Thinking of getting a SCSI drive

[Elfear]

Thinking about getting a couple of these 15k Maxtor Atlas SCSI drives. One for WinXP and one for a few games. Probably a 300GB Sata drive for storage. I already have 2 160GB sata drives that I've been using in Raid-0 and I'm wondering if the 15k drive will provide any noticeable boost in performance. I'll probably just get an inexpensive SCSI card if I go with the Maxtor drive. I'd love a Raid-0 configuration but I've heard SCSI Raid cards are pretty expensive.

Couple concerns:
1) Will the SCSI drive be noticeably faster for an average desktop user (game load times, WinXP load time, etc.)?

2) I'm unfamiliar with SCSI drives so I'm not sure if the 80-pin design is common or not. Will that be a problem?

3) Cableing will be messier with the SCSI card and drive vs. the sata drives. Not a big deal but I like a clean look.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[ValuedCustomer]

Not worth the hassle/$$ for what you're gonna use it for. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket and you just have to spend it on something just get a 150gig Raptor and be done w/ it.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
Not worth the hassle/$$ for what you're gonna use it for. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket and you just have to spend it on something just get a 150gig Raptor and be done w/ it.

I concur. I went fom 18 SCSI drives to 6 SATA and never looked back.

 

[Elfear]

So the speed increase wasn't very apparent? Would maybe a pair of Raptors be a good upgrade from my 7200rpm sata drives than?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Elfear
Thinking about getting a couple of these 15k Maxtor Atlas SCSI drives. One for WinXP and one for a few games. Probably a 300GB Sata drive for storage. I already have 2 160GB sata drives that I've been using in Raid-0 and I'm wondering if the 15k drive will provide any noticeable boost in performance. I'll probably just get an inexpensive SCSI card if I go with the Maxtor drive. I'd love a Raid-0 configuration but I've heard SCSI Raid cards are pretty expensive.

Couple concerns:
1) Will the SCSI drive be noticeably faster for an average desktop user (game load times, WinXP load time, etc.)?

2) I'm unfamiliar with SCSI drives so I'm not sure if the 80-pin design is common or not. Will that be a problem?

3) Cableing will be messier with the SCSI card and drive vs. the sata drives. Not a big deal but I like a clean look.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

first, don't do striping raid, especially if you are only going to be using a 32bit pci slot. this hdd will have a str of ~80+MB/s which is definately very fast. you would be best off by buying a u160 card like a lsiu160, adaptec 19160, 29160 or 39160 for ~$20 in the fs/ft, 2cpu.com or ebay. u160 has a max bandwidth of 160MB/s, a 32bit pci slot is i think 133MB/s, so you are fine and the card will not be the bottleneck.

as far as the connector you will need a 80(SCA)->68 pin connector, again not a big deal.

pick up a u320 cable on ebay or wherever you can get one for a decent price, i have paid $10 upto $50 for a internal u320 scsi cable w/ terminator, one was ribbon type cable the others were round. they were all ~48" long, so you may want to make sure you get a smaller one.

the main reason to go 15k is seek time, this is where the 10k and 15k rpm hdds beat the 7.2k hdds. this is what makes a computer feel more responsive since the hdd is the slowest item in the chain when using a computer (usually)

personally, i would go with this one because it is a 68pin hdd and is only 1generation old, and is a d@mn fine, fast hdd. actually if my crt didn't just die and i had to replace it with a lcd, and i switched out my psu, i would have bought one of these to replace my 10k fujitsu.

also, you should have active cooling on the hdds, it is recommended in the instructions usually.

as far as boot times, any speed advantage created by the hdd will be negated by the boot-up process going through the scsi post finding the hdd, it takes time, so boot time may actually be longer.

game load times will be faster, but again once the game loads the play will still be the same.

a lot of people on here will say scsi is a waste, and for some it is, but nothing can beat a 15k hdd in seek times besides a solid state drive. regardless of the new raptor does some things a little better here and there, the 15k hdds, even 1gen will still have faster seek times and that is what you will notice as a "average"(with a 3GHz 146...?) user.

