Help a SCSI ignorant individual..

[JJ650]

Ok, I hear all the great things about how fast SCSI systems are and how much of a performance difference there is between EIDE drives.

I have never had the funds nor the time to do anything about it until now. I would like to now that I can.
One thing, I don't know much about the hardware involved.

Anyone care to give any pointers, or links, concerning on what to get and what NOT to get. My current system specs are below in the link for my rig. I would like to keep the mobo so that means a SCSI card.
Which would be good for me and a drive to go along. I do gaming, some ripping and am planning to do DV editing.

Nothing outlandish or REALLY expensive mind you. My funds are limited to an extent

*edit*
horrendous spelling. Fixed some of it. Ugghh....

 

[Damascus]

Get the Seagate Cheetah X15 36LP SCSI hard disk drive

 

[guzik]

If this is standalone machine don't waste your money on SCSI.
SCSI shines on servers.
If you still have burning in your wallet, how much can you spend on your disk subsystem?
Some advice:
1. Make sure you have enough storage space to do backups (at least weekly) of you RAID 0 arrays (you may be sorry if you don't). 5400 RPM IDE drives are perfect for this task.
2. To get high performance from SCSI you have to create RAID array. For that you have to buy several drives of the same size and speed, preferably exactly the same model.
3. To get some security for your data install RAID 5 (you'll need 3+ drives to set RAID 5).
4. To get high performance from your RAID 5 array you'll need RAID controller which is going to cost you another $350+, probably +++
You can set software RAID 5 (using win2k, and probably XP pro), but you'r going to get performance hit. In my case my Sandra score dropped 27% after adding fourth drive and setting software RAID 5 (previously i had RAID 0).
5. I installed OS on pair of smaller drives in RAID 1 (mirror) to get maximum security.
Now, let see:
Cheap SCSI solution: controller $200, 2x10k/18G $280, IDE backup $50 = $530
you get 36GB in RAID 0 + backup drive
Nice SCSI solution: controller $200, 3x10k/18G $420, 2x10k/9G $120 = $740
you get 36GB in RAID 5 + 9G in RAID 1 for OS = 45GB, no backup needed
Very nice solution: controller $500, 3x15k/18G $900, 2x10k/9G $120 = $1520
as above but much much faster

Now, think if you're willing to pay so much money for so little storage?

If you still are, then welcome to the club. Btw further expansion is somehow cheaper

 

[DaFinn]

Well,

Personally I am happily running an Adaptec 19160 U160 scsi card and 2 IBM 36LZX 10000rpm scsi drives. Very stable and accepatable performance. Also not very loud!!!

If I was you, I would go for Adaptec SCSI card (29160) and maybe Fujitsu's MAN3367MP SCSI disk(s). They have had good rewievs, and are quiet and cool running. Check Toms rewiev

Adaptec 29160 has also a very extensive driver support!

 

[Colt45]

you DON'T need raid to benifit from SCSI. it has lower seek times on the drives (like the X-15's) they usually have much larger cache on the drive, plus the scsi bus is superior to IDE.
the devices don't have to wait for each other.

scsi is better, one fast 15 000 rpm drive with good cache will blow the sh!t out of any IDE system you could imagine.

edit: forgot to say that scsi drives generaly have better warranties. there are quite a few companies with a 5 yr warranty on their scsi drives. 5 years is along time for a hardrive!

 

[AMDPwred]

I wish I could go SCSI. I personally don't see the performance for a home system being worth the money. For all of that money you could build the core of a really kick ass AMD system.

 

[billyjak]

Keep in mind that serial ATA is right around the corner and will be faster than IDE

 

[guzik]

<< scsi is better, one fast 15 000 rpm drive with good cache will blow the sh!t out of any IDE system you could imagine. >>



You can check e.g at storagereview.com that on most non-syntetic benchmarks new IDE drive will stay within 10% from your 15k SCSI.
Only in server enviroment SCSI stans out significantly.
It's true that burning CDs with SCSI is much swifter and error-free, but with BurnProof technology gap gets closed.

In my opinion buying single 15k drive ($500 with controller to get 18GB of storage) is mentally incorrect.

