Fast Hard Drives

[Ipno]

I was wondering, what is the fastest hard drive configuration you can get for about $300 these days?

Would it be faster to get a motherboard that supports IDE raid and get two of those Deskstars and mirror them for faster access? Or would it be better to get a SCSI system, keeping in mind that I really only care to have about 30gb or so in my system.

 

[mikefromwa]

fastest is scsi, you can get 10k rpm IBM's for under $300. best currently is the seagate cheetah x15, but the cheapest ive seen those go for is around $350~

if your thinking about getting a motherboard with onboard ide raid, you dont want mirroring for performance (2 drives in raid 1 = 1 drive capacity and slower than normal performance...because its mirroring all the info to the 2nd drive). what you want is raid0, this stripes 2 drives into 1 large drive and increases performance.

but, even raid0 ata/100 7200 rpm drives arnt gunna be 10k or 15k scsi drive performance (but im sure people will argue that point)

 

[cnhoff]

Well, a RAID 0 IDE system (two 30Gig or so)would definetely be faster than a single SCSI system, and I do not see any reasons to upgrade to SCSI only for performance reasons. You even get the RAID funcionality for almost nothing with boards like the A7V133 or the KT7-RAID.

 

[$pade]

for 300 ata raid is the only way to go. u can get 2 20gb 60gxp ibm drives for around 210 or 2 40gb 60gxp drives for 290 and then buy a motherboard with onboard raid wich usually cost 15 to 30 bucks more than the non raid motherboard.

for 500 dollars or more u can get a 18 gig cheetah 15x drive and the appropriate scsi card. this will be the fastest solution for now but as u can see u only get 18 gig and the cost is way more than 300.

 

[nortexoid]

I'm not sure, but i think that IDE RAID would give higher theoretical max. data throughput (i.e. per sec.), but its seek/access times compared to SCSI blow major penis-bits.

i would have to say that in real-world benchmarks, the SCSI would be faster...remember u must cost in a SCSI adapter - which aren't exactly cheap, depending on model/brand.

and yes, u want striping, not mirroring for RAID performance.

 

[Ipno]

What about using a smaller, say like a 9gb 10k rpm scsi drive as the primary drive that has the OS and stuff that gets read a lot of times on it, and then buying a cheaper hard drive for "bulk" storage, for like Mp3s and older games that I don't play much.

Does anyone see a problem doing that?

 

[JellyBaby]

Yes we could certainly use a price war in the SCSI controller/hard drive deptartments.

 

[mikefromwa]

You got it! get a 29160 from adaptecconnect.com ($145 or so, great scsi controller, lvd 68pin with all the options) and a nice IBM 10k rpm scsi drive, put os and all your apps/games on that drive and get a large capacity drive to store your backups, mp3's, ect ect...and run it off the onboard ide channel.

this is how i setup my computers, wouldnt do it anyother way (well, cept with my VP6, i wanted to try 2 45gig 75gxp's in raid0 and see how it worked...not bad, but not scsi)

 

[Zach]

<< Well, a RAID 0 IDE system (two 30Gig or so)would definetely be faster than a single SCSI system, and I do not see any reasons to upgrade to SCSI only for performance reasons. You even get the RAID funcionality for almost nothing with boards like the A7V133 or the KT7-RAID. >>



Bull, get a 10K SCSI drive. Seek times are important too, do searches on the forums. There's plenty of arguments against using IDE RAID, there's more to a system then throughput.

 

[rommel]

i have a RAID eide system with the deskstars...two 30 gig and will do an array with 4 when that new fast trak tx comes out from promise...4 channels and supposedly 200mb burst transfer ...but it would be real nice to do a scsi RAID array using two seagates...thats definately next to try for me