i have been running a scsi system drive for quite some time and really like it. ithere was a noticeable difference between it and the 80GB wd i was using at the time, althoug benches don't look that much different. when you take into accout rotational speed, my scsi hdd is 2x as fast in seek times as my 80GB wd. the 74GB raptor is pretty equal (probably is better in some area and worse in others) to my hdd so i can't say anything bad against the raptors, even the new one, but a 15k is still the fastest mechanical hdd in seek times and usually str (and other stuff that is usually server related).

striping raid will not be really a benefit because you will just saturate the pci bus.

and to address the comment about hassle - there is no hassle, hooking up scsi stuff is very straightfoward, set a couple of jumpers, tell the m/b to boot from either a add in card or the scsi hdd and go.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: bob4432

first, don't do striping raid, especially if you are only going to be using a 32bit pci slot. this hdd will have a str of ~80+MB/s which is definately very fast. you would be best off by buying a u160 card like a lsiu160, adaptec 19160, 29160 or 39160 for ~$20 in the fs/ft, 2cpu.com or ebay. u160 has a max bandwidth of 160MB/s, a 32bit pci slot is i think 133MB/s, so you are fine and the card will not be the bottleneck.

as far as the connector you will need a 80(SCA)->68 pin connector, again not a big deal.

pick up a u320 cable on ebay or wherever you can get one for a decent price, i have paid $10 upto $50 for a internal u320 scsi cable w/ terminator, one was ribbon type cable the others were round. they were all ~48" long, so you may want to make sure you get a smaller one.

the main reason to go 15k is seek time, this is where the 10k and 15k rpm hdds beat the 7.2k hdds. this is what makes a computer feel more responsive since the hdd is the slowest item in the chain when using a computer (usually)

personally, i would go with this one because it is a 68pin hdd and is only 1generation old, and is a d@mn fine, fast hdd. actually if my crt didn't just die and i had to replace it with a lcd, and i switched out my psu, i would have bought one of these to replace my 10k fujitsu.

also, you should have active cooling on the hdds, it is recommended in the instructions usually.

as far as boot times, any speed advantage created by the hdd will be negated by the boot-up process going through the scsi post finding the hdd, it takes time, so boot time may actually be longer.

game load times will be faster, but again once the game loads the play will still be the same.

a lot of people on here will say scsi is a waste, and for some it is, but nothing can beat a 15k hdd in seek times besides a solid state drive. regardless of the new raptor does some things a little better here and there, the 15k hdds, even 1gen will still have faster seek times and that is what you will notice as a "average"(with a 3GHz 146...?) user.

i have been running a scsi system drive for quite some time and really like it. ithere was a noticeable difference between it and the 80GB wd i was using at the time, althoug benches don't look that much different. when you take into accout rotational speed, my scsi hdd is 2x as fast in seek times as my 80GB wd. the 74GB raptor is pretty equal (probably is better in some area and worse in others) to my hdd so i can't say anything bad against the raptors, even the new one, but a 15k is still the fastest mechanical hdd in seek times and usually str (and other stuff that is usually server related).

striping raid will not be really a benefit because you will just saturate the pci bus.

and to address the comment about hassle - there is no hassle, hooking up scsi stuff is very straightfoward, set a couple of jumpers, tell the m/b to boot from either a add in card or the scsi hdd and go.

Sweet, thanks bob4432. Sounds like you've had good luck with SCSI drives. I don't know a lot about hardrives, so correct me if I'm wrong, but is the main advantage of raid-0 the fact that you can get higher sustained throughput and not necessarily faster seek times? Is that why one 15k SCSI drive would be faster than 2 sata drives in raid-0?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: bob4432

first, don't do striping raid, especially if you are only going to be using a 32bit pci slot. this hdd will have a str of ~80+MB/s which is definately very fast. you would be best off by buying a u160 card like a lsiu160, adaptec 19160, 29160 or 39160 for ~$20 in the fs/ft, 2cpu.com or ebay. u160 has a max bandwidth of 160MB/s, a 32bit pci slot is i think 133MB/s, so you are fine and the card will not be the bottleneck.

as far as the connector you will need a 80(SCA)->68 pin connector, again not a big deal.

