ME WANT SCSI!!! (answers and opinions needed)

[Syborg1211]

Once my radeon 8500 and logitech z560s come in my computer will be almost perfect with the exception of my aging 20 gb western digital hard drive. So, I have decided to go scsi or raid, but which one and how much? I basically know nothing about these topics so information on these will be much apreciated.

I'd like 2 different suggestions:

The value skimp setup consisting of a pretty cheap scsi or raid card that performs well but isn't top of the line and a decent-good hard drive which isn't the latest and greatest but cost is low

or

The dream setup with the best scsi or raid card and the best hard drive to get (but still respectable prices)

Size of the drive isnt too big of a deal as long as it's somewhere near 20 because I can always use my old drive as a storage. I just want something big enough to hold my games and other stuff where accesstime will be most noticed.

 

[skypilot]

Hmm... you'll want an adaptec 19160 ultra 160 scsi card for your adapter (around 200 retail), and a seagate 15,000 rpm cheetah for your drive, a 18GB version it looks like for you would work just fine. Pricewatch has these listed for around 310 (dont get the 51LC, get the 52LC it is a newer version). Hope I could help. For around 500 that is one sweet drive setup.

 

[Sestar]

Why not an 80mbyte card tho? They are cheaper and I thought scsi doesnt REALLY go over 80

 

[DarkManX]

get a tekram controller, just as good, and unless you plan on filling up your SCSI chain theres no need for U160.

 

[kly1222]

If you're not planning to running a boatload of u160 scsi drives on the controller, you should listen to Sestar and get a 2940u2w card. You should be able to pick one up for under $80.

Only if you plan to raid a couple seagate X15-LP's should you get a u160 card.

 

[Richard98]

My vote for the low end would be a 2940u2w & an 18 gb Atlas 10k II drive. ~$200.

 

[DarkManX]

i got this card for like 90$ somewhere around a year ago. this model I never had a single problem, and never had any driver issues, in win98, me, 2k, and XP. i got the retail box that also came with all the cables i needed.

 

[BuckNaked]

I would go with Tekram ( I have the 390U3W). Performance is about the same as a comparable Adaptec but you get all the cables for less than you would pay for the comparable bare adaptec card. Check out Storagereview for the test comparing the two. I actually haven't installed the card yet, and am just running my Plextor SCSI CD-ROM and Burner off an Adaptec 2930 card. I haven't picked up a SCSI HD yet, but may go with a 18g Atlas 10K III and use my current 30g Maxtor as storage. I would love to have an X15, but its just a little too much money, and I am worried about the noise.

I have a Plextor IDE 12/10/32 with burrnproof and a SCSI 8/20 burner, and still prefer the slower burner on SCSI over a faster burner on IDE. That plus the incredible ripping speed of the 40x CD-ROM is a hard combination to beat. A SCSI HD is nice, but in my opinion SCSI really shines when you have some SCSI peripherals such as a burner in addition to the HD. It can be a big expense if you already have money tied up in a current IDE burner, and wanted to replace it with SCSI. So I guess it depends on how much money you had and wanted to spend... SCSI is nice, but it isn't cheap...

Dave

 

[Syborg1211]

Thanks for the replies! Keep em coming...


bump before bed

 

[soulm4tter]

IDE RAID0 stinks imho. access times are much more indicative of hard drive peformance and scsi is where its at. check out xbits 10k roundup. The Atlas 10K III looks oso nice. Its very fast, quiet, and cool. You can pickup an 18GB version for $190. plus a DC390U2W for $130 for a grand total of $320.

The dream setup would be Seagate Cheetah X15 36LP (18GB~$320 | 36GB~$520), which would be considerably louder and hotter. As for the SCSI card i guess it depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want RAID? Do you need dual channels? how about an external connector? The Adaptec 39160 (~$230) would be a safe bet with dual LVD channels, a 50-pin connector, and 64-bit PCI compatible. Tekrams DC-390U3D is virtually the same thing and same price. That would double your expense at $640.

 

[CdnMade]

well a guy at work gave me this Qlogic 1080 scsi card and a 10 gig quantum vikingII hd. Is it any good and how is it better then a normal ide if it is?

 

[EXman]

SCSI is nice performance on the HD front but the lack of choice on the optical side forced me to go back to IDE. I just hated the lack of choice and nothing performed up to par with my Lite-on 24x burner (even though they were way more than the Lite-On) and my Pioneer DVD-rom played like only have the CD's I threw at it.

I would go for adaptec for a painless install and I suggest getting it from the FS/FT there are excellent deals there I got a X15 and a 29160 for $300. I have seen 2940U2W for as little as $60 there, which sounds like it suit you fine. I preffer the seagate Drives as they were easy to install and the quantum needed to be jumpered too much and there was zero support for a Quantom atlas 10K III online.

