not like $2.99 isnt great but these drives are antiquated and slow. The 5400rpm and slow seek times make for a pretty lame scsi drive. Most ATA drives should outperform these I think. Not that they wouldnt be fun to play with but practical, they are not.
I bought 4 of these drives for a friend of mine. Popped one in to see how it ran.
1. Slow - Any 3.5 drive around the same size will beat it hands down.
2. LOUD - This thing can easily muffle out the noise that comes from the case fans.
3. HOT - You think 15K RPM SCSI drives are hot? This guy is only 5.4K and it pumps out more heat. Makes the case nice and toasty.
If you need cheap raw storage, go for it, but if you're planning to use it, you're better off getting a 20GB IDE drive or something similar.
As for the store, B&M is pretty decent. From what I've heard from folks that order online from them, they ship the wrong/damaged items at times and it takes time to get things right. Also keep in mind that they usually sell obsolete/used stuff so some of it is bound to be defective from time to time. Doesn't happen a lot but still happens. No store is perfect.
1. Slow - Any 3.5 drive around the same size will beat it hands down.
2. LOUD - This thing can easily muffle out the noise that comes from the case fans.
3. HOT - You think 15K RPM SCSI drives are hot? This guy is only 5.4K and it pumps out more heat. Makes the case nice and toasty.
If you need cheap raw storage, go for it, but if you're planning to use it, you're better off getting a 20GB IDE drive or something similar.
As for the store, B&M is pretty decent. From what I've heard from folks that order online from them, they ship the wrong/damaged items at times and it takes time to get things right. Also keep in mind that they usually sell obsolete/used stuff so some of it is bound to be defective from time to time. Doesn't happen a lot but still happens. No store is perfect.
These Elite series full height drives also come in a 47GB version. They are slow, loud and put out a good deal of heat, although nothing a single fan won't take care of. They can easily be raided with a SCSI raid card. The only real advantage of these drives other than price is that they are nearly indestructable, easily the most bullet proof drive you have ever seen. We had 4 of the 9.1GB models in a Datasilo case at a place I used to work for when the 2 fans in the case went out. No one noticed because the case was stuffed behind a large Intergraph Imagestation. We figure they ran for at least a week like that before someone burned their arm on the exterior of the Datasilo case while retreiving a pen. The exterior of the case was hot enough to leave a nasty red burn mark on this persons arm after only grazing the case if that gives you any idea how hot the drives inside must have been. The drives were still running perfectly and continued to run for another year and a half before they were taken out of service in favor of higher capacity, smaller physical footprint drives. Pretty amazing drives really but seriously inconvenient. I have 3 of the 47GB models in a Datasilo case that hold most of my MP3 collection and have been using them for years.
The top of the description says it has a regular 58 pin UW connection, but the specs say ASA2. Even if it is only SCA, you can get adapters to use it. SCA is basically the SCSI cable and power connector combined into one standardized cable to make it easy to pop them into hot swap arrays.
If you're worried about heat, stick it in an external exclosure or a spare case. That old AT case you have sitting in the attic may come to some use
If you're worried about heat, stick it in an external exclosure or a spare case. That old AT case you have sitting in the attic may come to some use
DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Tempting, except on the shipping.
What's the maximum number of hard drives you can raid? (I've never messed with raid before and would need a refresher, obviously by that question)
What's the maximum number of hard drives you can raid? (I've never messed with raid before and would need a refresher, obviously by that question)
I used to have a drive like this in my cad wkstn back in the day. You certainly wouldn't want to move it too much as it makes for quite a hefty pc.
It's THE drive to get if you want your box to sound like it's powered by a jet engine.
It's THE drive to get if you want your box to sound like it's powered by a jet engine.
Demon-Xanth
Lifer
- Feb 15, 2000
- 20,551
- 2
- 81
DrPizza: 15 on my card. (as far as I know). You could do 45 on a three channel card though. You'll need some hardcore beefiness of a power supply though.
Surplus Computers has been trying to move these drives for over a year now. There must have been a massive number of these drives that were defective and required repair, because Surplus Computers is not the only 'discount/closeout' computer reseller I've seen selling this same drive (cheap). Three bucks is by far the lowest I've seen, though. Hell at that price, I might buy a couple to use as door stops. lol!