pick up a u320 cable on ebay or wherever you can get one for a decent price, i have paid $10 upto $50 for a internal u320 scsi cable w/ terminator, one was ribbon type cable the others were round. they were all ~48" long, so you may want to make sure you get a smaller one.

the main reason to go 15k is seek time, this is where the 10k and 15k rpm hdds beat the 7.2k hdds. this is what makes a computer feel more responsive since the hdd is the slowest item in the chain when using a computer (usually)

personally, i would go with this one because it is a 68pin hdd and is only 1generation old, and is a d@mn fine, fast hdd. actually if my crt didn't just die and i had to replace it with a lcd, and i switched out my psu, i would have bought one of these to replace my 10k fujitsu.

also, you should have active cooling on the hdds, it is recommended in the instructions usually.

as far as boot times, any speed advantage created by the hdd will be negated by the boot-up process going through the scsi post finding the hdd, it takes time, so boot time may actually be longer.

game load times will be faster, but again once the game loads the play will still be the same.

a lot of people on here will say scsi is a waste, and for some it is, but nothing can beat a 15k hdd in seek times besides a solid state drive. regardless of the new raptor does some things a little better here and there, the 15k hdds, even 1gen will still have faster seek times and that is what you will notice as a "average"(with a 3GHz 146...?) user.

i have been running a scsi system drive for quite some time and really like it. ithere was a noticeable difference between it and the 80GB wd i was using at the time, althoug benches don't look that much different. when you take into accout rotational speed, my scsi hdd is 2x as fast in seek times as my 80GB wd. the 74GB raptor is pretty equal (probably is better in some area and worse in others) to my hdd so i can't say anything bad against the raptors, even the new one, but a 15k is still the fastest mechanical hdd in seek times and usually str (and other stuff that is usually server related).

striping raid will not be really a benefit because you will just saturate the pci bus.

and to address the comment about hassle - there is no hassle, hooking up scsi stuff is very straightfoward, set a couple of jumpers, tell the m/b to boot from either a add in card or the scsi hdd and go.

Sweet, thanks bob4432. Sounds like you've had good luck with SCSI drives. I don't know a lot about hardrives, so correct me if I'm wrong, but is the main advantage of raid-0 the fact that you can get higher sustained throughput and not necessarily faster seek times? Is that why one 15k SCSI drive would be faster than 2 sata drives in raid-0?

with striping raid you will get higher str, but sometimes a small amount slower seek time. a relatively new gen 15k rpm has a str of 80-95MB/s, a relatively new gen 7.2 pata/sata hdd has a str of ~60MB/s, so striping 2 relatively new sata/pata hdds wil have a slightly higher str than a single 15krpm hdd.

unless you are moving huge files across Gb/s network to other striped arrays, or moving huge files in your own computer to other striped array, you will not gain anything really because you have to take into account the slowest item, which may be network or other hdds. and you risk the possiblity of losing your data if 1 hdd dies. and when i mean huge/large files i mean large, like in the GB size because if you move a 200MB file with either single hdd setup, it will only take a couple - 5 seconds, if you move GB size files then you will notice a difference, but only when moving to something else that can write as fast.

personally i wouldn't use striping raid as for me there is really no reason, besides bragging rights on some benchmark that doesn't really mean anything.

as far as luck, no, just knowledge from reading and asking questions. not trying to sound like a arrogant a$$. many people i know run scsi and if you read through everything that comes with the equipment, most of the time there will be no issues. i have been running scsi in some flavor for about the last decade.

 

[cubby1223]

I think the big advantage to scsi is when you can get 5 or so drives together in a raid 5 configuration to really take advantage of the 320mb/sec transfer speeds.

Otherwise, just go ide.