Lastly if you are spending that much $ seriously consider the WD 100GB "Special Edition" w/ 8mb cache buffer that has SCSI perfomance for only $250 which is half the cost of a 73GB SCSI. go to Storage review to see it Beat even a Atlas 10K II. Save money with no SCSI card and get a but load of Space. Yes this is what I just purchased

 

[soulm4tter]

lol, good one EXman. i just compared my year and a half old cheetah to the WD 100GB Speacial Edition. check it out. Then i compared the WD to the Atlas 10k II and it didn't look any better for the WD. try comparing IOMeter. WinBench is very dependent on buffer size and while the WD has a nice big 8mb buffer and good read speeds, its access times are pathetically high.

 

[Bovinicus]

I wouldn't bother going SCSI/RAID. It is just not worth the extra hassle and expense. Especially the expense. If you want a really fast harddrive, the 1000BB SE (Or 1000JB) from Western Digital is quite fast. That 8MB buffer really helps. SCSI drives are not that much faster. They are only important for database operations and very intense things of similar nature. For the home user, even if they do pretty intensive tasks, they will never equal what a server does, which is the only place that SCSI/RAID really comes in handy. Sure, things will be faster for the home user as well, but not several hundred dollars faster. =)

 

[Pabster]

Bovinicus:

You're full of hot air

While the WD1000BB "SE" is a decently priced, large capacity, reasonably fast IDE drive ... it can't even begin to compare with SCSI drives.

I made the switch on my main rigs from IDE to 100% SCSI about a year ago and have never looked back. I'm using high-end SCSI drives (10K IIIs and X15-36LPs) but it is a complete night and day difference. Particularly when multitasking. And when multiple drives are being read/written to.

 

[guzik]

If you can afford it go for it. I switched to SCSI couple months ago. I've done multiple (20-30) simultaneous downloads, besides that PC is my file and domain server for other 3 at home. With all this simultaneous accesses my 80GB/7200rpm IDE drive was crawling. I considered IDE RAID for a while, but RAID 0 is too crazy idea with not so reliable IDE hardware, raid 5 needs expensive controller ($260+) and is too new technology to trust all my data to it. Then I found on Internet Asus p3c-ls mobo with onboard Adaptec 7892 (U160) for just $79 new. It's RDRAM but my old mobo was i820 also so no expense with it. I put 4 18GB/10k Fujitsu ($138 a piece) in raid 5 and 2 4.5GB/7200 Seagates ($26 a piece) in raid 1 for OS. IDE drives serve as archive. Of course I didn't have enough space and power inside my full tower case (I also had CD scsi, CDRW scsi and DVD ide), thus I spent $119 for 4bay SCSI/160 enclosure w/200W PS. Total expense: $800 to get extra 60GB of hard drive space. Was it worth it? For me it was. Further expanding will be less costly as archives are going to be IDE only and so far my files I need fast access to don't exceed 30GB what gives me extra 20GB for DVD rip. Difference in performance is huge. But, if you don't want to build whole RAID5 array stay with IDE.
Buy three fast drives. e.g. 160GB and two 80GB, buy Promise FastTrak RAID controller. Put two 80GBs into RAID 0, and 160GB as a backup drive for array. For $530 you'll get 160GB of quite fast storage, secured - thanks to your regular backups!!, and faster than single SCSI 10k drive.

 

[thermite88]

<< SCSI drives are not that much faster. >>

This may be true in many benchmarks except the access time which the SCSI really excel. I use both SCSI and IDE daily at work, shuttling between a W2K PC using IDE and a NT workstation using SCSI. Both have the latest CPU from Dell. It is just no comparison that the SCSI is much more responsive in interactive uses. It is hard to go back to IDE once you experienced the SCSI.

I use an all SCSI system at home. I tried IDE a few times when I think that I can get the best hardware for a fraction of the cost of SCSI, but SCSI always won out at the end.

My SCSI rig.

If you go SCSI, don't skip to save a few dollars. It is not worth it.

Get Adaptec instead of other brand. All new Windows OS has native support for Adaptec card which makes it a true PNP when installing new OS. The Tekram and old Deamond Fireport both need third party install disk.

Get Ultra160. It has several features that really impact the performance compared to the U2W, in addition to the bandwidth.

More detail at the Adaptec site.

Plan carefully before you switch. Several of the concerns are real:
(1) Much high cost per storage capacity.
(2) DVD and CDRW drive choices are limited and cost much more at the same speed.
You may regret the switch if you do not appreciate the responsiveness of a SCSI system.

 

[Richard98]

There's no reason you can't enjoy the advantages of both ide and scsi. I use a SCSI drive for my OS and backup of important documents and a Maxtor ATA-100 60GB drive for storage. It's fairly easy to pick up a reasonably fast and large ata-100 drive for $100 or less. Combine that with an 18gb 10k u160 scsi drive and you have plenty of storage as well as a fast system with about a $200 investment, excluding the cost of the adapter card. For another $75 to $100, you can pick up a 2940u2w which works very well for the $$.

