheaper for manufacturer to improve density because higher density means less number of platters and lower cost. Improvement in sustained transfer rate is more or less a by-product. Thus, it is in their best interest that mass consumers perceive sustained transfer rate as the most important factor in determining performance, when in fact it is not. They can't do this marketing brainwash with SCSI customers, who are generally more knowledgeable. So SCSI drives generally emphasize data access time and that's also why Cheetah X15 uses very small platters and can only store 18 Gig on a low-profile drive while the new IBM IDE drive, with a much higher density, can store 75 Gig.

 

[dl]

I'm already using 7.7GB on my 27GB drive and I am expanding at about 1GB a month -NFS4

If you do get a SCSI HDD, please do yourself a favor by NOT using it as a long term storage device

If your applications take up more than 7 GBs, then it's time to remove some apps or move the inconsequential apps to a slower IDE HDD...use the faster drive for apps that you really use a lot and used in conjunction with other apps. For example: OS, MS office, winamp, dvd app, games, icq, real, quicktime, and audiograbber are all apps that can stay on the boot drive. stuff like office files, mp3s, p0rn , movies, and drivers should be considered long term files and should be copied to IDE.

Threfore, a very fast 9GB SCSI drive is not so bad after all....besides, smaller SCSI drives tend to be a bit faster than their larger-capacity counterparts. it's true...it's true

 

[Radboy]

Yes, what dl said.

smaller drives = less platters + less r/w heads = less enery req'd to move r/w heads = faster

get that p0rn off ur boot drive!

 

[Sir Fredrick]

1GB a month? Holy crap! Why not keep your large ide drive and add a 9 or 18GB 10k RPM SCSI drive for your boot and applications drive?
I don't even want to know what's on your hard drive right now...

 

[NFS4]

MP3's I've been offloading many of them to CD, but it's easier to have them all on my HD than to keep on popping in CD's.

Not to mention that I have a full install of:

Win2k Professional
Visual Studio 6 Full Install
Office 2000 Premium Full Install
My tons of various other apps (i.e. Norton AV 2000, Nero, Music Match, etc.)

*All games full install*
Deus Ex
Unreal Tournament
Motor Cross Madness
Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed
Tribes
Half Life
CounterStrike/Team Fortess
MDK2

213MB of downloads, utilities, patches, nicknacks, etc.
45MB of drivers files
80MB Outlook.pst file
1.8GB of MP3's

 

[Soccerman]

&quot;You want performance? Get two, say, Diamondmax Plus harddrives, put them on a RAID 0 stripe, and you will see incredible performance.&quot;

HA! nearly halve your windows load time? HA! like I said in my (apparently long winded ) post, it's ACCESS time that matters more then transfer rate. sorry all you IDE'ers, you just wasted a bunch of money on making game levels load faster! it doesn't affect windows performance much at all.

plus, if you really want more transfer rate, you can still go SCSI RAID. up to 15 devices.. RAID.. understand?

 

[Bryan]

To clarify my earlier post, I wholeheartedly agree that SCSI wipes the floor with IDE in terms of performance and reliability. But so does a Porsche Boxster when compared to a Camry. You get what you pay for. The real question is, do you need it? SCSI, like a Porsche, is fun to drive, and worth mucho bragging rights to anyone familliar with it. I wouldn't use anything but SCSI for my mission-critical stuff, but I don't have a need for it at home.

Here's what I do at work:
Network Admin (Dell Poweredge server / Backoffice SBS). 15 users. Server is used as a proxy server, file server, database server, and mail server
- 2 Quantum Atlas V's in RAID 1 (for reliability)
- 20/40 GB U2W DDS4 Tape Drive for backups
I chose this config because:
- Multiple users are accessing the net via a DSL line
- I need a reliable storage system for mission critical files
- The tape drive doesn't take a week to backup everything, nor bog the system down while doing so
- The server has to perform multiple simultaneous operations

Here's what I do at home (WinME/2k dual boot):
- Visit the AGN forums and Anandtech Forums
- Gaming (Unreal Tournament, Q3A, The Sims, SoF, Zork )
- Download lots of er... files from mIRC
- Burn lotsa CD's
- Napster
Here my SCSI config benefits me very little, as I am not doing enough at one time to tax the system. The DMA setting on my UDMA/100 drives helps keep CPU usage down. I keep multiple IE5.5 windows open at all times, burn CD's with my BURNProof Plexwriter (using Nero), and notice zero performance loss over my old SCSI rig.