Even in basic servers nowadays ide is close enough to scsi.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: bob4432

with striping raid you will get higher str, but sometimes a small amount slower seek time. a relatively new gen 15k rpm has a str of 80-95MB/s, a relatively new gen 7.2 pata/sata hdd has a str of ~60MB/s, so striping 2 relatively new sata/pata hdds wil have a slightly higher str than a single 15krpm hdd.

unless you are moving huge files across Gb/s network to other striped arrays, or moving huge files in your own computer to other striped array, you will not gain anything really because you have to take into account the slowest item, which may be network or other hdds. and you risk the possiblity of losing your data if 1 hdd dies. and when i mean huge/large files i mean large, like in the GB size because if you move a 200MB file with either single hdd setup, it will only take a couple - 5 seconds, if you move GB size files then you will notice a difference, but only when moving to something else that can write as fast.

personally i wouldn't use striping raid as for me there is really no reason, besides bragging rights on some benchmark that doesn't really mean anything.

as far as luck, no, just knowledge from reading and asking questions. not trying to sound like a arrogant a$$. many people i know run scsi and if you read through everything that comes with the equipment, most of the time there will be no issues. i have been running scsi in some flavor for about the last decade.

Interesting. Well, it looks like I'd be into a SCSI setup (with the drive you recommended) about $180. I can probably sell my sata drives for $50-60 apiece so I'm looking at $60-80 to upgrade to the SCSI drive. Plus I'd probably need a big inexpensive drive for storage so maybe another $80-100. I like to experiment with new stuff but does that sound like a smart move?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: bob4432

with striping raid you will get higher str, but sometimes a small amount slower seek time. a relatively new gen 15k rpm has a str of 80-95MB/s, a relatively new gen 7.2 pata/sata hdd has a str of ~60MB/s, so striping 2 relatively new sata/pata hdds wil have a slightly higher str than a single 15krpm hdd.

unless you are moving huge files across Gb/s network to other striped arrays, or moving huge files in your own computer to other striped array, you will not gain anything really because you have to take into account the slowest item, which may be network or other hdds. and you risk the possiblity of losing your data if 1 hdd dies. and when i mean huge/large files i mean large, like in the GB size because if you move a 200MB file with either single hdd setup, it will only take a couple - 5 seconds, if you move GB size files then you will notice a difference, but only when moving to something else that can write as fast.

personally i wouldn't use striping raid as for me there is really no reason, besides bragging rights on some benchmark that doesn't really mean anything.

as far as luck, no, just knowledge from reading and asking questions. not trying to sound like a arrogant a$$. many people i know run scsi and if you read through everything that comes with the equipment, most of the time there will be no issues. i have been running scsi in some flavor for about the last decade.

Interesting. Well, it looks like I'd be into a SCSI setup (with the drive you recommended) about $180. I can probably sell my sata drives for $50-60 apiece so I'm looking at $60-80 to upgrade to the SCSI drive. Plus I'd probably need a big inexpensive drive for storage so maybe another $80-100. I like to experiment with new stuff but does that sound like a smart move?

i wouldn't recommend anything to anybody unless i would do it myself, and i know quite a few people where $$$$ is literally not an object.

i think if you did do it, you would learn, and have a faster responding everyday computer. even when i use to run a old 10k rpm u160 hdd in my wife's 1GHz machine, it made a noticeable difference over the 30GB pata hdd that was in there.

if possible, i would recommend active cooling, but i recommend that for all hdds if possible.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: bob4432

i wouldn't recommend anything to anybody unless i would do it myself, and i know quite a few people where $$$$ is literally not an object.

i think if you did do it, you would learn, and have a faster responding everyday computer. even when i use to run a old 10k rpm u160 hdd in my wife's 1GHz machine, it made a noticeable difference over the 30GB pata hdd that was in there.

if possible, i would recommend active cooling, but i recommend that for all hdds if possible.

Thanks again bob. Sorry to keep inundating you with questions but i have a couple more maybe you can answer. How big of a drive would I need for WinXP? Could I get away with an 18GB drive for WinXP and maybe buy the 36GB drive for some games?

Also, does this look like the right kind of cable I'd need? I assume that for two SCSI drives I'd probably want two separate cables to free up bandwidth on the cable (I could be talking out my rear here).

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: bob4432

i wouldn't recommend anything to anybody unless i would do it myself, and i know quite a few people where $$$$ is literally not an object.

i think if you did do it, you would learn, and have a faster responding everyday computer. even when i use to run a old 10k rpm u160 hdd in my wife's 1GHz machine, it made a noticeable difference over the 30GB pata hdd that was in there.

if possible, i would recommend active cooling, but i recommend that for all hdds if possible.

