OT: SCSI Questions

[deerslayer]

I built a dually rig a while back, and I had been planning on putting a faster hard drive solution in. Now that I have a little more cash flow, I would like to do it soon.

What would you guys suggest? I was thinking of getting a SCSI card and hard drive, then I can put my storage drives on the IDE channels of the motherboard.

Would I be better off with raid or serial ide?

What would you suggest for a card and hard drive?

Brett

 

[SinfulWeeper]

Keep in mind that while SCSI drives are faster than SATA, they are so much slower in the boot process for the computer (BIOS checks and what not).
Unless you are into something that requires the fastest data transfer of the the drives, I would steer clear of them.

Thats only my opinion though...

 

[Confused]

If you're looking for snappiest system, then a 15k (or probably even 10k) SCSI system will be nice and quick. The WD Raptors are basically 10k SCSI drives on a PATA interface.

For highest STR (sustained transfer rate), you could probably do better with a RAID0 setup, but then you have the risk of losing everything if a drive fails.

My ideal (money no object) would be 3x 76gb 15k SCSI drives in a RAID 5 array High storage capacity, speed and redundency


Confused

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Confused
My ideal (money no object) would be 3x 76gb 15k SCSI drives in a RAID 5 array High storage capacity, speed and redundency

Confused

I was just writing a specs suggestion sheet for an A/V workstation with three SCSI drives: an 18GB 15kRPM drive for the boot device (OS and programs), a 36GB 15kRPM drive for scratch and temp files, and a 73GB 10kRPM drive for data storage. The extravagance is only because this is probably going to be built for someone else with lots of money; if it were my box (and my money), I'd just settle for a 36GB 15kRPM boot drive, and use IDE for secondary storage.

 

[deerslayer]

Originally posted by: jliechty

Originally posted by: Confused
My ideal (money no object) would be 3x 76gb 15k SCSI drives in a RAID 5 array High storage capacity, speed and redundency

Confused

I was just writing a specs suggestion sheet for an A/V workstation with three SCSI drives: an 18GB 15kRPM drive for the boot device (OS and programs), a 36GB 15kRPM drive for scratch and temp files, and a 73GB 10kRPM drive for data storage. The extravagance is only because this is probably going to be built for someone else with lots of money; if it were my box (and my money), I'd just settle for a 36GB 15kRPM boot drive, and use IDE for secondary storage.

That's what I was thinking of doing But i'm not sure yet.

 

[deerslayer]

Oh, and I think I figured out what was wrong with my main rig. I've RMA'ed the video card, because it wasn't acting right in other computers either. But I plugged my seagate into the regular IDE channel and set it outside the computer on a piece of foam and it ran fine all week. I put it in the HD cage, hooked it up to the raid channel and set it to the boot drive....BSOD, everytime, no matter what the clock speed was. I put it back on regular IDE and disabled the raid channels, works fine now. Back to me regular overclock too. I guess the RAID channel(s) on my board are fubared

 

[Rattledagger]

For scsi-card, a 64-bit-card that fits into your mainboard. Not all 64-bit-card fits into all mainboards.

As for a little slower boot, this should be unimportant, since there shouldn't be any reason to re-boot constantly.
A quick look, my last re-boot was 32 days ago, due to power-outage.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Rattledagger
A quick look, my last re-boot was 32 days ago, due to power-outage.

...which is why a high-quality UPS is a good investment.

<-- was just given an old APC Back-UPS 650; it doesn't have a lot of capacity, but it powers my two computers and 19 inch CRT for about 8 minutes, which is enough to last through most short power glitches and outages.

 

[SinfulWeeper]

I rarely reboot also.
But I hate having to wait 50+ seconds for complete SCSI boot just for the stuff to initailize before windows even starts to boot. I like my current setup. From the time I hit the power button till the hour glass stops spinning (complete boot) right now only takes 11.something seconds.
Also, SATA/ATA/133 RAID 0 is moves data much faster than a single 15k rpm drive and costs much less. Reliability is pretty much now the same.
Now if those 15k drives are put into RAID 0...:Q:Q:Q

Also, do not get me wrong. Just like a woman, SCSI has it's time and place. I like SCSI when it is really useful. But the occurances of needing that much throughput is rare. I only make 2-5 DivX movies a week. So the added cost of going SCSI in a home enviroment can not possibly be justified unless it is for the simple fact of blowing money. But my my server enviroment, it is a must.

 

[Rattledagger]

Well, mostly then there's a power-outage, it's sheduled work taking some hours...

11 seconds? I'm probably using longer time counting the memory...
Hmm, a quick look on the event logs, the difference between quickest ide-machine and slowest scsi-machine on re-boot is 8 seconds. All uses over 1 minute on re-boot...
The NT4-box is corrently in pieces, but this OS is faster to boot.
I think win95 was faster also, but never upgraded since half of the time forgot detecting the mouse. :frown:

 

[m2kewl]

lsi u320 raid card
33gb 15k cheetah
2x200gb wd ide mirrored

 

[deerslayer]

SCSI is like a woman? Oh boy, I can only imagine all the goods and bads of that route now.

All opinions welcome!

 

[Woodie]

Well, I've had an all-SCSI file/SetiQ/SoB server for a while now...it just runs. Hot-swap out hds when they fail (no shutting down--), and along we go. Worst issue is repeated power failures. My UPS is new, but not big enough to run the single server.

BTW, SCSI drive failures are because all of my drives are over 4 years old, and they've been running 24x7 for 90% of that time. Oh, and most of the drives cost me exactly $0.

My workstation is also all-SCSI. SCSI RAID5, hot-swap drives, SCSI CD & RW. It's not fast to boot, but I try NOT to reboot too often. I haven't done benchmarks, but it's "fast enough" for me, and I prefer the hot-swap, redundancy of RAID5. My next client will most likely have IDE, just because of the pricing, but I'll keep the server on SCSI. Did I mention that I LOVE the hot-swap capability??