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help me get my scsi up and running

C

cirthix

Diamond Member
mylex dac960 series raid card and the drive is a seagate cheetah 15.3k, ultra 320, 18gb

the problem is that sisoft sandra shows the drive as having a "19mb/sec drive index" and it doesnt seem fast. any settings i can change?



i'm just going to get a new controller, an lsi u160
 
Is it a standard 68-pin drive or is it an SCA drive with an adapter? And what OS are you running - I see a note that the Flashpoint LW drivers were removed from XP for both Home and Pro versions. So you have to find XP drivers and install them first - before you try connecting any drives to the LW. Also check the version of ASPI software you have installed and update if necessary (DL from Adaptec.com - works with all SCSI, not just Adaptec).
. And neither of those HBAs are even LVD capable - so you may have to jumper the drive to SE operation (supposed to autodetect, but I like to be sure). You will want to get at least a U80 (U2W LVD) capable adapter to get the most out of that drive - you can get them pretty cheap on eBay along with LVD compliant SCA adapters, cables and Active LVD/SE (works on both) compliant terminators.
. If it is an SCA drive with an adapter, the SCA to 68-pin adapter has to be LVD compliant even if you intend to use the drive in SE mode.
. Once you have all that sorted out, make sure that the device address you have the drive set to is 0 or 6 and that no other device is set to the same address. And the drive has no internal termination so you must supply an Active LVD terminator to go into the end position on the cable.
. Find a lot of helpful info and links here: http://www.scsifaq.org .

.bh.
 
You only need one ASPI layer software. But Adaptec's is the most commonly used and will work with most HBAs and drivers etc. If you are running SCSI or even just IDE optical drives, you should have ASPI installed. And whatever ASPI you use, make sure it's the latest version available.

.bh.
 
ok, i got it working, i had to fool the scsi card into thinking it was running a radi with one drive lol. its nice because the card has 8mb of ram, can do raid, is an all-hardware solution, and xp has drivers for it already. BUT it seems slow, so i benchmarked it..

mylex dac960 series raid card and
with a seagate cheetah 15.3k, ultra 320, 18gb

gave me 19mb/sec "drive index" from sandra. what am i doing wrong? shoudl i have read and write buffers enabled (they are)? any other possible settings to make it faster?
 
You need no ASPI layer software AT ALL to run a hard disk. ASPI layers are needed for very old programs that can't attach to Windows's native SCSI services yet.

Slow transfer rates might indicate your SCSI cabling isn't correct (got termination?), or your RAID setup isn't quite what you should be doing.
 
My controller lets you set options for each drive in the BIOS. You can set for Sync or Async, set the data rate for each drive, set Wide negotiation Enables/Disabled, etc. Perhaps there is something like that for yours or maybe a separate utility. Sounds like either Wide negotiation may be set to Dis or the rate is not set right or it may be set for async mode... Any of the above can cause it to operate slowly. With that controller, the most you're going to be able to get is 40MB/sec. The drive is capable of 51-76MB/sec. per storagereview.com .
. BTW, that DAC960 is ANCIENT - the manual I was reading says 1997. A 15k U320 drive deserves better...

.bh.
 
Yeah, I have one of those. Let me put it this way, it takes SIMM memory. And it does U2W (80MB/s SCSI) at best. But at least it can be expanded up to 128MB.
 
hmm, i'll think about gettig a controller, maybe selling the drive, if i cant get this all up and running fast by changing settings
 
Get an LSI "U160" controller, and the speed shall arrive 😉

An U2W controller isn't much slower when plugged into a "normal" PCI slot, since the latter limits you to about 90 MB/s anyway. You should use your current stuff to learn how to set up a SCSI chain correctly, and if you then still don't like it, go with a faster controller card.
 
I just told you where the limits are. Try the current one, learn how to set up SCSI and RAID. Then (!) decide what you want to do.
 
i re-did the raid, same results. should i use "normal" or "read ahead" cashe? "write through" or "write back" cashe? whats the cheapest controller you recommend?
 
Look, why don't you try reading what I already wrote? I recommended an alternate controller.

As for your controller's settings, please study its manual to learn what they do and what the implications are.
 
Yeah, it can do 80MB/sec with both channels operating - only 40MB/channel. The LSI U160 can be found for under $50. still, but you would need a new LVD cable and LVD terminator. I found a Qlogic U2W (LVD - U80) adapter at pc-pitstop for $22.

Here are some good SCSI vendors:

http://www.hypermicro.com (may offer free ground shipping if you mention www.storagereview.com - check the SR site for the latest offer)
http://www.centrix-intl.com
http://www.pc-pitstop.com (offers PayPal as a payment option)
http://www.scsi4me.com (ditto)
http://www.etech4sale.com
and I can usually find stuff (like drives, cables and adapters) for low bucks on eBay.

.bh.
 
The U160 doesn't do RAID, but that's not needed up front when starting SCSI for the first time.


I have a couple of PDFs for this controller you have, at least I'm pretty sure you have the same one as one of mine which is a Mylex AcceleRAID 250. I'll post links to them for you after work tonight.
 
Doing SCSI RAID on "normal" PCI slots is entirely pointless anyway (if your goal is speed) - simply because a single 15k rpm drive of a current series outperforms the PCI bus already.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
Doing SCSI RAID on "normal" PCI slots is entirely pointless anyway (if your goal is speed) - simply because a single 15k rpm drive of a current series outperforms the PCI bus already.
Click to expand...

no it doesnt... plus, i'm only using one drive
 
Conventional PCI is 133 MB/s _raw_ bandwidth. With communication and addressing overhead, you won't get any kind of storage controller to do more than 95 MB/s. This ceiling is pretty consistent, whether you use Intel, VIA, ServerWorks or whoever else's chipsets.

The latest breed of 15k rpm drives hits this ceiling, in single-drive configurations.

In another forum, I recently coached another guy through his first SCSI setup, and you'll find pretty pictures from this person's benchmarking that are nicely proving my point - on page 2 of the thread. Also in this thread: Link to Storagereview.com, demonstrating how this single drive would be faster if its controller were on a faster bus.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=385351&page=1&pp=15
 
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