Desktop 15,000 RPM SCSI Anyone ?

[Whitedog]

Originally posted by: 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).

I totally agree Parish... I don't have any kind of problems with my 19160. My server has 2- SCSI CDROMS, 3-SCSI HD's... It only takes about 15 seconds to init all of them... Boot up time is about 1.5 minutes.. (Dual PII 400 w/512MB ECC - Windows 2000 Server)

 

[Ilmater]

Yeah, my LSI Logic card (that didn't work) botted in about 3 seconds, but my Adaptec card takes less than 10 seconds, so I'm not complaining.

 

[optoman]

I have used my current setup with and with out SCSI drives. When I dumped my 10K cheetah, I got a WD SE 80GB drive. It is one of the fastest IDE drives out there. The performance was close to the cheetah I was using. The cheetah was also almost 4 years old. I did notice a sort of lag in things loading. The boot up time of the computer was faster by about 10 seconds, no SCSI controller to intialize. I wasn't too happy with the switch so I went and got a X15 generation II drive.

The system seems more responsive than with the WD. Programs load up within a second. Photoshop might take two seconds. It might not be practical in cost but I sure feel more confident in the drive knowing it has a 5 year warranty. I never had a SCSI drive fail. I have had about 4 ide drives fail. To not have the headache of a drive failing is worth the extra money to me.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Whitedog
In OTHER WORDS... Unless you can afford an NForce2 Mobo with a GB of PC3200 CL2 memory and an ATI9700 Pro video Card and a 21" Monitor...etc...etc... you don't really have any reason to be buying SCSI hard drives...[/b]?

I have a reason for having SCSI despite not being able to afford a 9700 Pro... it's called "work." My office system (which is my property) has to run 24/7, and SCSI is built for that. When the system has several others pulling Office2000 installations across the network, and then the daily virus scan kicks in, it remains fairly responsive, where an IDE system would be lethargic. And that's just with one drive and controller.

Actually, I would like a 9700 Pro insofar as it gave me dual-monitor support, but I can get that with something much less expensive.

 

[lssanjose]

I like the idea of one card to rule them all. 15 devices on one card isn't so shabby. Right now i'm waiting on my 9GB 10K and LVD scsi cable. but my two 18's (granted 7200rpm, should be as responsive if not more so than the IBM that i decommissioned) are here. I also have a jaz drive waiting to be used. four 2 giggers (i have some flexibility in that) that have performed admirably in this system as temporary replacements (they're 7200 rpm as well).

 

[mechBgon]

Just as long as they all agree on the protocol, so that you don't have slow drives dragging the fast ones down to their older protocol.

 

[toant103]

i'm running on raid 0 with 4 9GB 10,000 rpm 8MB cache SCSI raid



pretty loud

 

[novagamer]

Originally posted by: giocopiano
For those with dual processors, does IDE activity immobilise the whole computer for moments or does the free processor keep it running smoothly?

Yes. 2x 2.4 Xeons here on an i860 chipset. My system STOPS when my optical drives spin up, unfortunately. However, everything else is smooth as butter.. I can burn cds and play CS for instance just fine Creamy smp goodness!

 

[Davegod]

IDE activity immobilise the whole computer for moments


doesnt on my single cpu, unless the only things running are needing something from hdd. I've burned cd's while browsing web with winamp on, all i notice is noise of the cd spinning.

With more direct regard to topic, I doubt I'd notice much improvement swapping my 7200rpm for a SCSI. Yes they'd actually be a lot faster as many things but I dont actually DO anything that would need it. IE loads in about 1 second (set homepage to "about:mozilla") and er thats probably the slowest loading app i have except for games. Games might load maps up significantly quicker, but nowhere else would i really notice it - but then I dont run anything that intensively uses HDD, and generally take the view that virus scanning and defragging are something to flick on when off to watch a bit of TV.

If I had a serious wedge of free cash I'd probably get a SCSI drive, but I'd also be getting some silly speedboat or something aswell. I can afford to go buy a SCSI disk tomorrow - no, go order it online right now even. I dont see much point it bothering however because I would hardly notice it, simply due to the way I use my computer... A bit like an Excel 2000 user going from a 2.4 to 3.06ghz cpu... fair bit more performance thats not going to be noticed.

If you really want, you can buy PCI cards that you can stick in a few gig of I think it was SDRAM, which then calls itself a harddisk. Now THAT is a fast drive, but then stores hardly anything and unless i just didnt notice a battery, will lose everything upon loss of power. Probably versions around or coming that use solid state memory or whatever it is called though.