IDE RAID or SCSI?

[soulm4tter]

I'm seeking better hard drive performance for my next system. I can't decide between a nice new SCSI drive or an IDE RAID setup. I've never owned a SCSI hard drive. I've heard they are louder and hotter. This makes me a little leary. Do most 10,000 rpm U160 drives need a hard drive cooler? I mostly game, browse and use light apps. I'm looking for faster load times and general responsiveness. I'd like faster bootup times also. I'll prolly be using Win98SE or Me in FAT32, possibly Win2k Pro in NTFS someday. Most SCSI systems seem to be slow to boot from what i've seen. Do RAID systems boot quicker? I'm leaning towards an Seagate 18XL or a couple IBM 75GXPs in RAID 0 on a Promise controller. I haven't seen many comparisons, so lemme know what you think.

 

[DarkManX]

RAID isnt so great, I got it and im thinkin of goin SCSI, not every SCSI drive is loud, but most get really hot.

 

[DarkManX]

RAID isnt so great, I got it and im thinkin of goin SCSI, not every SCSI drive is loud, but most get really hot.

 

[soulm4tter]

thats kinda what i thought about RAID, it doesn't really increase access time or overall responsiveness at all. I don't really want to get something too hot. The 18XL review on storagereview.com says it stays fairly cool!

 

[Pariah]

Current generation SCSI drives don't get that hot.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

But I still wouldn't use a 10k rpm scsi drive without cooling. A non-raid scsi setup seems like the most promising. Unless you wanted raid 1 for redundancy.

 

[Pariah]

Do you own any current gen 10kRPM+ drive DonnyBoy? I have a Quantum Atlas 10K II and it isn't even warm to the touch in my open case. I also have an X15 which gets a bit warmer but still cooler than some older generation IDE drive I have used that no one would think of using cooling on.

 

[Noriaki]

The question about boot speed is easy, any addin card that is capable of booting will make your system boot slower. A promise Ultra100 added a few seconds to my total boot time. SCSI shouldn't be any worse than that though.

IDE RAID is crap...it's software RAID (except Adapatec's card but it's like $400-500 for the controller) so you use even more CPU time than regular IDE.

Current Generation SCSI drives aren't that bad for heat/loudness, if you are going to get a 15,000rpm Cheetah X15 you might have some issues depending on your case fans/space...but beyond that you should be ok...older 10kRPM drives could cook your bacon for you,but new ones are no worse than IDE. an X15 is a bit loud, but not to bad.

SCSI is also a very effecient protocol; it very very low CPU, and also handles a high number of devices very effectively.

IDE RAID0 is dumb...access time for drives is the same as a single drive at best, but it increases transfer rate at the cost of CPU cycles. From what you're doing it doesn't sound like Xfer rate is the limiting factor. That's only in like Video editing or something like that...for a low cost Video editing workstation with spare CPU power IDE RAID0 might yeild some benefits....but that's about the only case.

A SCSI 10k RPM drive would yield you more benefits over all, it would have less transfer rate, much better seek time, and lower CPU time, and just over all SCSI goodness. Probably have an 8MB cache or something silly like that on the disk, give yourself like 128MB of Vcache (I'm sure you can afford 128MB of RAM right now if you are considering SCSI) and your disk performance will dominate a silly IDE RAID0 setup.

IDE RAID1 is a totally different story...that doesn't increase performance at all (in fact lowers a bit in every measure) but duplicates all your data, so if you have important data on your puter that might be a good idea.

 

[TimeKeeper]

oh good...let's talk about cost-wise...
(assume no one here like cheap parts)


IDE:
Promise ATA100 Raid card: ~$75 plus shipping.
IBM 75GXP 20.5GB 7200rpm: ~$120 Plus Shipping. (X2 for Level 1 RAID)
Total: $315 + shipping.

Adding another 20GB RAID cost....$240

=========================================================================
SCSI: (ultra 160 LVD)
Adaptec 19160/ Tekram 390U3D: ~$150 Plus shipping
WD Enterprise 10K rpm 18.3GB Ultra160 LVD: ~$235 Plus Shipping.
Total: $385 + shipping.

Adding another 18GB Drive cost.......$235

==========================================================================
My conclusion: why bother w/ IDE RAID??????

 

[usual_suspect]

ok as long as the experts are here, how much faster would a scsi raid 0 be than a single scsi drive...

or would it depend on the controller. I have an atlas 10k 9.1gig , was thinking of buying another 10k drive for raid 0.

 

[Radboy]

Surprises me when ppl seem more interested in boot-up times .. when that's such a small part of the PC experience .. unless you're rebooting frequently. Vast majority of time (for me) is spent using apps .. and seek/access times are much more important when using OS & apps.

Have never used/configured an IDE RAID array, but have researched the (IDE RAID vs SCSI) Q. Opted to go with SCSI. Been nothing but please with the decision.

Deciding factors:

1. SCSI offers dramatically lower seek/access times (compared to IDE or IDE RAID). This translates into (dramatically?) improved system reponsiveness.

