Desktop 15,000 RPM SCSI Anyone ?

[servicepack100]

Is anyone using a U160 15,000 rpm hard drive on thier windows desktop machine ? If so, is the performance good enough to justify the extra money over a WD 8mb cache IDE ? Any input is appreciated. I'm looking at a 68 pin lsi single channel controller for $89 and 36.4 15,000 rpm HD for around $180 - $200. thanx

 

[Adul]

in most cases prob not. Unless you are doing very Disk intensive tasks.

 

[SafeZone]

would it help for un-raring big archives ? or perhaps archiving large amounts of file, or creating a lot of ISO's ?

also would it help for boot-up times and load times I wonder??

 

[DimZiE]

i prefer serial ata drives. although i've tried only several of prototypes i think serial ATA would be a better choice... (it's cheaper and much more versatile )

 

[dullard]

Welcome to Anandtech. You asked one of the questions that always starts a big debate (people who want the best performance vs. people who don't have the money for it).

It really depends on your use. Many people leave their computer running and even their most used programs running 24 hours a day. Then they go to their computer and start working/playing games without ever using the hard drive. If that sounds similar to you, then no, you won't notice a difference. But if you use programs that intensively use the hard drive, then yes you will notice the difference. The WD 8 mb cache drives are nearly as fast, but they are slower - especially when working with many small files. But if you don't work with saving/loading many small files, you probably won't notice much difference.

Boot up times are often much longer for SCSI. It can take up to 2-3 minutes to initiallize the SCSI controller, depending on the model you have (although most are shorter than that).

Program load times are usually shorter for SCSI, but are you spending much time loading programs? Or are you spending your time using them?

 

[Ilmater]

It's funny you should ask, as I just recently moved from a WD 800JB to an IBM Ultrastar 15k U160 drive. Installations and searches are just ridiculously fast. I can't comment on load times right now because, due to some driver or compatibility issue, my bootup hangs for about 45 seconds to a minute. I have traced the problem partly to my motherboard and partly to my installation procedure. I won't be rectifying this problem until I get a new case and motherboard (next two weeks or so). I can tell you that I definitely notice more of a difference between this drive and the 800JB than I did between the 800JB and my old 40GB 7200RPM Maxtor. I noticed little difference between the latter two. The only problem is, I have yet to play any games on it. I've only been up and running for about a week, and I haven't really been interested in playing any games recently. However, it shouldn't make any difference except in load times. I'll tell you this though: I really want to buy a decent RAID adapter and run a RAID 0 array of two 15k SCSI drives as my boot disk. I've now gone SCSI and I'm not going back!

But, of course, I use IDE for all my actual data storage (all 300GB of it).

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: DimZiE
i prefer serial ata drives. although i've tried only several of prototypes i think serial ATA would be a better choice... (it's cheaper and much more versatile )

I mean no offense, but wtf are you talking about? Serial ATA will make NO difference to performance. IDE drives just can't use up the bus they have now; moving to 150MB/sec only makes for more unused bandwidth.

Boot up times are often much longer for SCSI. It can take up to 2-3 minutes to initiallize the SCSI controller, depending on the model you have (although most are shorter than that).

All you have to do is disable all the IDs that you aren't using. I have my drive on ID 0 and the two bus controllers on 7 and 8 (I still haven't figured out why I have two bus controllers when I only have one bus, but...). Everything else is turned off. It only takes about 10 seconds to initialize my card, and I've got the same LSI card that he's probably talking about. It's the one from this thread.

 

[dmhinz]

dullard does a very good job of answering your question. I would add that the major advantage to SCSI drives is their superfast access/seek times. An IDE drive typically takes 9mS to locate data on the drive while a 15K SCSI drive takes about 3.5mS and a 10K SCSI drive about 4.5mS.

You will not see a large benefit from using SCSI drives unless you do I/O intensive things.

I personally have a 36GB, 10K, U320 drive that I use for a big "C" drive. I install the OS and all apps on this disk. I have dual 120 GB WD SE drives in a RAID 0 array that I use as a huge "D" drive. I store all of my data (MP3, MPEG, AVI) on this disk.

