Recommend a good SCSI drive

[ahsia]

I am looking for a 9gb or 18gb SCSI drive that gives the best performace for the best price. I found a Maxtor Atlas 10k III 18gb drive for about $170 on pricewatch, I was wondering if that is a good drive for the price. Seems like the Seagate X15-36LP is about $50 more, but that is a 15000rpm drive. Is the Seagate worth the extra $50?

So besides the Atlas 10k III and X15-36LP, what other drives will give top notch performance with a decent price tag? Also, are there 9gb drives that gives excellent performance comparable to the Atlas 10k III and X15-36LP? Seems like the new u160 SCSI drives are at least 18gb now.

Thanks for your time!

 

[Athlex]

If you're looking for a 10K RPM drive, can't go wrong with the Maxtor or with Fujitsu's MAN3 drives (link).
If you're specifically looking for a 9 gig drive, there are many U2W SCSI drives out there that should be comparable (Quantum/Maxtor 10K II) because for most purposes the differences between U2W/U160/U320 SCSI can't be realized without large arrays of disks and multiple 64/66 PCI busses. eBay's a great source of SCSI hardware if you can't find what you're looking for here in the forums.

 

[ahsia]

<< If you're specifically looking for a 9 gig drive, there are many U2W SCSI drives out there that should be comparable (Quantum/Maxtor 10K II) because for most purposes the differences between U2W/U160/U320 SCSI can't be realized without large arrays of disks and multiple 64/66 PCI busses. >>



Can you give me other 9gb U2W SCSI models I should be looking for for the best performance drives?

Basically, I am looking to gain whatever performance I can for my desktop. I currently have a 60GXP 20gb drive, but I want to try out SCSI because I do multi-task quite often. I have enough storage on a file server that all I basically need on this drive is enough for the OS, apps, and limited amount of files. So a 9gb drive would be plenty, 18gb would probably be too much.

What I am really looking for is to get into SCSI only if the performance warrants the cost. If there is a 9gb or 18gb SCSI drive that is going to give me the performance increase over the latest 7200rpm IDE drive without costing an arm and a leg, I definitely will be willing to spend the money. But if the performance increase is not that great, I am not going to spend money on an 9gb or 18gb SCSI drive when I get probably get the IBM 120GXP or the WD 8mb cache drives for a similar price.

 

[rockhard]

ahsia - from the description of the use your intending to use the drive under i feel you will be wasting your money for little return.
You would probably be better off looking at that 8mb cache Western Digital Ide HD IMO FWIW.
I use SCSI and IDE myself and the boot OS drive i use is IDE as SCSI has nothing to offer me there.
Only on an application specific volume do i use SCSI as the type of application on that Volume fairs very badly under IDE.

 

[Goosemaster]

Acutally, my situation varies a lot with "wockhard"'s . Idon a lot of multitasking a such, and I find my scsi drive invaluable as my OS drive. I would highly recommend one of the Quantum(now MAXTOR) drives paired up with an u2w LVD cotroller.

SCSI drives of all price ranges are guarenteed to excel in on e area: access times. Although the lower-end SCSI drives might not beat the Western DIGITAL IDE drives in sustained transfers, they willdutterly destroy it in access times, and NO ONE will argue about that

OF course the Seagate 36LP is the fastest drive you can get, and destroys al drives in all categories, but the price is simply too high. I never bought the drive my self because I knew it would be overkill..the $600 price tag was a big flag too....

WEll good luck.

 

[Goosemaster]

The others do have a point however. Using a scsi drive IS NOT like adding a nother CPU. IT will basically allow you do MANY things at the same time that are HD intesive, without a noticable slowdown in any of the programs

 

[bacillus]

<< Is the Seagate worth the extra $50? >>


yes indeed!

 

[Goosemaster]

<< << Is the Seagate worth the extra $50? >>


<<Indeed>> >>




I second that motion THere is nothig lik having 3.6ms access times and >65MB/s tranfer rate

 

[ahsia]

I will probably get either the Maxtor Atlas 10k III or Fujitsu MAN3184 because of price considerations. Both drives are around $160, the Fujitsu is probably cheaper than the Maxtor. Unless someone can recommend a good 9gb SCSI 10000rpm drive. Anyone?

BTW, what is the best priced SCSI I can get for those drives?

 

[Goosemaster]

Get the 18GB...I had a 9GB and It quickly filled up.


Good Luck

 

[rockhard]

I would favour the Maxtor as AFAIK theyre RMA procedure is better in that you can RMA both OEM and retail to them direct whereas Fujitsu i think can be a little awkward insisting on RMA via the supplier you bought the HD from if OEM IIRC.

 

[BD231]

SCSI drives of all price ranges are guarenteed to excel in on e area: access times. Although the lower-end SCSI drives might not beat the Western DIGITAL IDE drives in sustained transfers, they willdutterly destroy it in access times, and NO ONE will argue about that

I can agree to that statement, just for kicks I used 20mb max per secound 10,000rpm Cheetah and while slower in loading the OS(not by way to much), in terms of access times, it was quite a bit faster than my WD.

I would favour the Maxtor as AFAIK theyre RMA procedure is better in that you can RMA both OEM and retail to them direct whereas Fujitsu i think can be a little awkward insisting on RMA via the supplier you bought the HD from if OEM IIRC.


Maxtors RMA is *AWSOME*. I had an 80gig Maxtor die on me and they sent me a new one the day after I reported it, got it in 3 days flat. All I had to do was ship the dead drive back to them within 30-days of receiving the the new one.

 

[Goosemaster]

I believe you now have the answer you were looking for.

 

[ahsia]

Thanks again to everyone that replied!

Just one more question:

Which cost efficient u160 SCSI card should I get? I did a search on pricewatch, and the two lowest priced adapters are the LSI Logic LSIU160 and the Adaptec 19160. The LSI can be had for less than $100, and the Adaptec goes for $145. Is the LSI a good SCSI card? Would the Adaptec be sufficient? Is there any SCSI card you can recommend?

 

[rockhard]

If you want to go adaptec you may be able to find the low profile OEM version of the 19160 somewhere for less than $100.
Ive seen them a few times here in the UK so would assume you can get them in the US also.
If your only going to be using the one drive you could always go for an U2W card to save on the cost of the adaptor and still have the headroom of 80MB/s which is more than enough for any current single drive.

 

[Athlex]

I highly reccomend the LSI Logic 21040. I have one in my system now running my CD and CDRW drives and I'm planning on adding a Maxtor 10K III when the budget allows (to compliment my 60GB 60GXP). The 21040 is the same as Tekram's DC-390U3W and has the same features as Adaptec's 29160 (64 bit PCI @ 33MHz, backwards compatible with 33MHz PCI). The only difference with the Tekram board is that it comes boxed with cables and has diagnostic LEDs. I paid a little under $200 for mine about 9 months ago, but Pricewatch now has them listed for a little over $100, which is a pretty sweet deal. Burning CDs using a SCSI controller is quite nice as well since it takes <2% CPU time to write the CD as opposed to 10-15% using IDE. Not a huge difference, but noticable. Once you go SCSI you won't want to go back.

 

[Ben50]

If you are looking for a 15k drive, take a look at the new Fujitsu drive. It is supposed to be pretty good. Tom's hardware did a review but it was a pretty bad review. Hopefully storage review will have a good review of it soon.

 

[mastertech01]

If you dont HAVE to have brand new, always check your avaliable resources..

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