As a matter of fact, I'd venture to say that this rig runs better. Why?
- Less heat (overclocked PIII more stable at lower voltage)
- Quicker boot times b/c of no SCSI polling
- MUCHO Quiter (all these fast seeks you hear of? You pay for them with a god-awful noise that sounds like a toy machine gun. RAT-TAT-TAT!!!)
- Gobs of storage on the cheap

Point being, NFS4, what exactly will you be doing, if anything, that you'll need SCSI for?
-

 

[NFS4]

Faster boot times, less load times for apps...just overall snappiness

 

[Bryan]

How about this then? Get your feet wet without diving in over your head. Buy an Adaptec 19160 Ultra160 controller (fairly inexpensive), and a 9 GB 10K SCSI drive (check FS/T). Use whatever IDE drive you have now as MP3/misc. storage (along with a burner). You'll get faster boot time (once past the SCSI BIOS initialization), and snap like nobody's business. I recommend a Cheetah over a Quantum Atlas 10k though. The Atlas is just too loud. If you like it, eBsy the original combo as a combo, and I guarantee you'll get back more than you invested. Take that money and step yourself up.

 

[Hardware]

I bet my IBM DTLA 30G 7,2&quot; will crush 95% of all scsi drives!

 

[Radboy]

Well, we have the classic, SCSI = Porsche analogy, and almost 100 posts. This is getting to be the mother-of-all SCSI threads version 2. I'd be proud to have started this thread.

 

[thermite88]

Bryan,



<< To clarify my earlier post, I wholeheartedly agree that SCSI wipes the floor with IDE in terms of performance and reliability. But so does a Porsche Boxster when compared to a Camry. You get what you pay for. The real question is, do you need it? SCSI, like a Porsche, is fun to drive, and worth mucho bragging rights to anyone familliar with it. I wouldn't use anything but SCSI for my mission-critical stuff, but I don't have a need for it at home. >>



Your argument makes a lot of sense. I agree with everything that you said except the conclusion. I am a hobbyist when it comes to computer. Even a 486 with an old IDE would have more computing power than I need at home. But I enjoy the thrill of driving a Porsche, oh, no, I mean, a Pentium III oc to 1 GHz with an all SCSI drive subsystem. Like fine wine or high end audio gear, SCSI is worth it for those who can appreciate the difference. There will always be those who thought that their system is better because they pay more and afraid to tweak anything. Let us not to confuse them with the hardware hobbyist who enjoy the thrill of driving a Porsche.

(Well, since I can't afford a Porsche, I will settle for a Pentium III oc to 1 GHz with an all SCSI drive subsystem.)

 

[NFS4]

Hardware is just begging for attention....must not get enough luvin at home

 

[vi edit]

I guess it really depends on what you do. If you do a lot of burning, like a couple cd's a day, then I'd recommend starting out by upgrading your CDROMs to SCSI. Like an UltraPlex 40x and a 8x20 CDR. The price difference for that setup is a little more than an equivalent IDE setup, but the reliablity makes up for it. SCSI CDROMS aren't really any faster than IDE by specs, but the fact that they can multitask without the overhead makes them feel faster.

I'd say that if you don't have the money to throw all over the place, wait a while before hopping onto the SCSI HDD train.

Just my opinion

 

[dl]

Hardware is just begging for attention....must not get enough luvin at home

hey, a little attention doesn't hurt at all...

eg.

[cough! shameless self promotion]

[SOB]

only a few peeps contributed in my Broadband Router Thread(and I thank all those who contributed)....

But, I thought that was going to be the mother of all broadband router threads...with all the research, time, info, and effort I put into it

[quivering lips]someone hold me?[/quivering lips]

[/SOB]

[/cough! shameless self promotion]