Hard Drives, whats really the best?

[gfx]

hi... i am starting my own game server company in southern california. i am currently buying my parts for a really nice server... dual opterons... 4 gigs ecc pc-3200... the new asus dual opteron motherboard... but i cant figure out which hard drive format to go with...

lets start off with the most obvious choice for servers... SCSI... yes... inside we all crave one... but the biggest problem is the price for the drive... they can range from 100 dollars all the way to about 1K... (talking about 80 pin ultra 320) not to mention the adapter... we all know scsi is unbeatable and yatta yatta... but is it really worth it... i mean... game servers rarely access the hard drive... and even when they do its only to change the level of the games etc etc...

the next choice is SATA/SATA-2... cmon... what are really the advantages to these? sata 150 helps by only a couple mbytes compared to ATA-133... and its still a new technology... u need bootable discs most of the time... and they have a higher fail rate and a shorter life span... on the other hand SATA-2 is twice as fast as SATA and the price isnt that much bigger... but still the same problems of the life span etc etc...

ATA-133... the cheapest... the most reliable next to SCSI... but also an aging technology...

what really is this best?

is it worth it to shell out the money for SCSI?

would running raid help me in this situation?

if running raid-0+1 ... do u need only 1 drive to back up a raid-0... or 2...

answers i need... plz help o wize community

 

[imported_Kensai]

SCSI is the best way for a server. SATA is the next best way.

For SATA, I would recommend 400GB Seagate 7200.8s. And run them in RAID 0+1. (4 drives per array)

~What do you mean by backing up a RAID?

IDE is falling, it consumes more power than an SATA

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Kensai




IDE is falling, it consumes more power than an SATA

How is that so? do you have proof of that? Last time I checked a 15k scsi drive consumed about 12watts and a 7.2k IDE used around 10-12 watts. Sata is the same.

 

[Googer]

I would recomend a Hitachi 7k250 It still manages to out perform most newer drives. Since you say it is for servers I would recomend 36 or 74 gb (10k is fine) SCSI drives in a redundant setting. If you want the latest and greatest but dont mind a few months of wating then I suggest adopting SAS (serial attached scsi). SCSI is an aging technology, which in the server world is generaly a good thing; I mean it is a robust and has with stood the test of time, Ultra 640 is on it's way, SCSI still has a good bit of life left in it. Expect to see servers running it for at least another 12 years.

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/sas_hbas/index.html

http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/products/hard-drives/mav-sas/

 

[gfx]

thank you for the input so far

in an 0+1 raid... does only 1 drive backup the 2 running the raid ... or do i need 2 to back the raid-0+1 ?

also... when running game servers... a fresh install of lets say... a half life engine based game... is up to 1GB... aka i will need at least 74 GB

any more thoughts/ideas/input?

 

[Googer]

Here is a thread from a while back about SAS

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=27&threadid=1515148

 

[Googer]

HP will start shipping SAS drives soon
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1775755,00.asp

 

[Googer]

Seagate SAS
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1517967,00.asp

LSI and Seagate Team.
http://www.lsilogic.com/products/customer_success/seagate.html

 

[imported_Kensai]

Don't triple post. You will get banned quite fast.
Does it take more energy to send signals through 80 pins or 6 pins?

 

[Googer]

What is a tripple post?

and no it is almost imeasureable, both drive types are rated for the same wattage.

 

[Green Man]

Originally posted by: gfx

SATA/SATA-2... cmon... what are really the advantages to these? sata 150 helps by only a couple mbytes compared to ATA-133... and its still a new technology... u need bootable discs most of the time... and they have a higher fail rate and a shorter life span... on the other hand SATA-2 is twice as fast as SATA and the price isnt that much bigger... but still the same problems of the life span etc etc...

ATA-133... the cheapest... the most reliable next to SCSI... but also an aging technology...

Whoever told you these things is misinformed at best. Many SATA drives have longer warranties and higher MTBF than comparable IDE drives.
You can boot to SATA drives just fine so you need a boot disk NEVER, as opposed to most of the time. :roll:

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: Googer
What is a tripple post?

and no it is almost imeasureable, both drive types are rated for the same wattage.

You made 3 ridiculously small posts in 4 minutes to this thread. Is it really that hard to figure out what he meant by "triple post"?

