SCSI Drive to buy

[raptorsoft2000]

Product Description
The Symbios Logic SYM8751SP is a 16 bit, PCI-Wide SCSI host adapter board. The board performs UltraSCSI data transfer rates up to 20 Mbytes/second (narrow) and 40 Mbytes/second (Wide). The SYM8751SP with SDMS software is PCI Plug and Play compliant. Single-ended termination one external wide 68-pin high density, two internal terminations: one Wide 68-pin high density and one narrow SCSI connector.

I need to buy a scsi drive for this controller, but I don't think it will do raid, so I would only need 1 drive I guess unless it will do RAID in which case I would want RAID 5 I guess. But anyway, I am gonna be putting Windows Server 2003 on it to act as a file server, and was wondering as I got the card a while back and didn't really use it too much, what drive (about 36 gig I guess as it would only be a sys drive) would work good with this? If only 1 drive I can use with it, a good quality one, if I CAN do RAID 5 with it, I would like at least 4 in which case a little cheaper on the drive cost. That way I wouldn't spend too much money.

What drive would work good with this? I'm sure it's a couple years old, so would a new SCSI drive, raid maybe, be better than using this old one?

TIA

 

[Oyeve]

Any 68 pin scsi HDwill work, pretty much any scsi HD will work, even SCA with 68 pin adapters will work, but forget about RAID as that is not a RAID card. You can, at most, connect 7 drives on the wide and seven on the narrow but that will surely bog down the PCI throughput.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Any 68 pin scsi HDwill work, pretty much any scsi HD will work, even SCA with 68 pin adapters will work, but forget about RAID as that is not a RAID card. You can, at most, connect 7 drives on the wide and seven on the narrow but that will surely bog down the PCI throughput.

At 40MB/sec, that's not a whole hell of a lot of bogging

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Any 68 pin scsi HDwill work, pretty much any scsi HD will work, even SCA with 68 pin adapters will work, but forget about RAID as that is not a RAID card. You can, at most, connect 7 drives on the wide and seven on the narrow but that will surely bog down the PCI throughput.

At 40MB/sec, that's not a whole hell of a lot of bogging

I meant if he filled up the scsi cards capacity of 14 drives. I had a setup with 14 scsi drives connected to one scsi drive and if a lot of the drives were being accessed at the same time it bogged down.

 

[Zepper]

Actually you can put up to 15 devices on just the wide connection or 7 on each if you also use the narrow (50-pin) connector. Yup, SCSI stuff is ridiculously backwards compatible so even U320 drives will work with that controller (just not up to their potential..)..

But considering you can get a nice new U160 SCSI host adapter LSI brand for around $40. that will support at least one of the fastest available drives (e.g. Maxtor Atlas 15k II). I would suggest going that route to get the best out of whatever drive you choose. I have three 10k U160 drives on an older U80 adapter from Tekram (which I 'stole' on eBay ) and they work just great together. I'd be looking for older generation 10k U160 or U320 drives to go with the LSI.

Here are some of my favorite SCSI sources:

hypermicro.com (may offer free ground shipping if you mention www.storagereview.com - check the SR site for the latest offer)
centrix-intl.com
pc-pitstop.com (offers PayPal as a payment option)
scsi4me.com (ditto)
etech4sale.com
and I can usually find stuff (like drives, cables and adapters) for low bucks on eBay.

And for lots of useful SCSI info and links, go here: http://www.scsifaq.org .

.bh.

 

[raptorsoft2000]

Would I be better off going with a SATA Raid card? I wouldn't need that much space on my main drive, but I would want redundancy. My motherboard's (A8V Deluxe) SATA ports are all filled up, plus I got a ATA133 card with like 3 more available connections. I'm sure I could just take out a NIC card or 2 to make room for the SATA card if I was to get that. I was looking at SCSI cards and RAID ones seem to be VERY expensive. I am not going to spend $500 on a little pci card. It just ain't happenin. But I can get a SATA RAID system like this.... http://scsi4me.com/?menu=menu_scsi&pid=3490

Would this system right there work just as good? And it has hardware RAID, or does it just mean that it supports the ABILITY to do hw raid if my card does it? Not sure what exactly it means. Also, what's with the connectors on the back? It looks like 2 connectors with sata power + 2 regular sata + 2 regular 4pin. Does that mean that I would have the power drawing from the card for 2 and drawing from the 4 pin for the other 2??? Thanks in advance for all help!

Jesse

 

[sharkeeper]

I meant if he filled up the scsi cards capacity of 14 drives. I had a setup with 14 scsi drives connected to one scsi drive and if a lot of the drives were being accessed at the same time it bogged down.

UW =40MB/S per channel. You would need 4 channels to bog down the pci-32/33 interface. Well in most cases three would probably do it especially with rogue chipsets.

 

[ribbon13]

If you want good hardware RAID and SATA look at the 3ware 9500s-12