IDE vs. SCSI reliability

[SickBeast]

Hey guys,

I was told by an uber-tech the other day that SCSI drives are far more reliable than IDE. I knew this was one of the advantages of SCSI, but never thought it was such a big deal (I have yet to have an IDE drive fail on me in over 20 years of working with computers). He wants me to purchase a 72GB SCSI drive for the network server in our office. I'm thinking the better option is to go with an internal 200GB IDE drive, and a 250GB drive in a USB enclosure to act as a backup which can be brought off-site (in case the building burns down).

Cost:
$700CDN for the 72GB SCSI, plus extra $$$ for a backup solution
$400CDN for the two IDE drives plus an enclosure

Right now the server has two 18GB SCSI drives that are not in a RAID array. Here is my plan:

- set up the current 18GB SCSI drives in RAID-1, and store all active projects on them
- a 200GB internal IDE drive for archived projects that are rarely accessed
- a 250GB IDE drive in a USB/Firewire enclosure to back everything up
and take it off-site
- an IDE RAID card and a second 200GB internal IDE drive for a RAID-1 setup (future upgrade)

Any thoughts? Can Windows 2000 Server do IDE RAID-1 without using a controller?

 

[biostud]

Add an extra IDE drive for RAID-1

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: biostud
Add an extra IDE drive for RAID-1

That's a great idea, but would require a RAID card. I'll have to price it. Cheers. :beer:

 

[Vegito]

scsi are better in multiuser multi access os such as windows 2003
I have a 8 drive ide raid sever using 200gb maxtor 7.2k 8mb cache sata drive into a 3dware controller.. dual xeon 2.4, that machine is so fricken slow.. even a 2ghz machine with scsi raid copys stuff faster.

Sure, IDE are cheaper, reliablity are pretty much the same.. but most scsi have 5 year warranty vs 1-3 for ide with the exception of seagate (5yr)

if you're going ide, as mentioned, IDE raid 1 + another drive for your external usb backup

 

[biostud]

If it's just for a desktop/single user I would go for an IDE solution, but if it has to be a file server SCSI drives will probably be a lot faster.

 

[Mogh]

What you typically see which is kind of telling is warranties for SCSI being 5 years and typically 1 year IDE (and occassionally 3 year).

 

[GoSharks]

you are getting ripped off paying $700 for a 73gb scsi setup.
go to hypermicro.com and price out the LSI u160 scsi adapter along with the 73GB seagate cheetah 10k.6. I am assuming that 10/15k rpm will not matter much as you are comparing scsi with ide. if it does, a 10k/15k drive will rape any ide drive in a multi-user environment.

(yes they are out of stock, and i am too lazy to dig through pricewatch.)

 

[Baked]

You can get a pair of 300GB/16MB IDE for $300 @ officedepot.com. But if you want 5 year warranty, go with Seagate.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: GOSHARKS
you are getting ripped off paying $700 for a 73gb scsi setup.
go to hypermicro.com and price out the LSI u160 scsi adapter along with the 73GB seagate cheetah 10k.6. I am assuming that 10/15k rpm will not matter much as you are comparing scsi with ide. if it does, a 10k/15k drive will rape any ide drive in a multi-user environment.

(yes they are out of stock, and i am too lazy to dig through pricewatch.)

Well, the "uber-tech" suggested it, so that's why I questionned it and suggested the IDE scenario.

There are only 13 people working at my firm, so I'm really thinking that a 10/15K SCSI drive is overkill. There are already 2 18GB SCSI drives in the server that I plan to RAID-1, so I think the additional IDE drive for archiving paired with the external drive for backup is an ideal solution. If I RAID-1 two IDE drives it adds even more redundancy which is great.

Can 13 people on a 10/100 connection really bring a 7200RPM IDE drive to its knees? We don't constantly access the server, we just open a drawing and periodically save it.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Baked
You can get a pair of 300GB/16MB IDE for $300 @ officedepot.com. But if you want 5 year warranty, go with Seagate.

I need a Canadian retailer unfortunately. My work seems to deal with a particular store which is stupid IMO, but I'm not the one paying the bills.

 

[SickBeast]

Edited OP for clarity.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: GOSHARKS
you are getting ripped off paying $700 for a 73gb scsi setup.
go to hypermicro.com and price out the LSI u160 scsi adapter along with the 73GB seagate cheetah 10k.6. I am assuming that 10/15k rpm will not matter much as you are comparing scsi with ide. if it does, a 10k/15k drive will rape any ide drive in a multi-user environment.

(yes they are out of stock, and i am too lazy to dig through pricewatch.)

It's $700 Canadian, not US. So long as you have a reliable backup system, which an external drive would qualify as, you'd be fine with ATA. SCSI is more reliable, but it doesn't sound like you are doing anything mission critical where you need dozens of drives. With a need for only 1 drive and a backup, the odds of both of them dying at the same time are practically nil, so you should be fine.

I wouldn't even bother with RAID 1 for the internal drive, so long as you run daily backups to the external drive.