2. IDE RAID does nothing to improve seek/access times. Even heard reports that it actually adds an extra 1-3 ms to the equation .. but not sure about that.

3. SCSI drives are more reliable than IDE drives.

4. SCSI is a multitasking/multi-threaded I/O .. IDE (& IDE RAID) is not (it's single-tasking).

5. RAID boosts STRs, but increased STRs have little effect for running an OS & apps (compared to seek/sccess times).

Storage review has a nice piece here why seek/access times are so much more important than STRs.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

Pariah: I've heard recent scsi reviews saying that they still recommend some cooling for these drives for best reliability. if they are really cool enuf to run good without some cooling, then i stand corrected.

 

[Radboy]

I cool all my 10Krpm drives .. whether needed or not .. too much money (when I bought - cheaper now) to chance probs. (I use IBM drives.) Either way, I think a cooler adds a degree (pun - ha) of reliablility. I've never read anything anywhere saying, 'Thou must cool 10Krpm drives." This is my own personal pref .. I use the BayCooler - made by PC Power & Cooling .. which also brings cool/outside air into the case .. cooling my entire case.

 

[Pariah]

Hard drives are mechanical, unlike almost everything else in your computer. They will not run any better or faster if they are cooler. In fact, you will more likely damage them if you cool them too much. Highend SCSI drives are designed and spec'd to run in environments as hot as 130 degrees. That's 130 degree environment, not drive temperature, which may be far higher. If it is 130 degrees in your case, you have a major problem and other parts will be failing long before the hard drive will.

 

[Radboy]

ur right that most (comtempory) drives don't *need* coolers, but missed fact that (mechanical) drives still have onboard electronics .. at least mine do .. PCBs, chips, etc. .. mounted to the drive. If drive gets hot, electronics get hot. Everybody knows electronix don't like heat. Also seems absurd to imply that cooling a drive could damage it. If this were the case, the Storagereview wouldn't use one in their test bed system.

I realize this is an IDE RAID vs SCSI thread .. apologize for getting side-tracked. Not an important issue.

 

[soulm4tter]

I'm not more interested in bootup times than overall responsiveness, but i would like my system to boot fast. Its something that is very noticeable to me. I had a Plextor UltraPlex Wide CD-ROM and PlexWriter 12/4/32 hooked up to an Adpatec 19160 and it took my system forever to boot up. Ok probably about 2 minutes, but long enought to piss me off. Just after POST, the SCSI devices would be recognized and it took a good 20 seconds for the CD-ROM to be recognized. Then i'd get a message that says "No SCSI BIOS installed." The CD-ROM is defective, no longer in my system and hopefully will RMA it. Now the system boots somewhat faster, but still slow. The system booted fast as hell before having a SCSI card, so i found the this really annoying. It looks like all be going SCSI fer sure however for the faster seek/access times and excellent I/O performance.

 

[AfterBurn]

I'd go with Radboy. Ive done the same thing, only i have used IDE RAID-0, but now more than happily running SCSI. When using benchmarks, the raw throughput of my Quantum Atlas V (7200rpm) is actullay some slower than the RAID setup, yet cause of an access time that is almost a third of the RAID, the system 'feels' a whole lot faster. And that translates to me happier. To me its worth every penny for the extra cost. As far as boot time, who cares? I boot my system every once in 2 or 3 weeks; i dont care if it would take 5 mins. What matters is what it does when im sitting at it and working.

My ?0.02,
-AB-

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

actually, when a HD starts working from idle or off state, the platters warm up, making them expand just tiny, minisclue bit. but the heads must recalibrate to compensate for this expansion, causing a *brief* slowdown. And the same must happen when the platters cool down and contract.

this isn't a noticable slow down, but it still can be reduced by cooling the drive so that it heats up less from idle/off state, there for reducing the amount of expanding/contracting.

 

[Pariah]

soulm4tter, you can speed up cdrom initialization by simply opening the drive tray when you boot.

The recalibration process is almost nonexistent with current drives. If the drive is AV rated, which a lot of SCSI drives are, they don't recalibrate at all.

 

[bonkers325]

scsi is for multitaksing and raid is for performance

u choose

cheers,
bonkers325

 

[spamboy]

skip them both and buy more memory.

 

[borealiss]

why not a huge eide disk drive and just a buttload of memory? scsi's great, but i think the performance is justified if you want to capture video or something, and besides, how much is ram? so cheap. 256 for about 100 bucks at some places? i would get 2 pc133 dimms at 256 megs and a western digital 40 gig 7200 rpm hard disk. ram would really speed up things. unless you really care about load times or something. and ram is much faster than any scratch disk.

 

[jimmygates]

More ram is nice but I don't think that will help speed up applications as much as a fast SCSI hdd. I think the ram still has to get infomation from your hdd and more ram + same slow hdd = same speeds? I have an IBM 10k 18.3gb Ultra 160 HDD and I noticed a huge improvement over IDE drives. Granted I have to watch all those SCSI bios/detect crap during bootup but the overall speed is worth it. I can acutally sit and watch defrag finish now where I used to have to run it before I go to bed for IDE drives..