The benchmarks are very similar between the two subsystems (IDE vs. SCSI) on everything except seek times. Boot time is MUCH longer in my setup and SCSI disks can often times make much more noise than IDE drives. SCSI is also much more confusing, you have different standards (80, 160, 320), different connections (SCA, 68, 50 pin) and often times different channels that must be terminated.

Unless you are ready to dive into the world of SCSI, I suggest going IDE - it is much simplier...and cheaper.

-D

 

[servicepack100]

True, I forgot about the SCSI boot delay, that will probably make boot times slower. I play lots of first person shooters, wil my map loading times be alot faster ?

 

[dullard]

All you have to do is disable all the IDs that you aren't using.

All the computers with SCSI that I've used are all SCSI - CD drives and everything. So there aren't that many IDs left to disable. If only they could somehow make the initialize part faster. I hate rebooting the computer I'm typing on now. 5 mintues to boot.

 

[dmhinz]

You have two controllers listed because one represents the internal channel and the other represnts the external channel.

Disabeling unused targets really doesn't speed up boot time that much - most of the increased boot time comes from loading the SCSI BIOS itself.

-D

 

[dullard]

I play lots of first person shooters, wil my map loading times be alot faster ?

That is where things get really interesting. It depends on your needs and the games you play. Map loading times will be a bit faster (the difference depends greatly on the game). Some of the first person shooters played online give the best starting place to the first person to load the map. In that case, you need SCSI. The extra fraction of a second is so important. But in other games map loading times aren't that important. Does a fraction of a second matter to you? If so is it worth the little extra money for SCSI over IDE? For some people the answer is yes. For others the answer is no.

Put it this way: that is a great SCSI drive, and it will be a tad faster. Now how much is your money worth to you?

 

[servicepack100]

hey Ilmater,
Is that LSI controller pci 2.2 compatible ? Fits in regular pci slot ?

 

[Pariah]

Unless you have disposable income that you just don't care about, or you want the fastest regardless, I wouldn't bother with SCSI for gaming, as it won't make any difference. Save the money and buy a 9700Pro or better CPU, which will make a difference. Do not try to go bargain basement with SCSI, if you want to get the most out of SCSI you have to pay for it, cutting corners will yield you little performance boost over standard ATA. I would definitely recommend buying an 18GB Cheetah 15k.3 (around $230) over a slower obsolete 36GB drive. 18GB should be plenty for OS and apps.

Boot up times are often much longer for SCSI. It can take up to 2-3 minutes to initiallize the SCSI controller, depending on the model you have (although most are shorter than that).

All the computers with SCSI that I've used are all SCSI - CD drives and everything. So there aren't that many IDs left to disable. If only they could somehow make the initialize part faster. I hate rebooting the computer I'm typing on now. 5 mintues to boot.

Must be the hardware you are using, as that is not typical at all. It takes my system 8 seconds to initialize the SCSI card (4 drives, scanning all ID's).

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: servicepack100
hey Ilmater,
Is that LSI controller pci 2.2 compatible ? Fits in regular pci slot ?

It's a long card, but it works just fine in the smaller PCI slots. However, it can work in a 64bit 66MHz slot also.

And I'm telling you, it doesn't take hardly any time to boot this thing. Your map loading should be faster, yes.

Originally posted by: dmhinz
I personally have a 36GB, 10K, U320 drive that I use for a big "C" drive. I install the OS and all apps on this disk. I have dual 120 GB WD SE drives in a RAID 0 array that I use as a huge "D" drive. I store all of my data (MP3, MPEG, AVI) on this disk.

I'm not sure how to put this nicely, so I'll just say it... WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?! You had better have all of that backed up! You see, RAID 0 isn't technically a "RAID" standard because RAID by its very name is supposed to have redundancy, which RAID 0 does not. I hope you realize that if either of those drives crashes, all of your data will go down. And why do you need extra performance from storage drives anyway? If I had enough money, I'd run two 15k SCSI drives in RAID 0 for my boot disk and 4 or 5 IDE drives (big ones) in RAID 5 for storage. That way, I'd get more performance from my boot drive (since I don't care about losing that data), and have redundancy for my data.

