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SCSI Controller Recommendation

B

boggsie

Platinum Member
My system is a dual athlon ... Iwill MPX2.

Boot Drive
Fujitsu MAS3184 15k SCSI-320

Applications
2x Seagate ST318453LW 15k SCSI-320 in Windows RAID-0 (stripe)

Data
2x Seagate (refurb) 146gb 10k SCSI-320 in Windows RAID-1 (mirror)

Optical, etc (50-pin)
Plextor Reader, CDRW Writer, Pioneer DVD, Seagate tape, Zip-100.

All connected to my SCSI controller, which is an (no laughing out loud):
Adaptec AHA-2940U2W

While the drives access time is not hindered by this controller, the throughput is definately capped at a maximum of 80mb/s.

I am looking to upgrade my controller and think that one of the following is my best bet.

Tekram DC-390U4W
Adaptec 29320A-R

Both of these offer a 50-pin connector that will continue to support my optical drives.

The Tekram seems to be well-respected by most, even more so than Adaptec. The Adaptec offers a feature called Speedless Streaming which supposedly allows all devices connected to run at their maximum speed. So, if I connect the RAID-1 pair to controller B (68-pin) and my optical drives to controller B (50-pin) the presence of the non-320 drives will not cause the RAID set to drop down to 80mb/s. The adaptec also offers 'built-in' software RAID options, which may be more efficient than the RAID implementations available in Windows Disk Manager.

Additionally, I am looking for a controller that will take advantage of the AMD MPX chipset and one of the available PCI 2.2 3.3v 64-bit 66-Mhz slots.

So, any and all thoughts are appreciated.
 
You'll find that on a normal PCI bus (32-bit 33 MHz), throughput is capped at about 95 MB/s even with the bestest of all SCSI controllers. But I see you're on the 760MPX chipset, so you have 64-bit 66 MHz PCI there.

The Tekram 390U4W fits your application well because it has one U320 channel and one dedicated single-ended UW40. Put your "etc" stuff onto the latter, and the harddisks on the former, sorted.

Also, the Tekram comes with all the cabling and other misc bits and pieces you'll ever need. The SCSI engine and software is LSI's reputed "FusionMPT" system: LSI 53C1030 true dual channel SCSI controller chip w/ embedded RISC engine, and LSI's original software.

"Speedless Streaming" is marketing bull to cover up that it's only a single-channel adapter. Access to the slow drives WILL step on the toes of HDD throughput - not because it'd force the RAID drives to a slower mode, but because the HDDs cannot use the common SCSI bus while the slow drives transfer data. This is totally unlike the 390U4W's solution that gets you two truly independent SCSI channels.

The Tekram doesn't implement controller-assisted RAID 0/1 - if you want that, then you might want to look at LSI's own controllers, e.g. the 20320R, 21320R or 22320R. The latter two are true dual channel, but use the 1030R chip rather than the plain 1030 on the Tekram. These will require you to use wide->narrow adapters for your legacy drives though.

Your best option (at least as far as bang for the buck goes) is to go with LSI's 20320R (single channel) or 21320R (dual), and keep the Adaptec for the legacy/optical drives. You might want to move the Adaptec to the slow PCI bus unless it is capable of 66 MHz PCI.

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/scsi_hbas/lsi20320_r.html
http://www.lsilogic.com/products/scsi_hbas/lsi21320_r.html
 
I was going to suggest about the same as peter. Just get a single channel U320 card for your LVD hard drives and keep the card you have for the slow drives. Should work dandy.

.bh.
 
This is fantastic news. Tex over @2CPU recommended the same.

It just so happens that I have an LSI 21320 sitting in a box. I wasn't using it, because of consistent time out errors in device manager for the Adaptec card. In the past, when I would experience these errors, I was running the 21320 in 64-bit slot #1, which apparently shares 'stuff' with the AGP slot and can hamper performance. He mentioned PCI latency.

So, I reinstalled the 21320 in 64bit slot #2 and I am not going to say that the problem is solved, but I haven't seen any System Event log errors in about an hour.

Thanks so much for chiming in. Any follow-up thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
-boggsie
 
Mind there's a tiny difference between a 21320 and a 21320R - it's the RAID capability of the SCSI chip. But for $0, I'd definitely cope with the non-R too.

Disregard those "sharing" and "latency" mythologies - they're standard issue support drone answers whenever the real problem can't be figured out 😉
 
Well, I was unclear; I have the 21320R and as you mentioned, it supports RAID 0 and RAID 1, but not both at the same time. I would rather use the RAID 1 option. This would allow me to mirror in the LSI card, as opposed to hacking my DM* files to trick XP Professional into enabling RAID 1 in software. Unfortunately, my 146GB 10k.6 drives were refurb and have identical "REFURB" identifiers in the LSI bios and because the identifiers are not unique, RAID will not enable for these drives.

So, I'll leave everything as is, presuming that it will continue to work.

Best regards,
-boggsie

Originally posted by: Peter
Mind there's a tiny difference between a 21320 and a 21320R - it's the RAID capability of the SCSI chip. But for $0, I'd definitely cope with the non-R too.

Disregard those "sharing" and "latency" mythologies - they're standard issue support drone answers whenever the real problem can't be figured out 😉
Click to expand...
 
Are those drives' serial numbers overwritten with "REFURB"? Bad move, SCSI compliance error. I'd ask Seagate for assistance. After all, refurbed drives should not be limited in their usefulness.
 
Yes, the serial number reads "REFURB". I didn't realize this until after I had owned the drives for awhile ... I just never paid attention as the SCSI bus initialized.

Now I wonder if they were ever really Seagate refurbs or if they were black/grey market imitators ... drives that were manufactured on the assembly line after the actual Seagate production run was completed and probably without Seagate knowledge. I have read a couple of conspiracy theories that describe such shenanigans, but have no real knowledge, myself. All I knew is that I was getting a ~$600 drive for $185 with a 90 day warranty through the retailer, which had been around for at least seven years that was aware of.

I'll give Seagate a shout, just to see what they have to say.

Thx, much!
-boggsie

Originally posted by: Peter
Are those drives' serial numbers overwritten with "REFURB"? Bad move, SCSI compliance error. I'd ask Seagate for assistance. After all, refurbed drives should not be limited in their usefulness.
Click to expand...

 
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