Anyone use SCSI drives??

[Mattd46612]

Dont really know too much about them but always looking to play with something new.

 

[ionoxx]

if you'rereally looking to play with something new, play with SAS. that is a whole lot a fun

 

[jackschmittusa]

I once used SCSI for the speed, and the number of drives I could use (including a raid setup). Today, there is not much of a reason to spend a bundle on it unless you are running a web server or something like that with large numbers of multiple accesses.

 

[Mattd46612]

I may just pick up a pair of drives and do a raid first then go from there. Will save alot of money. Havent messed with raid at all yet. Just always lookin for faster alternatives. Why hasnt seagate come up with competition for the Raptor? I like seagate more than wd.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Mattd46612
I may just pick up a pair of drives and do a raid first then go from there. Will save alot of money. Havent messed with raid at all yet. Just always lookin for faster alternatives. Why hasnt seagate come up with competition for the Raptor? I like seagate more than wd.

They have: link, at about 1/4 the price per GB.

 

[rond36]

Originally posted by: Mattd46612
I may just pick up a pair of drives and do a raid first then go from there. Will save alot of money. Havent messed with raid at all yet. Just always lookin for faster alternatives. Why hasnt seagate come up with competition for the Raptor? I like seagate more than wd.

I don't see where you would save allot of money SCSI is very expensive compared to S-ATA

Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
$159.99 $2.16 per GB

Seagate Cheetah 10K.7 ST373207LW 74GB 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache SCSI Ultra320 68pin Hard Drive - OEM
$199.99 $2.70 per GB
And you need a new motherboard with SCSI or a SCSI RAID card to use it.

SCSI drives are not compatable with P-ATA (IDE) or S-ATA. You cant just pick up a pair of SCSI drives if your motherboard doesn't support them. You will also need a SCSI RAID card. most SCSI RAID cards are 64bit 133MHz PCI-X, installing one in a 32bit 33MHz PCI slot will severly limit the data throughput making it pointless to even try it. so unless your motherboard has onboard SCSI or you have an empty PCI-X slot dont even try it.

Why hasn't seagate come up with competition for the Raptor? Good question! The answer is they don't need to. Western Digital does not make SCSI drives so they introduced the Raptor line of drives to compete with Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, and Fujitsu SCSI and SAS drives but the Raptors have fallen very short. a Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 74GB 15,000 RPM Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drive has 50% faster spindel speed, half the latency, and more than twice the data throughput than the Raptor. The question is why hasn't western Digital come up with competition for Seagates SCSI and SAS hard drives.

If you are wondering what SAS is, it is Serial Attached SCSI the new replacement for Ultra 320 SCSI. Just like S-ATA is replacing P-ATA in desktop systems SAS is replacing U320 SCSI in server systems. I would like to see SAS replace S-ATA in desktop systems.

 

[Googer]

IF you dont mind spending money and have an extra grand to spend, then I highly recommend scsi. LSI Logic's 320-2E controller is a great HBA to start with. Just be sure to avoind those striped down customized DELL versions called PERC-4.

 

[Mattd46612]

I meant save money and just go with regular 7200 drives in raid. I have the seagate you linked too and in HD Tach its pretty close to my 74gb raptor. I havent played around with raid yet so I may pick up another pair of 320s or 400s and go for raid. Dont have 1k to blow on hard drives and controllers for SAS. Because Id want to do it with a decent amount of storage and raid and the price/gb is insane. Now if only Outpost would start that $109 for a 400gb seagate up again...

 

[SunSamurai]

Originally posted by: rond36
Why hasn't seagate come up with competition for the Raptor? Good question! The answer is they don't need to. Western Digital does not make SCSI drives so they introduced the Raptor line of drives to compete with Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, and Fujitsu SCSI and SAS drives but the Raptors have fallen very short. a Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 74GB 15,000 RPM Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drive has 50% faster spindel speed, half the latency, and more than twice the data throughput than the Raptor. The question is why hasn't western Digital come up with competition for Seagates SCSI and SAS hard drives.