Thanks again bob. Sorry to keep inundating you with questions but i have a couple more maybe you can answer. How big of a drive would I need for WinXP? Could I get away with an 18GB drive for WinXP and maybe buy the 36GB drive for some games?

Also, does this look like the right kind of cable I'd need? I assume that for two SCSI drives I'd probably want two separate cables to free up bandwidth on the cable (I could be talking out my rear here).

if you put the os on a 18GB hdd and the games on a 36GB hdd, i don't think you would notice much, if anything unless you were hitting the pagefile all the time. personally i would just get 1 15k 36GB since there will be heat issues and i know the fujitsu manual recommends active cooling for that drive. depending on the generation of hdds, the older the hotter. the fujitsu is 1gen old so it will be cooler than a 3gen old hdd. a friend of mine has some 7.2k rpm 9GB scsi hdds and they get hot as hell, to the point where you wouldn't want to keep your finger on for more than a couple osecones.

as far as the cable, i will pm you with a good deal i found on ebay for you.

 

[imported_Phil]

Definitely get SCSI if you can afford it, and bobb4432's advice on this matter is, as always, thorough and full of personal experience.
The Fujitsu 36Gb drive in my machine is a noticeable step up from the 200Gb 7200.7 PATA drive that's now a secondary drive. Programs load faster, under heavy queue depths and loads it's a lot faster, and it has a unique, distinctive seeking noise.

 

[Vegito]

Can someone post some hd tach results from raptors.. in any raid ? i just want to look

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
Not worth the hassle/$$ for what you're gonna use it for. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket and you just have to spend it on something just get a 150gig Raptor and be done w/ it.

I concur. I went fom 18 SCSI drives to 6 SATA and never looked back.

What was your scsi setup before ?

 

[the Chase]

I know this is slightly off topic but since there are already a couple of knowledgable peeps here on Raid and Hd's- I was thinking of Raiding my 2 seagate 120GB PATA 100 hard drives. Would the IDE 100 transfer rate negate any improvements you might see in doing this? It sounds like Raid 0 isn't really that much faster anyway but just curious.

Also are the 16MB cache Hd's really faster than the 8MB cache Hd's?

 

[Elfear]

Hmm. Well, I'm now thinking that maybe three 80GB Sata II drives in a Raid-0 array would be about the same money as one 74GB Raptor or one 36GB 15k SCSI drive. I've seen some comparisons of a pair of 250GB Sata II drives against one Raptor and they kept up with or bested it pretty handily. I'm still unsure of seek time and latency, as the 10k/15k drives seem to be much better at that. Any thoughts on this?

 

[mechBgon]

Let me point out that WinXP load times will not be SCSI's strong suit. If it'll hurt your pride to see the scrollie go by eight or ten times, then just be aware of that

 

[bob4432]

as far as thoroughput, yes 2 or 3 striped raid hdds will beat a single 10/15k rpm hdd in str, but that is about it. imo, str is not that important unless you move numerous large (GB) size files. like mechBgon pointed out if you are worried about boot up times, scsi is slower because your computer will go through its main post, any onboard raids/lan boot options, then the scsi post screen and while loading XP i will see the blue bars go by 6 1/4 x's. but, i just start my computer up in the morning and leave it on all day, so i really wouldn't care if it took 5mins to start up.

here is a screenshot of hdtach comparig my scsi hdd to my 80GB pata hdd.

this is a bench for how my computer is used daily, and wasn't defragged immediately before the test, but i normally due defrag 1x week.

 

[Pariah]

Forget SCSI, it is no longer the king of desktops. This coming from a once staunch SCSI supporter who is currently still using a SCSI boot drive. If I was buying today for performance, the Raptor 150 would be it. bob4432 is living in the past and has not come to grips yet with reality even though it can be seen right in front of his face.

Rather than try to convince you otherwise, this is a cut and paste job from the SR forums of a post done by the admin of the site:




"Reading reactions to the reivew around the net has been quite interesting.