I was working on "project external raid" a few months back, but scrapped the idea because of converters and performance. I may just buy 15 drives, and throw them in a massive tower, linked to a power supply and a raid controller from another comp.
I have in my old system a full height seagate scsi drive, it's 8gb and weighs 8lbs! Now 24gb at 8lbs, that's 3x better weight/performance.
I just may bite...
I have in my old system a full height seagate scsi drive, it's 8gb and weighs 8lbs! Now 24gb at 8lbs, that's 3x better weight/performance.
I just may bite...
I have an array of 24 of the 49GB version of this drive. I run it in RAID5, requires 5 Power supplies and produces enough heat to keep my basement at a comfortable temperature in the winter(montana). as for speed, I have the drives attatched to a 3 channel RAID controller that is 50MB/channel/second, so 150MB/second on the interface and I get pretty good performance. I run this on a Gigabit NIC on a Gigabit only network, I can pull data accross on SEQUINTIAL reads at about 85-90MB/s, random reads drops to about 40MB/s, but consider that this is over samba shares, on Gb networking, and the host machine for the array is a dual cel 500 running gentoo linux built specifically for this array and does nothing but manage this array and run the samba server(samba3, btw)
they drives are load also, especially 24 other them, I have them in a custom built hardwood case with 5 80mm fans pushing air in and 5 more pulling it out from the other(top) end of the tower, the wood absorbs the sound quite well and I can't really hear the drives.
be aware of the power bill if you get these drives. i only turn mine on to access data or when I have a lan party.
they drives are load also, especially 24 other them, I have them in a custom built hardwood case with 5 80mm fans pushing air in and 5 more pulling it out from the other(top) end of the tower, the wood absorbs the sound quite well and I can't really hear the drives.
be aware of the power bill if you get these drives. i only turn mine on to access data or when I have a lan party.
Performance? A joke.
Note the specs:
- Internal Transfer Rate (mbits/sec): 85 to 125
Seek time is also not so good.
- Average Access (ms) read/write: 13.2/14.2
- Single Track Seek (ms) read/write: 1.3/2.3
- Max Full Seek (ms) read/write: 28.2/28.2
compare with the 7200.7:
Internal Transfer Rate (Mbits/sec) 683 (this is a MAX, but still over 5 times faster than the listed drive)
Avg. Sustained Transfer Rate (Mbytes/sec) >58 (vs around 10 for the listed drive)
Average Seek (msec) 8.5
shagman is right. These things are OLD. I work for Seagate in a media manufacturing site (we make the discs). I've worked here for 7 years and the only 5.25" discs I've ever seen were those people kept for souvenirs. We haven't made those things for a LONG time.
The guy didn't list the power specs on these... I wonder why?
These things pull over 60 watts EACH at startup.
The other thing to consider is reliability. Drive standards for reliability have definitely improved in 10 years. Also, that thing has 14 platters and 28 heads. About twice the capacity can be had in current 40GB drives with ONE head and ONE SIDE of a platter. More moving parts = increased chance of failure.
They are definitely cheap, but that's all they are. If you buy one, don't expect to use it for anything you want any speed from unless you buy a whole farm of them and RAID them together as syadnom has.
Buy it for the rare earth magnets and shiney metal coasters? Use for the big mugs that won't fit on CDs?
Do you need fans to cool these HDs?
IMO, these can be used for my car ramp if I could stack them up to do carwork. ;-)
IMO, these can be used for my car ramp if I could stack them up to do carwork. ;-)
Originally posted by: SurgicalShark
Remember big is not always free.
No but the recent sales in the last month or two like the WD SE 160 gig for $20 makes the big just about free
Sheesh, pretty mean words for someone who can't tell the difference between bels and decibels.Originally posted by: Kenny0829
Originally posted by: jrichrds
46 decibels...that's one loud hard drive.
That's 4 . 6 db, either put on your glasses, get a better monitor, or get some sleep
OrganizedChaos
Diamond Member
- Apr 21, 2002
- 4,524
- 0
- 0
i wouldn't mind putting 60 of these in a box setup into 4 raid5 arrays. clear case and redundent power suppliers. massive geek factor, bring your computer to lan parties on a palet jack
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,587
- 10,225
- 126
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