Why are you pushing SAS on this guy? He certainly doesn't need it. You're going to have to come up with some really strong arguments if you think he should wait till it comes out, be an early adopter, and pay the extra it will cost.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: gfx
the next choice is SATA/SATA-2... cmon... what are really the advantages to these? sata 150 helps by only a couple mbytes compared to ATA-133... and its still a new technology... u need bootable discs most of the time... and they have a higher fail rate and a shorter life span... on the other hand SATA-2 is twice as fast as SATA and the price isnt that much bigger... but still the same problems of the life span etc etc...

is it worth it to shell out the money for SCSI?

would running raid help me in this situation?

if running raid-0+1 ... do u need only 1 drive to back up a raid-0... or 2...

answers i need... plz help o wize community

Where are you getting this info about SATA drives failing more often? Most SATA drives have the same internals as their PATA counterparts.

Also, booting isn't a prolem. If you're not running a SATA RAID, it's not even an issue. If you have a SATA RAID you want to boot from, you just have to put the drivers on a floppy.

The Hitachi 7K250s are very fast drives, but they're really about the same as the Seagate 7200.7s. The newer Seagate 7200.8s have higher density and transfer rate. That's what I'd go with if I were you. Just get a 250GB Seagate 7200.8. It has a 5-year warranty, and I really don't think you'll have any reliability issues. I can't see you needing a ridiculous amount of space for a gaming sever, and a RAID really isn't going to help you unless you want mirroring for backup purposes. RAID really only helps video editing and other things that only care about sequential transfer rate. I doubt you'd find any real difference in level load time on a machine that already has 4GB of RAM. I don't see why you'd need RAID for backup, either. After all, it' a game server. You're not storing critical time-sensative information. I doubt you'd be the slightest bit inconvenienced if you had to revert to a 2-week-old image. Just keep a Ghost image of your main drive on some crappy 80GB drive or a DVD-RW.

 

[ExpertNovice]

I am not a Telecommunications expert, server admin, etc

I do run SCSI for my personal computers (purchased before SATA!) not only because of the speed but because the SCSI adapter does the processing which significantly increases the speed of the computer overall. Of course, this depend the processing being HDD intensive vs CPU, which mine is.

My next computer will be SATA drives because of the cost. The need for severs woudl be different but then I would imagine it would depend on how the server is being used.

I read a review (can't find it now, sorry) that compared 15k SCSI drives with 10k SATA drives and the SATA drives were faster. I don't think a dedicate server has a huge drain on the CPU so would probably go with SATA drives.

IDE 133 might be ok for a home system (not mine) but I wouldn't use them. Especially for server. However, if you server is only going to be used by friends and you are on a strict budget then they would probably be acceptable.

Again, I'm NO authority but have just recently quite a bit about SATA vs SCSI.

Edited to add... oh, Game Server Company. Are you going to be hosting games? If the CPU will be processing for the games as well as serving up the files, then, uh, SCSI, or perhaps SCSI.

 

[Arcanedeath]

In your case for a deticated server w/ uptime being important, I would suggest either 2 Seagate 7200.8's in raid 1 or 2 WD raptors in raid 1 along w/ an SATA raid card. if you want better performance go w/ the raptors, if speed isn't so important go w/ the seagates. In this case speed isn't as important as reliability. SCSI is a much more expensive option and really isn't necessary in this case as you'll have 4gb of ram, so the only time you should be hitting the disk is when people are loading levels

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ExpertNovice
I am not a Telecommunications expert, server admin, etc

I do run SCSI for my personal computers (purchased before SATA!) not only because of the speed but because the SCSI adapter does the processing which significantly increases the speed of the computer overall. Of course, this depend the processing being HDD intensive vs CPU, which mine is.

My next computer will be SATA drives because of the cost. The need for severs woudl be different but then I would imagine it would depend on how the server is being used.

I read a review (can't find it now, sorry) that compared 15k SCSI drives with 10k SATA drives and the SATA drives were faster. I don't think a dedicate server has a huge drain on the CPU so would probably go with SATA drives.

IDE 133 might be ok for a home system (not mine) but I wouldn't use them. Especially for server. However, if you server is only going to be used by friends and you are on a strict budget then they would probably be acceptable.

Again, I'm NO authority but have just recently quite a bit about SATA vs SCSI.

Edited to add... oh, Game Server Company. Are you going to be hosting games? If the CPU will be processing for the games as well as serving up the files, then, uh, SCSI, or perhaps SCSI.

Agreed.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Googer
What is a tripple post?

and no it is almost imeasureable, both drive types are rated for the same wattage.

You made 3 ridiculously small posts in 4 minutes to this thread. Is it really that hard to figure out what he meant by "triple post"?