It seems there remain, however, many anachronistic assertions that simply don't wash. Let's informally address a couple of them here:

The first:


QUOTE
the Raptor can't hold a candle to my 15K SCSI drive!!


You're right, it can't... as long as you're usiing your 15K SCSI drive run, say, Oracle databases. But as a drive in a single user system? To boast of a 15K SCSI drive there is to brag about a tractor-trailer that's can haul 20 tons when others are discussing the speed and ride characteristics of sports cars. SCSI drives are designed for access patterns vastly different than even the heaviest of single-user loads.

Individuals who spout this garbage:

# 1) Failed to take a real look at the single-user graphs throughout the article

and

# 2) Failed to read and consider this paragraph:


QUOTE
A Word of Caution to Power Users

It is all too common for an enthusiast to believe that his or her usage pattern is closer to that of a server's rather than a desktop's. This idea arises from a variety of sources- "I multitask a lot," "I hear the hard drive grinding away," "I deal with lots of huge files," etc. The truth is, however, that even the heaviest, grinding multitasker experiences disk access patterns that are far more localized in nature than the truly random access that servers undergo. Individuals who choose a hard drive based on its prowess in IOMeter with the belief that their usage habits mimic a server simply do themselves a disservice. It is measures such as the SR Office and High-End DriveMarks that most accurately depict a non-server's response, whether it be the sheer speed experienced under intense disk access or the "snap and feel" associated with intermittent but bursty operations.


Let's move on to the other big misconception:


QUOTE
Twice the price of a 74GB? For that much money I could get 2 WD740GDs and RAID them for much better performance!!


Wrong. Here's a look at how two RAIDed configurations of the WD740GD on a basic RAID controller compare vs. a single WD1500ADFD:"



After that there is a graph showing four 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 tying a single 150GB Raptor in one benchmark and losing in the other four tests. If four 74GB Raptors can at best tie a 150GB what do you think the odds are that three 80GB 7200RPM drives in RAID 0 are anywhere close, let alone faster?

His post continues:


"These figures were drawn from a large database of results compiled in perparation for a future article that will examine the performance of the WD740GD, the Seagate NL35, and the WD4000YR in multidrive configurations operating off of three separate RAID controllers. As demonstrated above, even a four-drive RAID0 array matches the WD1500 in only one out of five cases. I can already hear "but RAID0 suxx, what about RAID5??!!" RAID5's performance is -vastly- worse than RAID0s when it comes to single-user patterns. Results have been omitted to avoid muddying the issue.

The internet is huge, and replete with those who will posit premises based on nothing but stubbornness and intractability. I hope, however, that we can -eventually- start moving on and spread the word that servers and desktops, and the drives designed for each, are largely different beasts... and that RAID's applications arise more in the server world than in the desktop, despite what every major taiwanese manufacturer would have you believe."


This post can be found at the bottom of this page where you can see the benchmark chart for yourself:

Western Digital Raptor WD1500

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Vegito

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
Not worth the hassle/$$ for what you're gonna use it for. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket and you just have to spend it on something just get a 150gig Raptor and be done w/ it.

I concur. I went fom 18 SCSI drives to 6 SATA and never looked back.

What was your scsi setup before ?

It was 18 Quantum 33.1GB 10krpm U160 drives connectedf to a Compaq RAID card with 512meg cache (forgot the model, sold it on ebay) the drives were all SCA and were in 2 external U160 chassis. Worked great but cost a fortune and was loud as hell. 18 drives spinning in raid 5 not to mention the 7 fans in each chassis. Have to admit one thing. I never had any problems with the drives. None ever failed and still work as far as I know. I still have em.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Forget SCSI, it is no longer the king of desktops. This coming from a once staunch SCSI supporter who is currently still using a SCSI boot drive. If I was buying today for performance, the Raptor 150 would be it. bob4432 is living in the past and has not come to grips yet with reality even though it can be seen right in front of his face.

Rather than try to convince you otherwise, this is a cut and paste job from the SR forums of a post done by the admin of the site:




"Reading reactions to the reivew around the net has been quite interesting.