If you are wondering what SAS is, it is Serial Attached SCSI the new replacement for Ultra 320 SCSI. Just like S-ATA is replacing P-ATA in desktop systems SAS is replacing U320 SCSI in server systems. I would like to see SAS replace S-ATA in desktop systems.

LOL. What a misguided thing to type. The drives you mentioned wernt even in the same price catagory. They dont compete with each other thus the question of "Why hasn't seagate come up with competition for the Raptor" remains valid.

 

[rond36]

Western Digital Raptors are enterprise class drives that were developed to compete as an inexpensive alternitive to SAS drives in workstation and server systems.

The only advantage raptors have over SAS drives is price!

All Serial Attached SCSI Host Bus Adaptors and RAID controllers are backward compatible with all S-ATA I, and S-ATA II hard drives. S-ATA controllers do not support SAS hard drives.

SAS controllers have another advantage over S-ATA controllers.

S-ATA controllers only support one drive per port, but SAS controllers support up to 128 drives per port using SAS port expanders.

My Asus P5WDG2 WS Pro motherboard Has 8 S-ATA 3.0GB ports and will support 8 S-ATA I or S-ATA II drives

MyAdaptec 4800SAS Serial Attached SCSI RAID PCI-X card has 8 SAS 3.0GB ports and will support 1,024 (8 X 128) SAS, S-ATA I, and/or S-ATA II hard drives in any combination.

My Adaptec SAS RAID subsystem consists of:
Adaptec 4800SAS 64bit 133MHz PCI-X RAID Card
(2) Adaptec 335SAS 4-bay hot-swap drive chassis (1 of which is not installed)
(4) Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 146GB SAS Hard Drives RAID-0

I bought my setup from a friend, it was a pull from a working server system, the customer decided to use U320 SCSI that was built into his motherboard. After I bought it I built a workstation system around it.

I hate to burst your bubble but in the market in which the Raptor was designed to compete it is at the bottom of the food chain. My Cheetahs would eat a raptor for lunch and ask for seconds.

The Western Digital Raptor is not the fastest hard drive on the market.

 

[Mattd46612]

I know the Raptor isnt the best since my 7200.10 320GB is right in the ballpark of the raptor. Just wondering as to why Seagate hasnt thrown something out there thats 10k competition for the Raptor. For my uses right now as much as Id love to get a SAS setup I cant afford it and even if I could Id have a hard time justifiying the cost for home PC use.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Mattd46612
I know the Raptor isnt the best since my 7200.10 320GB is right in the ballpark of the raptor. Just wondering as to why Seagate hasnt thrown something out there thats 10k competition for the Raptor. For my uses right now as much as Id love to get a SAS setup I cant afford it and even if I could Id have a hard time justifiying the cost for home PC use.

they don't need to. most people are going to go the 7200.10 series anyway. i would say only a very small % of people use raptors or scsi for their home machines and i am sure seagate is doing just fine with their 7200 lines for home/light work and scsi lines for serious server/workstations.

the raptor is weird in the sense that it was meant as a cheap setup for low end servers, but 10k scsi beat it in true server setups and 15k just kill it. the raptors beat the 10k scsi in "normal" everyday computing because they specialized it more for that task since they can't beat it in a true server enviornment.

 

[Mattd46612]

Just a shame anything over 7200rpm in hard drives is insane in cost.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Mattd46612
Just a shame anything over 7200rpm in hard drives is insane in cost.

unless you need the newest generation they are not. even if the newest 7200 has a faster str than a 1 or 2 gen 10-15k that does not mean the 10-15k won't "feel" faster in responsiveness. the 10-15K kill 7200 in seek times and depending on your computer usages, may really benefit you more than you think. if you are looking to get a scsi setup to mess around with you can easily get a u160 card (no raid as that would be a waste with scsi on the home desktop since you would flood the pci bus (assuming 32bit) with a striping raid) and buy a 1 gen old 10-15k u320 hdd and feel the difference. and cost is not too bad.

take bf2 for instance - with my 10k scsi hdd i am usually in the top 5 people on which can be very beneficial when you want a certain vehicle, when i ran a 15k i was the first one on a map nearly every single time, to the point that i thought something was wrong with the servers - where was everybody at? friends of mine that were on teamspeak with their raptors couldn't load as fast as i do with both 10 & 15k scsi. again, this is isolated but it is nice. in all reality you could get into 10-15k single scsi w/ card for ~$150, possibly $100 depending on size and where you find stuff at.