 

[Snapster]

<< Keep in mind that serial ATA is right around the corner and will be faster than IDE >>



For transfer rates not seek times. Plain and simple it will still be IDE drives, which are meant for value for money in cost/mb.

 

[LikeLinus]

guzik - you appear to be "mentally incorrect" because you forgot people who do any kind of photo work, cad, 3d work, or audio. You cannot simply narrow it down to servers. I have a 36.4 and an 18.2 gig 10k LVD U160 HD's with an Adaptec 29160 and i absolutely love it. I do website design/development and alot of photoshop work. The fact that i have about HALF the seek time of an IDE drive and faster saves/opens makes it well worth it. I save work all the time in the middle of it, to never lose anything. IT's very nice to have fast saves. With IDE you find yourself waiting for it to spin up and save...which is annoying when you have to wait for the hourglass to stop so you can work again.

If you do any of those types or work, SCSI will definately show you some benifits. Otherwise if you just game, internet, what have you....stick to IDE.

 

[Pabster]

The naysayers have either no idea, or no use for the technology.

SCSI has a definite advantage -- particuarly in a server environment, yes, but it also has a place on the desktop -- even more so if you happen to be involved in audio/video work, like me. It's worth every penny!

 

[Richard98]

<<
Only in server enviroment SCSI stans out significantly. >>



I've seen this comment repeated several times. It may be true if you're comparing the speed at which it takes to transfer large files, but in the real world SCSI blows away IDE because of the lower seek time:

The Maxtor Diamond Max Plus has a seek time of 8.5 MS
link

The Quantum Atlas 10K II has a seek time of 4.7 MS:
link

I switched to SCSI from IDE several months ago and haven't regretted it for a moment. I went with a 2940u2w and a Quantum 10K II U160 drive. The improvement in system responsiveness was quite noticeable.

If you went with a Quantum 18gb 10K II drive and the 2940u2w, you could get into scsi for ~$200. I've minimized my cost, by using an ATA-100 drive for storage and the scsi drive for the OS and often used programs.

 

[m2kewl]

<< The naysayers have either no idea, or no use for the technology. >>



...Or haven't tried it. Let me say this - once you go SCSI (Ultra160), you won't go back!

 

[Snapster]

<<

<<
Only in server enviroment SCSI stans out significantly. >>



I've seen this comment repeated several times. It may be true if you're comparing the speed at which it takes to transfer large files, but in the real world SCSI blows away IDE because of the lower seek time:

The Maxtor Diamond Max Plus has a seek time of 8.5 MS
link

The Quantum Atlas 10K II has a seek time of 4.7 MS:
link

I switched to SCSI from IDE several months ago and haven't regretted it for a moment. I went with a 2940u2w and a Quantum 10K II U160 drive. The improvement in system responsiveness was quite noticeable.

If you went with a Quantum 18gb 10K II drive and the 2940u2w, you could get into scsi for ~$200. I've minimized my cost, by using an ATA-100 drive for storage and the scsi drive for the OS and often used programs. >>




Agreed,

IBM 75GXP ATA100: 8.5ms (seek) + 4.2ms (ave latency) = 12.7ms access (actual, real-life = 12.3ms)
Seagate Cheetah X15: 3.9ms (seek) + 2.0ms (ave latency) = a svelte 5.9ms access (actual, real-life = 6.5ms)

some background info

 

[JJ650]

Wow, lots of opinions from those who like and don't like. The advice is indeed apprecitated.

Another question. Lifespans. Do SCSI drives last as long (I got a good 'ol CHAMP drive still whirring away somewhere here) as IDE drives?
HEat, wear and tear have that much of an impact on them?

Sorry for the newbish questions but like I said...don't know much about SCSI setups

 

[Colt45]

<<
Another question. Lifespans. Do SCSI drives last as long (I got a good 'ol CHAMP drive still whirring away somewhere here) as IDE drives?
HEat, wear and tear have that much of an impact on them? >>



like i said before, many manufacturers put a 5 year warranty on their SCSI drives. The longest IDE warranty ive seen is 3yrs. The manufacturer wouldn't warranty a product for 5 years if they didn't think it could last that long. So basically if your drive craps out within 5 years you get a new one, but you'll probably upgrade before the 5 years is up.

 

[JJ650]

good point.