It seems there remain, however, many anachronistic assertions that simply don't wash. Let's informally address a couple of them here:

The first:


QUOTE
the Raptor can't hold a candle to my 15K SCSI drive!!


You're right, it can't... as long as you're usiing your 15K SCSI drive run, say, Oracle databases. But as a drive in a single user system? To boast of a 15K SCSI drive there is to brag about a tractor-trailer that's can haul 20 tons when others are discussing the speed and ride characteristics of sports cars. SCSI drives are designed for access patterns vastly different than even the heaviest of single-user loads.

Individuals who spout this garbage:

# 1) Failed to take a real look at the single-user graphs throughout the article

and

# 2) Failed to read and consider this paragraph:


QUOTE
A Word of Caution to Power Users

It is all too common for an enthusiast to believe that his or her usage pattern is closer to that of a server's rather than a desktop's. This idea arises from a variety of sources- "I multitask a lot," "I hear the hard drive grinding away," "I deal with lots of huge files," etc. The truth is, however, that even the heaviest, grinding multitasker experiences disk access patterns that are far more localized in nature than the truly random access that servers undergo. Individuals who choose a hard drive based on its prowess in IOMeter with the belief that their usage habits mimic a server simply do themselves a disservice. It is measures such as the SR Office and High-End DriveMarks that most accurately depict a non-server's response, whether it be the sheer speed experienced under intense disk access or the "snap and feel" associated with intermittent but bursty operations.


Let's move on to the other big misconception:


QUOTE
Twice the price of a 74GB? For that much money I could get 2 WD740GDs and RAID them for much better performance!!


Wrong. Here's a look at how two RAIDed configurations of the WD740GD on a basic RAID controller compare vs. a single WD1500ADFD:"



After that there is a graph showing four 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 tying a single 150GB Raptor in one benchmark and losing in the other four tests. If four 74GB Raptors can at best tie a 150GB what do you think the odds are that three 80GB 7200RPM drives in RAID 0 are anywhere close, let alone faster?

His post continues:


"These figures were drawn from a large database of results compiled in perparation for a future article that will examine the performance of the WD740GD, the Seagate NL35, and the WD4000YR in multidrive configurations operating off of three separate RAID controllers. As demonstrated above, even a four-drive RAID0 array matches the WD1500 in only one out of five cases. I can already hear "but RAID0 suxx, what about RAID5??!!" RAID5's performance is -vastly- worse than RAID0s when it comes to single-user patterns. Results have been omitted to avoid muddying the issue.

The internet is huge, and replete with those who will posit premises based on nothing but stubbornness and intractability. I hope, however, that we can -eventually- start moving on and spread the word that servers and desktops, and the drives designed for each, are largely different beasts... and that RAID's applications arise more in the server world than in the desktop, despite what every major taiwanese manufacturer would have you believe."


This post can be found at the bottom of this page where you can see the benchmark chart for yourself:

Western Digital Raptor WD1500

i do not live in the past and have even commented on the fact that i am impressed with the raptors but not for me. i like and will eventually change my 10k scsi hdd to a 15k because it is what i like, plain and simple. i have never said or even thought that my usage patterns were anything like a true server, as i know they are not.

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: Oyeve

It was 18 Quantum 33.1GB 10krpm U160 drives connectedf to a Compaq RAID card with 512meg cache (forgot the model, sold it on ebay) the drives were all SCA and were in 2 external U160 chassis. Worked great but cost a fortune and was loud as hell. 18 drives spinning in raid 5 not to mention the 7 fans in each chassis. Have to admit one thing. I never had any problems with the drives. None ever failed and still work as far as I know. I still have em.

yeah new scsi are better & faster compared to what you were using... then again, everything new are usualy faster.. True ide are larger, cheaper and almost as fast... i have 14 in dual plane enclosure u320 each 7 drives. Internally I have 15 drives. mine is actually a server not for desktop usage.

I have 2 raid cards in my pc, each raid card is dual channel.. so I'm not saturating the u320

hooked this up for fun 7x 146gb 10k

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/forcesho/raid0-1.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/forcesho/raid0-2.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/forcesho/raid0-3.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/forcesho/raid0-4.jpg