 

[Mattd46612]

Bob if you have AIM and arent busy could you help me out with it? My name is Mattd46612. I think you have me hooked, Just hate not gettin the right things. You use the SCSI for just your OS or you put all your programs on it? I have a 74gb raptor that I use for my OS and most games. Thats def the size I would need.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Mattd46612
Bob if you have AIM and arent busy could you help me out with it? My name is Mattd46612. I think you have me hooked, Just hate not gettin the right things. You use the SCSI for just your OS or you put all your programs on it? I have a 74gb raptor that I use for my OS and most games. Thats def the size I would need.

pm sent

 

[Mattd46612]

Im pretty certain Im looking at the right things. Just the pin numbers confuse me, the adaptec card has 68 and 50 pin, and i see some u160 80pin drives out there?

 

[wwswimming]

i haven't used SCSI for a long time.

i have 2 parallel ATA Maxtor 160 drives in a Shuttle SFF system.

about 2 years ago i was doing some file transfers and it was obvious that the PATA 160's were faster than my Ultra-160 SCSI.

now most of my drives are SATA.

i still have a lot of old SCSI drives. i think they might have some musical value. they all make different sounds, and the 47 GB 5 1/4" ultra-wide Seagate's have some definite capability as a Bass instrument.

 

[Mattd46612]

Ive been researching overnight and the HD Tach times of the raptor beat any U160. SCSI would be faster IF I do 15k U320 setup, But that would cost me 500 to start out with the size id like. Think Im going to keep current config, raid will likely gain me very little and will only cause me a headache when I swap out mobo and cpu every 6-12 months. Gonna save my money and put it towards a conroe or am2 setup down the road.

 

[d3n]

I am a real fan of SAS and would not even consider SCSI at this point in time. I began research of SAS as a platform to build a High performance SAN without paying the very costly high end SAN preimum associated with 320 SCSI and Fiberchannel.



My solution that we are testing now is ISCSI SAN storage based on a Dell2900 and 10GB NICS. With expander JBODs it is able to expand up to 50 TB using SATAII disks. The IO throuputs are insane and the price very resonable. The only negative is the multipathing reducancy that is standard with most fiberchannels can't be had on ISCSI yet, but it is coming

For home use I am a real fan of the dell 2900. You can price one into the home to include a 5E SAS radi card for about $1400 if you are really serious about storage. I would buy the disk drives elsewhere. Most likely a Seagate SATAII 7200.10 320 or 400GB version

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

here is my advice...

I've had both SCSI and ATA drives.

SCSI is more reliable across the board, as they fail in a more predictable fashion and generally hold up better. You can usually chain more of them together than you can with ATA and they are sometimes faster.

ATA is nearly always cheaper. It's always been reliable enough to meet my needs at home and being cheaper I can buy more for redundancy and speed. There is built in support for this in most motherboards so you don't need an add on card. limited number of drives without add on card

SATA is getting cheaper and faster...and more boards are supporting it. It allows for more drives (in some cases) but reliability is still at the ATA level.

Fibre Channel is the top of the board, but very expensive. FC drives have the reliability of SCSI (they are in fact a SCSI derivative) with more speed and more drives per chain (fabric or loop).

IMHO, if you want to play with something, play with FC. SCSI is fading away. but keep in mind these (SCSI or FC) are not really for the faint at heart. I can't tell you how many hours I've spend troubleshooting SCSI related issues. you need new adapters and you need terminators and the like...I was glad to rid myself of all of this.

link to SCSI fun

That said, I usually retool my PC for fun, so if you are up for the challenge, then go for it.

my 2 cents.