Hey, my roommate said it would never happen to him, until it did.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Ilmater

Originally posted by: servicepack100
hey Ilmater,
Is that LSI controller pci 2.2 compatible ? Fits in regular pci slot ?

It's a long card, but it works just fine in the smaller PCI slots. However, it can work in a 64bit 66MHz slot also.

And I'm telling you, it doesn't take hardly any time to boot this thing. Your map loading should be faster, yes.

Originally posted by: dmhinz
I personally have a 36GB, 10K, U320 drive that I use for a big "C" drive. I install the OS and all apps on this disk. I have dual 120 GB WD SE drives in a RAID 0 array that I use as a huge "D" drive. I store all of my data (MP3, MPEG, AVI) on this disk.

I'm not sure how to put this nicely, so I'll just say it... WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?! You had better have all of that backed up! You see, RAID 0 isn't technically a "RAID" standard because RAID by its very name is supposed to have redundancy, which RAID 0 does not. I hope you realize that if either of those drives crashes, all of your data will go down. And why do you need extra performance from storage drives anyway? If I had enough money, I'd run two 15k SCSI drives in RAID 0 for my boot disk and 4 or 5 IDE drives (big ones) in RAID 5 for storage. That way, I'd get more performance from my boot drive (since I don't care about losing that data), and have redundancy for my data.

Hey, my roommate said it would never happen to him, until it did.

3ware makes some IDE RAID controllers that do RAID 5. They're kind of expensive, but worth it if your data is important to you and you have the money to spare.

 

[Wolfsraider]

i also have the ibm 36z15 and lsi controller

load times are much faster
bf1942 loads at least 5 seconds faster over my ide drive
ripping to the harddrive plus burning is faster
but i can burn, rip, download,surf without worry about crashing or having coasters

i turned off the scsi boot seek in global properties and i boot faster much faster than without doing this.also i boot to the desktop in less time than when i had the maxtor 40 gig ide drive by quite a few seconds.

the ibm drive is noisy in seeks but imho it isn't bad especially when you factor in the speed of file transfers etc...

one thing i really like is that the drive doesn't slow down when it starts getting full

i had 32 mb free on my c drive (scsi) i was downloading too many demos lol, but i was still able to use the mouse and delete/move files around to the d drive without causing a hang or crash in windows.ide has never let me do this.

i won't be going back to ide any time soon ....thanks but no thanks...i love my scsi


mike

 

[mechBgon]

Cheetah X15-36LP in my office rig, and I'm suffering Cheetah 15k.3 envy (it's even faster).

Let me put it this way: my system feels more responsive with the scheduled daily virus scan running, than our similar IDE workstations are without it. SCSI is efficient when faced with a lot of I/O requests, and is fast not only on the straightaways (75Mb/sec peak for a single Cheetah 15k.3) but also in the corners (sub-4ms seek time, 0.1ms track-to-track seek). And let's not forget a 5-year 24/7 warranty and cables of practically any length you could find a use for. Is it expensive per Mb? Yeah. But I would have a hard time going back.

edit: oops, little error: 0.2ms track-to-track on reads (compared to over 1ms for IDE)

 

[mrman3k]

I always say RAID 0 is like having the data on one hard drive, but it does give a little performance boost. I decided for myself it was best to keep my WD1200JBs each separate and partitioned.

 

[Thor86]

SCSI drives are built better than most IDE drives. That's why they still have 5 years warranty and only the Western Digitals SE IDEs have 3 years, while all other IDEs only have 1 year warranties.

Most of the contemporary IDE drives nowadays are just as fast in performance, but I like to think that SCSI drives take way less CPU cycles than IDE drives and way less seek times <4ms while the fastest IDEs are about 8-10ms and use more CPU cycles due to the IDE interface.

