scsi hard drive opinons

[kd2777]

I am looking to score one of the new Giga-byte Canterwood motherboards with the 320 ultra scsi controler. I want to use a 15000RPM scsi hard drive but don't know anything about them. All I've used in the past was IDE seagates. Are Seagates one of the better drives or should I look at Fujitsu drives. Give me some feed back. Thanks

 

[ProviaFan]

From what I've heard, the Seagate Cheetahs are good, but any high RPM SCSI drive will have noisey seeks compared to the (much) slower IDE drives.

<-- has no SCSI right now, but would love to get a SCSI HD or two in the near future. 😛

 

[microAmp]

I got my Cheetah 15k not to long ago and finally got around to playing with it. To me, I don't think it's all that loud, I can still barely hear it over the fans, but to me nothing to complain about.

For more info on SCSI, Storage Review does benchmarks for both types of HDD's. They recently did a SCSI Maxtor Atlas 15k and to me it seems just as good if not a hair better than the Cheetah. Atlas review.

 

[Yoshi]

I have two 15000 RPM IBM Ultrastars on an Adaptec 64bit 39160 U160 controller in my Powermac G4, they are really fast HDD's. I use one of them (37Gb) for OS X and all of my apps, I use the other (18Gb) as a scratch disk for video editing using Final Cut Express.

They are noisy and do run a bit hot especially if your case air flow sucks. But, it sounds badasfuck when I start up the machine, they make quite a symphony as the two drives spool from 0 to 15K RPM over about 3 seconds.

 

[mechBgon]

The Cheetah 15k.3 has the same heat output as Seagate's Barracuda ATA V, according to the specs, and uses fluid bearings. From StorageReview:

Despite the impressive performance outlined above, the Cheetah 15K.3's most astonishing attribute may be its idle noise floor. With a sound pressure measurement of just 45.1 dB/A at a distance of 18 millimeters, the 15K.3 finds itself among the idle noise generated by typical 7200 RPM ATA drives!

Seek noise also continues to decline. Just a few years ago top-end drives would churn away with a racket easily heard one room removed. The 15K.3, however, emits seek sounds more like that of quieter 7200 RPM SCSI units.

Since the X15's inception Seagate has repeatedly emphasized the importance of maintaining the series' power consumption (and thus heat generation) within the lines of 10K RPM drives. 15K RPM drives nonetheless seemed to run hotter than their 10K brethren? until now. At just 25.1 degrees Celsius above ambient, the 15K.3 lands itself squarely within the realm of 7200 RPM SCSI drives! It thus may be installed into any well-ventilated machine without requiring active cooling. 15K drives have finally reached a point where they may be unobtrusively integrated into a high-end desktop machine.

(more o' dat here)

 

[kd2777]

 

[kd2777]

Thanks for the links and replies. It looks like the seagate 15.3 is the way to go for desktops, being cooler and quieter, but with my 7 fans already it will probably come down to price.

One last question if I could squeeze it in on this post, what is the main difference in 68 or 80 pin? And is one better than other?

 

[bozo1]

One last question if I could squeeze it in on this post, what is the main difference in 68 or 80 pin? And is one better than other?

You want a 68-pin drive. 80-pin SCA drives are for servers with a hot-swappable drive backbone. To use one in a regular system, you'd need to use an adapter which adds another point of failure not to mention many people have problems with them.

 

[kd2777]

Thanks

 

[XBoxLPU]

*too many clowns! * :eeK:

If you can't afford a 15k drive than I would suggest a Maxtor Atlas IV 10,000 rpm drive

 

[stranger707]

Yeah, the IBMs are good but they are loud, and Yoshi is right about them running hot (the 15K ones). If you get them plan on getting a hard drive fan to cool them down.