 

[guzik]

Don't flame me to hard, please.
I have 6 SCSI drives inside my home server, 4x10k/U160 and 2x10k/U2W all LVD, SCSI CD and CD-RW.
I absolutely don't regert it. I still need to point out to JJ650 how much cost is involved in building SCSI system.
And for gaming, some DVD ripping and maybe some DV editing in a future, spending $500+ now may not be good investment.
I still defend my position, that for what 95% of people using their standalone PCs SCSI is overkill, and such money can bring much more improvement in performance if located into e.g. CPU upgrade.

Lifespan of SCSI drive is longer than is usual usability of its capacity/speed, most have 5 years warranty and over 1 million hours MTBF

 

[LikeLinus]

You keep saying $500 though! You're talking about buying the absolute top of the line....he doesnt need that! You can get an 18.2 10k for around $175 (from newegg) and even cheater on the forums? And a controller card for around $100, so your looking around $300, NOT $500 as you keep stating.

IF you wanted to spend even less money, you could get a 9.1 for your apps and os..and a cheap IDE for storage!

 

[Jen]

for myself i wont go back to IDE. i have 7 items now on scsi . i find scsi to be more reliable than ide. as my last ide's adventures has ended up in rma hell




Jen

 

[Richard98]

<< You keep saying $500 though! You're talking about buying the absolute top of the line....he doesnt need that! You can get an 18.2 10k for around $175 (from newegg) and even cheater on the forums? And a controller card for around $100, so your looking around $300, NOT $500 as you keep stating.

IF you wanted to spend even less money, you could get a 9.1 for your apps and os..and a cheap IDE for storage! >>



That's exactly the point I tried to make earlier, but I would suggest spending a few more $$ for an u160 drive such as the 10k II instead of the 10K ultra2 drive and I'd go with 18gb, instead of 9gb, plus the cheap ide ATA-100 for storage.

 

[guzik]

I'm afraid that with SCSI you have to go with new and expensive or none.
Spending money for single U2W+cheapo controller is a waste, since you'll get same performance and 5x more storage space with 120G WD/8MB cache.
If you want performance gain over IDE especially RAIDed 0, you need to go for 15k or for array. For tasks, author of this thread is performing, to get significant performance gain (games, DVD rip) you'll need really powerfull disk subsystem as most of this tasks taxes CPU (ev. video) not the disk system.
Every improvement you do to your system should be evaluated by possible performance gain in what you doing.
My gaming machine has P3, 18G IDE, GeForce 2GTS and 256MB RAM. As my big screen LCD projector is limited in resolution I don't plan to upgrade it, unless HD decoding will descent with a need for more CPU power. It does DVDs very well, has AC3 out for sound. OS sits on a pair of 6.4G IDEs in RAID 1.
My desk machine is measly 366MHz Celery w/ 4.5G IDE, 192MB SDRAM and 15"TFT, enough for Internet browsing, word-proc and Civilization III. Don't plan to upgrade as it does very well what is intented to do.
My server is P3, 4x18G/U160 in RAID5, 2x9G/U2W in RAID1 and 80G/IDE, 512MB RDRAM. I upgraded it to SCSI last year beacause IDE drives couldn't handle multiple tasks (simultaneous read/writes to 20 or more files). I use it for other stuff also, but the ONLY reason to go SCSI way was to revive disks from being clogged by read/write requests to almost unusability. Single task, regardless of nature (I'm excluding professional video/photo editing which needs not just ultra-fast drives but also huge and fast memory and powerful CPU) can't slow your new IDE drive to the need to spend whatever it is (even $300 is too much for some guys unless it's absolutely necessity, and $200 SCSI subsystem is a joke which can't even compare to the pair of good IDE drives on $55 RAID controller).

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< (even $300 is too much for some guys unless it's absolutely necessity, and $200 SCSI subsystem is a joke which can't even compare to the pair of good IDE drives on $55 RAID controller) >>


we all know that 55 dollar IDE RAID controllers magically decrease seek times to ~4ms

anyways, all the people that use scsi seem to love it, and say they would never go back. and all the people who make comments like "its just for servers" seem to be people that have never used it.

i would definitely love to go scsi, but money prohibits it at the moment. suffice to say that if i had to upgrade ONE thing in my computer, i'd go to scsi.