Why are you pushing SAS on this guy? He certainly doesn't need it. You're going to have to come up with some really strong arguments if you think he should wait till it comes out, be an early adopter, and pay the extra it will cost.

I'm not trying to sell this guy on SAS, but am only trying to inform him of what could be SCSI's replacement. The age of SCSI seems to be a big issue for him when it shouldn't be.

 

[fstime]

Originally posted by: Kensai
Don't triple post. You will get banned quite fast.
Does it take more energy to send signals through 80 pins or 6 pins?

No, the difference from IDE and SATA in terms of power drawing is NOTHING.

IDE only uses 4-5 watts more than SATA.

Its nothing.

SATA also offers no performance incress over IDE. (excluding the raptor)

 

[bob4432]

honestly i would do 4 scsi 36GB u320 hdds in a raid 0+1 setup, you can pick them up for ~$130/ea brand new. then i would put in a larger pata/sata drive for backup and use something like acronis true image so you don't need to shutdown the machine for backing up. also, the newer gen 15k rpm scsi hdds just came out and that report, i am assuming was using older 15krpm hdds. you do not need 15krpm but i would go 10k. or go with 4 74GB raptors in raid 0+1 with the larger pata/sata drive for backup if you need the additional space. personally i like scsi over all the others, but i am old skool.

also what kind of connection to the internet do you have?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: ExpertNovice
I don't think a dedicate server has a huge drain on the CPU so would probably go with SATA drives.

a dedicated gaming server uses all cpu and ram, until it changes levels, that is where it his the hdd. haven't you ever run one?

 

[theMan]

what about raid5? is that better than 0+1 ????

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: bob4432
a dedicated gaming server uses all cpu and ram, until it changes levels, that is where it his the hdd. haven't you ever run one?

If you understand this, why are you recommending SCSI drives? Level loading is not something that you're going to get a big benefit running SCSI. The newest 15K SCSI drives achieve transfer rates in the 90s, while the Raptor 74 and Barracuda 7200.8 achieve 70MB/sec. Is it worth it?

Am I missing something here? Exactly how does any of this benefit the game server? Even if every game you run is too dumb to make use of the 4GB of RAM you've got, your server is still going to load the next level long before any of the clients, right?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: bob4432
a dedicated gaming server uses all cpu and ram, until it changes levels, that is where it his the hdd. haven't you ever run one?

If you understand this, why are you recommending SCSI drives? Level loading is not something that you're going to get a big benefit running SCSI. The newest 15K SCSI drives achieve transfer rates in the 90s, while the Raptor 74 and Barracuda 7200.8 achieve 70MB/sec. Is it worth it?

Am I missing something here? Exactly how does any of this benefit the game server? Even if every game you run is too dumb to make use of the 4GB of RAM you've got, your server is still going to load the next level long before any of the clients, right?

because i feel that scsi drives are better all around and the 10krpm u320 drives are not too expensive. 4GB ECC, dual opterons and then a crappy drive system???

 

[Battlewaffle]

I wouldn't get SCSI, you won't be utilizing the drives that hard, plus WD Raptor drives are almost the performance of SCSI for way way less.

Get a pair of Sata I 10krpm WD740GD Raptors and run them in Raid 0+1

The drives are the fastest drives of any desktop drive, and give SCSI's a run for their money. They seriously nip a the heals of SCSI performance.

Now they're only 74gb each though (single volume RAID 0 would give you a 150gb volume) so if you need more space more than you need performance, then you might want something else.

But these drives are awesome

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Battlewaffle
I wouldn't get SCSI, you won't be utilizing the drives that hard, plus WD Raptor drives are almost the performance of SCSI for way way less.

Get a pair of Sata I 10krpm WD740GD Raptors and run them in Raid 0+1

The drives are the fastest drives of any desktop drive, and give SCSI's a run for their money. They seriously nip a the heals of SCSI performance.

Now they're only 74gb each though (single volume RAID 0 would give you a 150gb volume) so if you need more space more than you need performance, then you might want something else.

But these drives are awesome

you need more than a pair of drive for a 0+1, you need 4 and @ ~$180/ea. that amount of $$$ is more than most 36GB and 74GB 10k scsi hdds.

your comment "The drives are the fastest drives of any desktop drive" is not true, maybe in the sata/pata area but quite a few people use scsi as hdds in their desktop machines

and "I wouldn't get SCSI, you won't be utilizing the drives that hard, plus WD Raptor drives are almost the performance of SCSI for way way less." is another off the wall statement that doesn't make any sense.

do you know much regarding scsi, sata and pata hdds?