Hard drive recommendation for new system

[Reignor]

I'm about to build my first PC in about 6 years.
I'm looking for hard drive recommendations. I won't embarass myself about fibre channel, but I am wondering about serial ATA, Firewire, or SCSI 320.
Which has the fastest throughput? SCSI 320 sounds awesome, but I gather serial ATA is going to be quite something as well.
Should I wait for PCI Express?
And what's the deal with Firewire? Being able to expand externally sounds very good also, but I admit to not being able to find any info about throughput.
Thanks for any help.

 

[neoro]

SATA sometime next year......
For now
get the
Western Digital SE (8MB Buffer)
its the best out there.......

 

[Reignor]

After some more research, fibre channel looks realistic. But it blows the PCI bus outta the water. So it looks like it'll be worth waiting for PCI-X - as painful as that's going to be. Cheetah 15K FC (I hope I did this correctly) Please comment, all.

 

[Reignor]

I realize it's bad form to comment on your own post, but I was wondering if this: controller and this: drive makes any sense.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Reignor
I realize it's bad form to comment on your own post, but I was wondering if this: controller and this: drive makes any sense.

I'm no SCSI expert (would love to have it, but can't afford it, so I use IDE drives instead), but that should work, although to get any benefit out of that controller, you're going to need a high-end server motherboard as well. If you just have lots of money to spend (like $2500 to $3000 USD), check out the possibility of building a system with dual AMD processors on a dual AMD processor motherboard by Gigabyte, MSI, or Tyan. Those have 64 bit PCI slots that would use that SCSI adaptor at its best. Regular motherboards (single processor AMD and Intel) have only 32bit PCI slots, which would make getting such an expensive controller useless. If you're just going to get a regular motherboard, consider a controller like an Adaptec 19160, which is cheaper.

Oh, and don't bother with Fiber Channel hard drives. They're not a lot more expensive than SCSI, but the cheapest controllers are just under $1000, while you can get a good SCSI controller for only $200.

 

[mcveigh]

well if you want a lot of throughput, I think serverworks motherboards have PCI-X ( idon't know much about it though.

personally I'd reccomend a dual amd board with 64bit/66mhx pci slots, and a good U320 scsi card with cheetah 15k's in a raid 5


check out http://storagereview.com/ for more info.

 

[thorin]

SerialATA is coming along niceley, however it's still gonna take a year for it to catch on completely and for everyone to implement native solutions for it (maybe 2). There are also rumours about 10krpm ATA drives next year. Keeping these things in mind (and the fact that SATA is backwards compatible through the use of a dongle or gender bender type device) I would say don't bother with SCSI. of course Serial Attached SCSI is also coming but behind SATA by a year or two.

My suggestion is to go with the WD SE/JB Series w/ 8MB Cache.

Here are the totals from another recent thread on this topic.

Updated scores:

Maxtor: 6 (~21%)
Seagate: 2 (~7%)
IBM: 2 (~7%)
Western Digital Special Edition: 18 (~65%)
------------------------------------------------------
Total: 28 (100%)

Thorin

 

[buleyb]

SATA drives in December of 2k2(hopefully)

For parallel IDE drives, the suggestion for the Special Edition drives from Western Digital are good (the 8MB cache drives),

or if quiet is more important, any of the IDE drives with the fluid bearings (Maxtor is one of them).

 

[Whitedog]

I'm curious about something... If you've not built a system in 6 years, have you been buying OEM puters? And why all of a sudden the need for a very high end system?

You've not mentioned anything about usage or budget?

"If" you're just needing a run of the mill system, I'd say go with your first reply and get a WD SE drive. You can't go wrong with them.

Yea, the 15k Cheetah's are nice, but unless you're going to be running some fancy RAID system, you really don't need the U320 interface. Even if you striped 2 of them, u160 on regular PCI will give you enough throughput.

I honestly can't see needing more than 133MB/s throughput for a PC. SATA only offers 16 more MB/s then standard PCI. What's the hype in that?

Maybe you should share with us your intensions on what you're going to do with the system.

My guess is, if you've not built a system in 6 years, you're not in great need of a monster computer.

.02

 

[Reignor]

Thanks for all of the great info. I've taken a look at some of the links provided, and it's all been very helpful. Interestingly, one point was made that really struck a note with me - quiet. I'm doing research on quiet fans and would really appreciate any thoughts anyone may have on that point. I'm afraid this is gonna be a beast no matter what I do.

Yes - I'm ashamed to admit it, but the last box I built myself for myself was 6 years ago. [Fractured English] The last PC I bought was about 3 years ago and is a Dell XPS T500 that I got at the same time as my brother was buying his first system so I could support him [/Fractured English]. It's come in handy as I've been able to help him on a number of occasions with various issues, both hardware and software.

I admit to not knowing the complete specs of the PCI bus. What I do know is that I'm trying to buy a disk drive subsystem that'll last for quite some time - and I'm hoping "quite some time" is longer than three years. After I could afford it, all I ever bought was SCSI until I got this #%@ Dell. I've had to do serious and continuous surgery on it to keep it going. What I'm attempting to do is make my entire storage strategy independent - and longer-lived - again.

This means several things to me: buy the best controller I can (but I also admit to not being sure if PCI-X is finalized yet); buy the best and fastest drives that I can; and make the entire thing bus-based rather than board-based.

Re: budget. Yes, of course that always an issue - but I'm one of those folks who prefer to endure major pain once rather than extended pain delivered in drips and drabs.

Re: usage. I'm an Oracle DBA by trade. Believe it or not, you can download Oracle 9.2 from Oracle's Web site if you'd like. And, believe *this* or not, it runs on XP Home - and I've gotten it to run on this PIII 500. BUT - I doubt I need to tell you guys what it runs like...

I'm going to be running Oracle (which I get legitamately through work) on a ~20G test database (that I'm going to be pulling over DSL in pieces). This will allow me to do testing and development at home - which'll get me outta the office 2 days/week if I'm lucky.

This is my current plan, anyway. I really appreciate everyone's feedback. Everything seems to have come much further than I'd thought. I'm by no means completely 100% convinced that SCSI is the way to go, btw - but that's where I'm leaning right now.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Reignor
I'm by no means completely 100% convinced that SCSI is the way to go, btw - but that's where I'm leaning right now.

SCSI would be fine, but if it would work for you, you might want to also consider some Western Digital 120GB "Special Edition" drives on a 3ware IDE RAID controller. Since you're an Oracle admin, I assume you know all about what RAID level 5 is; well, 3ware's IDE controllers let you do that with IDE disks, so it wouldn't be as expensive as SCSI, and it would still be pretty reliable and fast.

I see that another poster already recommended that you read StorageReview; that site has a review of one of their controllers.

 

[mcveigh]

3ware is a great company, awesome hardware and tech supprt