SCSI Setup Questions

[BarnyardMonkey]

Ok this is my first time setting up SCSI,so i went ahead and bought some things cheap to test the waters.


But seems its not running as good as i hoped.


My Drive: Seagate ST118202LC 10K Cheetah 18G

My Controller: .Tekram DC-390U2W

With U160 Cable and LVD


Firstly,the Drive is extremely loud while tasking/seeking,but Spinup and such isn't all that bad actually.just when its loading into windows,or bringing up Apps it sounds like a pair of wore out break pads. (Well,not that bad...but very loud grinding)

And my IDE IBM 80G 7200 RPM 2MB Cache drive boots up faster then the SCSI.
In which i was told SCSI should boot up your OS much faster then IDE.

It did however run within windows a bit faster,but tended to have a slow/jerk to it every now and then,and the loud grinding.


So was checking to make sure i have things setup correctly,and to find out if all SCSI Drives has this loud grinding?


Also: The Terminiation had me worried a bit as well - This Controller says "Automatic SCSI bus termination" - That means i do not have to add a Terminator?


Sorry for the lengthy post - just have some questions that i need some help with since i'm new to SCSI.


If anyone could help me out,i'd appreciate it.



Shawn.

 

[mastertech01]

Auto termination does not remove the need to terminate the cable. It simply auto terminates the unused channels and sets the termination type. Just leave it there but do use your terminator on the cable. You chose an older scsi drive and naturally it is noisy compared to new generation drives. SCSI drives tend to run hot and do run noisier anyway. But a late gneration 15K is a whale of a lot quieter than the older drives. They run much cooler too. They have fluid bearings and advanced mechanisms.Its good though that you start out with a basic older setup to give it a shot and learn how SCSI works and to see that the SCSI buss rating doesnt mean you will have a single drive that blows all others away like you just upgraded from a PIII 800 to a P4 3.2GHZ. A properly configured RAID array with the latest generation will give impressive results but mostly in a server environment. The durability of SCSI is generally much greater than ATA but thats why you pay the price and of course one of the reasons it is more noisy. The access times of a comparable generation SCSI drive to ATA is much better. But again most noticeable in a server environment. I use SCSI exclusively simply because I can get used stuff cheaper and it lasts and lasts, and I can put so many drives in a system and never run out of IRQ or have conflicts. Its a personal preference, not just a performance issue. Im currently running one rig with 6 CD drives (DVD<DVDRAM<CDWRITER<CDROMS<JAZ<etc) a SCSI scanner, HDDs and all off one controller. I likes that.

 

[BarnyardMonkey]

Hows it going mastertech01.


Yeah i was thinking maybe it was an older Drive that may have been the culprit.
just never used SCSI and heard alot of people complaining about noise,so figured i'd check into it before i gave up on it.

So is it the U2W thats pretty much outdated,or would it be possible to get a quieter drive for this controller Card? (not really concerned about spinup noise - just can't stand that grinding)


I'd be willing to try again if i could get ahold of a OS Drive thats quieter.



Thanks for all the info.
And if you know of any Drives that you would recommend for my setup,i'd appreciate any info on that as well.

Anything around the 9G size would be fine.


Thanks.



Shawn.

 

[mastertech01]

Personally I would buy a later generation U160 drive and run it on that controller. As long as its LVD you will be good. The quieter drives are the 7200 RPM drives, and some of the better known overall 10K drives like the Atlas 1OK III. You can find the 7200rpm drives in 9GB but may have to get 18GB in the 10K III. They are fairly plentiful and relatively inexpensive. Western Digital makes some fairly quiet 7200 rpm drives and my preference in the 15K is the Cheetah 2nd or 3rd generation. No matter what you get you will find some amount of noisy operation in a SCSI drive. Its the nature of the beast. Luckily I run full towers will lots of fans, and full sized raid towers which by the time you get all the fans and PSU running they will drown out most of the HDD noise.. LOL

 

[Zepper]

Hypermicro.com has had some Quantum 10k U160 drives for not too much money that run pretty quiet. I have one of those and several others on my U2W and they seem just fine. They also had some IBM/Hitachi 15k for low bucks. Get free ground shipping by mentioning StorageReview.com. Centrix-intl.com usually has some cheap SCSI stuff as well.
.bh.

 

[BarnyardMonkey]

Thanks for the Input.

I followed up on that HyperMicro Link,and came across this here:

MAXTOR TY009J3 9GB

That Link has the 8Mb Cache for $22+Ship,and hypermicro had the 4Mb Cache of the Exact Drive for around the same.(4Mb Cache was also 7200 RPM)


Would either one of them Drives be worth getting?
The 10K II Drive looked pretty good for that price.


Thanks.

 

[Zepper]

. The drive from Axiontech sounds like a very good deal. But you should also check hypermicro.com - they have some of those Quantum/Maxtor 10k U160 drives and they include the adapter where you're going to have to buy a separate SCA-to-68 pin adapter for the one from Axiontech. I get those adapters pretty cheap from eBay (something like yoozinha was seller). Plus you can get the free ground shipping at hyper.
.bh.

 

[BarnyardMonkey]

I believe that Drive comes with the adapter if i'm not mistaken.
it was on the page before the one i linked it to.

I have one of them here on that Seagate drive though if not.


For that price,i wouldn't mind trying another Drive just to see how it acts.


Thanks for all the info.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Remember to add some cooling. Those 10-15k drives run mighty hot.