Help me choose SCSI vs SATA

[aryaba]

Alright, I have a few older 10k SCSI drives from work that they were throwing away. A bunch of 9 GIGs, some 36 gigs and a few 73 Gig drives. Mostly Seagate, but a few others as well.

I'm planning on building a new system in the next few weeks and wanted to get some feedback.

Should I just forget about the SCSI drives and buy new SATA drives?

Here are the two setups I am considering:

SCSI
9 Gig OS drive
9 Gig App drive
73 Gig Game drive
9 Gig Swapfile drive

I need to buy:
SCSI controller $136
SCSI housing $146
total $282

plus if I need to, I have a bunch of SCSI HDD I could add later on.

<OR>

SATA
36 Gig OS/App Drive $118
74 Gig Game Drive $169
Total $287

This system is primarily just to play games on, and I have other systems to store data files. So, what do you guys think?

Thanks

 

[Rubycon]

Newer SATA drives will be faster on the desktop than those old SCSI drives.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: C6FT7
Newer SATA drives will be faster on the desktop than those old SCSI drives.

 

[aryaba]

Technically, I could also use 3-73 Gig SCSI drives (OS, App and Games) and another drive for swap file. Would this still be slower than the SATA's?

Thanks

 

[Crescent13]

Don't get Western Digital Raptors. Seagate 7200.9 500GB hdd with 16MB cache is much faster (and bigger).

 

[aryaba]

The 7200.9 500 gig is faster than the raptors? Do you have any benchmarks? I would also imagine multiple spindles would be faster than a single spindle.

Additionally, the 500 gig Seagate is $374.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: Crescent13
Don't get Western Digital Raptors. Seagate 7200.9 500GB hdd with 16MB cache is much faster (and bigger).

Got any benchmarks to back this claim up? The Raptor is the fastest SATA drive there is. It may not be much faster to justify the added cost, but it is still faster.

I think the best all-around drive is the Hitachi Deskstar 7K400.

 

[DeathReborn]

If those SCSI drives were 15k then you'd be bettre off with them but as they're just 10k use SATA. Yes, don't get the Spinpoint if you want top performance SATA, the Raptor is the top dog for SATA.

 

[aryaba]

Well, it sounds like the logical choice would be to go with the newer SATA drives.

Hmmm, now, what do I do with these SCSI drives? Paper weight?

 

[SGtheArtist]

I bet that those SCSI drives you have there are pretty old considering the capacity. More than likely they are running at 7200rpm. In addition, SCSI is just plain expensive even in the future when you decide to upgrade a couple drives. Unless you are running a 15K rpm SCSI you wont see any major performance benefits to running those SCSI drives. In fact they will be significantly slower than the current SATA drives available.

I would sell the SCSI drives on eBay and then put that money into some SATA drives since most current motherboards have SATA controllers onboard.

 

[aryaba]

All the SCSI drives are 10K drives. I'll check the prices on Ebay for these things. Thanks

 

[interchange]

Yeah you can sell those older SCSI drives no problem. These things are still in high demand for legacy servers.

 

[Spiked]

grab a 74GB raptor for you OS and installs, and grab a 300-400GB Sata 16mb cache for everything else ($100-$175 depending on MIR)

 

[aryaba]

I usually keep data (My documents, etc) on network shares (RAID 5 array on a Domain Controller)

 

[SGtheArtist]

I've heard some 7200rpm SATA HDD today can out perform old SCSI 10k HDDs.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Send the SCSI drives to me.

 

[shoRunner]

Originally posted by: Crescent13
Don't get Western Digital Raptors. Seagate 7200.9 500GB hdd with 16MB cache is much faster (and bigger).

don't be dumb, the 10k hard drives will always have faster seek times and higher average transfer rates unless they are unbearably old

 

[Some1ne]

The 7200.9 500 gig is faster than the raptors? Do you have any benchmarks?

I concur, show some proof, or don't go claiming that any standard 7200 RPM SATA disk can outpace a raptor. The raptor continues to command its price premium for a reason, and that reason is that no other SATA drive can touch it yet.

grab a 74GB raptor for you OS and installs, and grab a 300-400GB Sata 16mb cache for everything else ($100-$175 depending on MIR)

I agree with this suggestion, get a fast OS/program install drive, and then a standard disk for storage/downloads/etc..

 

[alembic5]

I use 15,000 RPM Seagate SCSI drives in my machine, and they have a 3.6ms seek time. Wicked fast. Also, in my experience, scsi drives last longer! As for the 10,000 rpm drives, you probably won't see much difference performance wise. Let me know if you want to get rid of any 73GB drives! Also, you can get an adaptec 29160 really cheap. Heck, I have a couple laying around I'll sell you really cheap if you want. I love SCSI, but I also love SATA. Either way, you will get decent speed!

 

[SGtheArtist]

/\ The truth he speaks. I too have this 15000 rpm HDD and it is indeed fast.

I however would not invest in SCSI again because the 3.6ms access speed while noticable is not worth the cost IHO. (Don't get me wrong Im keeping my X15, but if I had to do it again I would've invested the money on more important parts.)