 

[Excelsior]

This talk about contemporary IDE drives nowadays being just as fast in performance is BS.
SR's Renaissance Testing Gamut 2001 - 2 Devices Go Head-To-Head


Device Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 (73 GB Ultra320 SCSI) Western Digital Caviar WD800JB (80.0GB ATA-100)

Low Level Suite 1.0................................. Cheetah 15K.3...................... WD800JB
Analyze Disk Read Service Time.............. 5.9 ms............ 13.9 ms
Analyze Disk Write Service Time.............. 6.2 ms.............. 14.3 ms
WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate - Begin... 76.4 MB/sec.................. 49.3 MB/sec
WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate - End...... 51.1 MB/sec .............. 29.2 MB/sec

Desktop/Workstation Suite 1.0..............Cheetah 15K.3..................... WD800JB
SR Office DriveMark 2002.................. 578IO/sec.......... 395 IO/sec
SR High-End DriveMark 2002............ 505IO/sec................. 375 IO/sec
SR Bootup DriveMark 2002............... 488IO/sec.............. 348 IO/sec
SR Gaming DriveMark 2002............... 706IO/sec.............. 477 IO/sec


Unreal Tournament v4.36............................ 568 IO/sec.............. 395 IO/sec
Half-Life: Counterstrike v1.3........................599 IO/sec.............. 424 IO/sec
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction v1.09b...........503 IO/sec.............. 302 IO/sec
The Sims: House Party.................................671 IO/sec.............. 483 IO/sec
Black & White v1.1.......................................529 IO/sec.............. 353 IO/sec

Ziff-Davis WinBench 99............ Cheetah 15k.3...........WD800JB
Business Disk WinMark 99 14.4 MB/sec.............. 10.1 MB/sec
High-End Disk WinMark 99 42.0 MB/sec.............. 35.0 MB/sec
AVS/Express 3.4......................43.8 MB/sec.............. 28.6 MB/sec
FrontPage 98...........................175.9 MB/sec............178.3 MB/sec
MicroStation SE........................60.2 MB/sec.............. 42.0 MB/sec
Photoshop 4.0.........................20.6 MB/sec.............. 15.3 MB/sec
Premiere 4.2............................32.6 MB/sec.............. 32.5 MB/sec
Sound Forge 4.0......................42.5 MB/sec.............. 60.7 MB/sec
Visual C++ 5.0.........................53.9 MB/sec.............. 43.9 MB/sec

Server Suite 1.0............................Cheetah 15K.3.............WD800JB
SR File Server DriveMark 2002........345 IO/sec.................130 IO/sec
1 I/O..............................................163 IO/sec..................78 IO/sec
4 I/O..............................................224 IO/sec..................83 IO/sec
16 I/O.............................................310 IO/sec.................106 IO/sec
64 I/O.............................................364 IO/sec.................123 IO/sec
SR Web Server DriveMark 2002......342 IO/sec..................128 IO/sec
1 I/O...............................................165 IO/sec..................70 IO/sec
4 I/O...............................................214 IO/sec...................79 IO/sec
16 I/O.............................................289 IO/sec..................104 IO/sec
64 I/O.............................................355 IO/sec..................126 IO/sec

Environmental Suite 1.0.....Cheetah 15K.3.................WD800JB
Idle Noise..........................45.1 dB/A@0.7"..............45.0 dB/A@0.7"
Net Temperature................25.1 Celsius...................15.3 Celsius
Ambient Temperature..........24.8 Celsius..................25.0 Celsius
Drive Temperature..............49.9 Celsius....................40.3 Celsius

 

[Alptraum]

For disk intensive tasks SCSI kicks IDE around. I think the thing to keep in mind though is that the majority of users won't notice much differnce. If you are browsing the web or doing email or something similiar its not gonna make any real difference. Its just when you get into tasks that need good discs that SCSI shines. But yeah, when it comes to pure performance no IDE drive is anywhere near SCSI.

 

[dmhinz]

Elvis has left the building! Excellent way to prove the point, thanks for sharing the info w/ the others.

--D

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Excelsior
This talk about contemporary IDE drives nowadays being just as fast in performance is BS.

We have all said the Cheetahs are the fastest. Now do that same comparison with any non-Cheetah SCSI drive. You will see the performance is about the same.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: Excelsior
This talk about contemporary IDE drives nowadays being just as fast in performance is BS.

We have all said the Cheetahs are the fastest. Now do that same comparison with any non-Cheetah SCSI drive. You will see the performance is about the same.

The access times still are not. SCSI > IDE.