80 to 68 pin scsi converter question

[dajo]

Hello,

I'm curious about something and thought some of you scsi experts might help. I have a seagate 15k 68 pin disk and lsi u320 controller. I'm seeing these 80 pin scsi drives which seem to be cheaper but a converter would be necessary for use with my cards. Questions for the knowlegeable:

1) why are these 80 pins cheaper? Are they not as good?
2) do these 80-68 pin converters diminish performance?

Looking to get another drive soon, so any help would be appreciated.

 

[SnoMunke]

I had the same 68pin drive you have now and had the same questions then about the 80pin drives....80pin drives have pins for power so you don't use a molex connector...these drives are used in hot-swappable RAID or NAS enclosures... stick with 68 pin unless you are planning on spending thousands of dollars on a dedicated RAID enclosure.

 

[imported_Phil]

Degredation of performance: none at all.
Difference in cost: I guess more of the SCA (80-pin) drives are bought, which brings the cost down.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
I had the same 68pin drive you have now and had the same questions then about the 80pin drives....80pin drives have pins for power so you don't use a molex connector...these drives are used in hot-swappable RAID or NAS enclosures... stick with 68 pin unless you are planning on spending thousands of dollars on a dedicated RAID enclosure.

Or, like in his case, the 80pin (SCA) drives are cheaper, and he's using an adaptor.

I use an SCA drive with a 68-pin converter board ripped out of a caddy. Works perfectly.

 

[Vegito]

I have a cremax 80pin enclosure... its 200 for 4 drives. Expensive but since I max out my lian li with 12 drives, i had to use this to add 4 more drives..

cremax

 

[SnoMunke]

12 drives???????? wth are you using 12 drives for?

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
12 drives???????? wth are you using 12 drives for?

pr0n

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
12 drives???????? wth are you using 12 drives for?

pr0n

not porn..... home made porn..

 

[Zepper]

They probably do make more of the 80-pin units as they are for hot swap installations. They sometimes lack a couple of insignificant features that the 68-pin versions have.
. Just make sure you get an 80>68 adapter that matches your drive and host adapter - some are rated for U160 and others for u320. Since few drives except the very latest models of 15k drives can crack 100MB/sec anyway, a U160 adapter will usually work fine, but not always - see how your drive actually performs at http://www.storagereview.com . U160 rated ones are cheap - U320 are not... Decent adapters don't diminish performance at all.

SCSI drives have smaller capacities on average than SATA/PATA, so you need more of them - my highest capacity drive is 36GB... I have that one and two 9GB.

.bh.

 

[dajo]

Thanks for all the answers. I have a Cheetah 15k 18GB boot and a Maxtor 15k 74GB. Neither of these even approaches 320 performance levels, I suppose due to the limitations of the bus.

Anyway, sounds like u160 80-68 would not hurt my performance any at all.

Now I have to re-think what I'm going to do. Have been seriously looking at the Atlas 10K V because of sterling reviews at storagereview.com, but then there's the 15k 80 pin drives - not much more.

Anyone here using an Atlas 10K V (not IV, but the latest "V")? Any comments on its performance? Will a 15k rpm drive usually beat the atlas 10K v? According to storagereview.com, this is not necessarily always the case.

Is this what I need:
Text

Does anyone know where else I can get these?

 

[imported_Phil]

How about this?

(scroll down to the bottom)

 

[dajo]

Lot of stuff down there!

My drives are LVD. You mean this one, right?

"If your drive is LVD, you need this SCA Adapter. - Ultra 320" (3720U)

Text

 

[Zepper]

You can also get U160 rated ones on eBay for around $7.50. shipped. I get mine from a seller named yoozinha but they are only rated to U160 and my drives are older 10k U160 drives. Works fine with them.
. I'd get the one from Hypermicro.com - a great company that has been supporting SCSI and the StorageReview site for years. Sometimes they give free ground shipping for mentioning SR - see their current offer on storagereview.com
. On that small item, he should be able to ship 1st Class mail for a buck or two. You'll be sure of having what your drive needs in any given situation.
. But there are also others from a seller on eBay called STSI that also guarantees U320 capability - he sells them for $9.99 shipped. Considering U320 rated ones used to sell for $30. at Hypermicro (and not very long ago either) These prices are very reasonable.

.bh.

 

[GoSharks]

Originally posted by: dajo
Anyone here using an Atlas 10K V (not IV, but the latest "V")? Any comments on its performance? Will a 15k rpm drive usually beat the atlas 10K v? According to storagereview.com, this is not necessarily always the case.

I use a 10K V as my main drive, and things defintely load quicker than they did when compared to the cheetah 36es and cheetah 10k.6 that i have used before. but then again, the cpu on this system is also much faster than the ones on the other systems.

also, my 4 year old u160 80pin-68pin adapters worked just fine running at u320. also my u160 cable and terminator worked at u320.

 

[dajo]

Thanks for all the answers and support.

This is going to replace a SATA 7.2K in my .Net/web development box. I have another machine which I use for gaming (yes, it's all SCSI!).

Torn between the 74GB Atlas 10K V and the 36GB Maxtor Atlas II 15k. The Maxtor is currently the server leader at SR. Head to head shows the Atlas II to be definitely speedier.

36GB may seem like a ridiculously low amount, but all that's on this box is OS, Photoshop, Visual Studio, mysql, xmlspy, and other utilities. Currently disk usage is about 17GB and I don't see much else going on there so 36GB should be plenty.

Atlas 15K II 36GB is $189 at ZZF, but there's a 74GB 15K sca at Dell SB which I can get for about $264 - tough to decided. The "real world" difference between the Dell drive (I don't know the manufacturer) and the Atlas II 15k probably isn't great enough to warrant paying almost twice as much per gb for the Atlas II.

Decisions, decisions - my venice 3200+ and ASRock board should be here today so I need to decide and order the drive or just stick with my 7.2 sata.

 

[redbeard1]

SCA drives can be pretty fussy about what adapter they work with. I gave up using cheap adapters and went with this model. To many wierd errors and drives that wouldn't spin up with the cheapies.

Corpsys

 

[Zepper]

I just found adapters at centrix-intl.com for $5. each, but you have to buy a substantial order to justify their shipping costs.

.bh.