Definitely replace the ide peripherals with SCSI peripherals. You'll be able to free up resources and see a tremendous improvement in performance. In my case, I was able to sell my CDRW and DVD IDE drives drives for approximately the same amount that I paid for the SCSI counterparts.

 

[Pariah]

"Get Adaptec instead of other brand. All new Windows OS has native support for Adaptec card which makes it a true PNP when installing new OS."

The Tekram U160 cards have native support in WinXP as well, and will install without the need for driver disks. There is no good reason at all to go with Adaptec unless you like spending more money. The cards perform very similarly, with the Tekram usually coming out slightly on top. The notion that adaptec is supported under more OS's is false as well. The Tekram U160 cards use an LSI chipset which is very well supported by LSI, a company that isn't exactly going to disappear anytime soon.

Comparing Tekram to an ancient long abandoned SCSI UW Diamond Fireport is pretty silly to say the least.

 

[mandrake88]

fyi....
the older 390u2w also has native support in winxp. had my tekram dc390u2w for more than 2 years
now and i am happy with it. i do not think buying adaptec again unless they bring their prices down.

 

[Rordog]

kind of an aside: can anyone here compare the responsiveness and performance of a single scsi hd setup (hypothetically with a tekram controller and 10k III) and a ide raid 0 setup (prob w/ WD drives). i am debating doing either a single scsi or raid 0 ide setup, and i have a 100 gb WD for my backup/storage drive, i just want a fast setup for my OS and most apps.

thanx

 

[Daovonnaex]

<< Once my radeon 8500 and logitech z560s come in my computer will be almost perfect with the exception of my aging 20 gb western digital hard drive. So, I have decided to go scsi or raid, but which one and how much? I basically know nothing about these topics so information on these will be much apreciated.

I'd like 2 different suggestions:

The value skimp setup consisting of a pretty cheap scsi or raid card that performs well but isn't top of the line and a decent-good hard drive which isn't the latest and greatest but cost is low

or

The dream setup with the best scsi or raid card and the best hard drive to get (but still respectable prices)

Size of the drive isnt too big of a deal as long as it's somewhere near 20 because I can always use my old drive as a storage. I just want something big enough to hold my games and other stuff where accesstime will be most noticed. >>

For a value set up, you'll most likely want to purchase a card that supports RAID 0, 1, and 0+1. Adaptec, usually considered the leader in SCSI adapters, makes such a card. For a dream system, a 64-bit 66MHz SCSI card with hardware RAID, like the Adaptec 3210s is your best bet (you need a 64-bit 66MHz PCI slot for this).
As for drives, I'm really only familiar with dream ones. A lot of people here will recommend the Seagate Cheetah X15. Granted, it's a fine drive, but I prefer the Seagate Cheetah 73LP. The reason is that while the X15 has faster access time (barely), the 73LP has a 16mb cache buffer and an average transfer rate of 62mb/s! The cache buffer makes up for the slower access time (think how the WD1000 outperforms the WD1200), and the higher transfer and better price to performance ratio seal the deal.

 

[scsi stud]

Hey now! I've been using a Diamond Fireport 40 for 3 years now and it's been working great! Although I do need to purchase a nice large U2W Hard drive.

Will my Fireport 40 support an U2W drive? I mean, until I get a new SCSI card, I don't care if I lose the 80/160 speed... I just it working on the Fireport 40, for now. Will U2W / 160 drives work on the Fireport 40?

Pariah,

What is the model of the Tekram controller (the U160 one) you were talking about? I'm looking to purchase one, and I have heard great things about Tekram cards. Plus, I like going for the underdog companies as well.

 

[GoSharks]

<< Granted, it's a fine drive, but I prefer the Seagate Cheetah 73LP. The reason is that while the X15 has faster access time (barely), the 73LP has a 16mb cache buffer and an average transfer rate of 62mb/s! The cache buffer makes up for the slower access time (think how the WD1000 outperforms the WD1200), and the higher transfer and better price to performance ratio seal the deal. >>



not to say that the 73lp is a bad drive or anything, but im not seeing the 62mb/s average transfer rate...

StorageReview's 73LP drive measurements

 

[Pabster]

Diamond FirePort 40 outperforms 2940UW.

It's a decent card that can be found for next to nothing now, and performs very, very well. Don't know why anyone would knock 'em.

The Adaptec vs Tekram debate is legendary. I choose Adaptec because, frankly, I'm in love with the 29160 and get them for next to nothing as well. I've used Tekram cards, and still own a couple. It's just personal preference. The Tekram really isn't much cheaper.