 

[jose]

What kind of motherboard do you have ? any 64bit pci slots ?
I would not use ide for any application server of any type... Ide hardware raid5 is fine (3Ware) for storing large amounts of data/files that are not constantly being accessed & modified .
ie a large database.

If you do have a 64bit slot then you should look at LSI's scsi raid controllers. scsi drives are so cheap , I just got a 10k4 73g for $169.. I've had servers running for 6+ years 24/7 on some poweredge hardware, no problems.

Ide is fine for a single user, but real slow when used in application server...

If you do go w/ ide you will regret it, but more important, your users will be mad.

For example
You could use the 2 18g drives in raid1 & get 3 - 73g for raid 5 on the same cntrl.

Regards,
Jose

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: jose
Ide is fine for a single user, but real slow when used in application server...

It's not an application server, it stores primarily CAD files which are opened periodically by each user and saved throughout the day.

So you're saying for $169 you can get a 73GB SCSI drive? I wonder where this guy is getting the $650-700 price from (sounds like he's trying to rip us off, which was my first impression of the proposal).

The other thing that you seem to be forgetting about is that we already have two 18GB SCSI drives in the server. The IDE drive would be rarely used by anybody as it would only hold our archived projects which are *very* rarely accessed.

The high capacity would also be very nice considering the volume of data our firm produces annually.

BTW we already have a SCSI RAID controller with slots for something like 8 more drives.

 

[halfadder]

I've seen entire racks of SCSI drives running hard and hot (literally) for years on end. Some say that the platters and actuators inside SCSI drives are made to handle greater extremes than consumer IDE drives. I don't know if this is true anymore, and I've heard of cases where SCSi drives have been just as unreliable as IDE drives.

If you don't need the performance and low seek times of some Atlas 15K drives, I wouldn't bother with SCSI.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Pariah
I wouldn't even bother with RAID 1 for the internal drive, so long as you run daily backups to the external drive.

The problem is, say the drive dies near the end of a workday. The firm would lose the work of 13 people for 7 hours. That's around $1800 in lost productivity (using a conservative salary estimate). They seem to be extremely paranoid about backups in the office.

In any event, you're right, I probably won't need 2 IDE drives in RAID, because I can already RAID the two SCSI drives which will be holding the active projects. :beer:

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: halfadder
I've seen entire racks of SCSI drives running hard and hot (literally) for years on end. Some say that the platters and actuators inside SCSI drives are made to handle greater extremes than consumer IDE drives. I don't know if this is true anymore, and I've heard of cases where SCSi drives have been just as unreliable as IDE drives.

If you don't need the performance and low seek times of some Atlas 15K drives, I wouldn't bother with SCSI.

Yeah I've heard of SCSI drive failures (apparently the more recent Fujutsu drives are plagued with reliability problems), but I seem to hear more horror stories about IDE drives (i.e. the "Deathstar"). This may be due to the fact that IDE drives are more widely used.

So this is it. Is SCSI more reliable? If so, how much more reliable? Are the failure rates of IDE drives anything to be concerned about anyways? It will be the only IDE drive sitting within a large server case.

I guess a good follow up to that would be: will two IDE drives in RAID-1 be more reliable than a single SCSI drive?

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Pariah
I wouldn't even bother with RAID 1 for the internal drive, so long as you run daily backups to the external drive.

The problem is, say the drive dies near the end of a workday. The firm would lose the work of 13 people for 7 hours. That's around $1800 in lost productivity (using a conservative salary estimate). They seem to be extremely paranoid about backups in the office.

In any event, you're right, I probably won't need 2 IDE drives in RAID, because I can already RAID the two SCSI drives which will be holding the active projects. :beer:

From your original post you stated that the ATA drive would be used for storing archived projects and rarely accessed. If that's the case, why would you have that day's work on it?

People are giving you prices of old SCSI drives in US dollars. A current generation 73GB 15k SCSI drive is about $500+US, which would be between $600 and $700 CDN.

SCSI drives on average are more reliable than ATA. But neither are immune to a bad batch of drives here or there, or just bad luck.

The 2 ATA drives would likely be more reliable. Anything could go wrong once. Twice at the same time is unlikely.

 

[Cerb]

If it's not doing a lot of random access (mail server, DB work), just stick a couple of big 'Cudas in RAID 1.
IDEs will die, but if you've got hardware RAID, all should be well. Or get an external HD. If you go external, see about a decently-priced manufacturer external. It could save a lot of headaches vs. getting drives and then enclosures.

13 people COULD bring a IDE drive to its knees if that IDE drive is home to a currently active database. Even light DB work can really tax IDE drives (not counting new Raptors as "IDE", BTW). However, if it is a file/print server, the drives will hardly be used at all.

In general, IDE drives fail more often. Hardware RAID, however (don't even think about software RAID in Windows...it works, but is a PITA when things mess up compared to a $150-$300 controller card). With RAID 1, you'd need the filesystem to sh!t itself to cause major damage, or soemthing like a PSU blowing, etc., any of which can generally be avoided with vigilance, good OEM boxes, or good parts built from scratch.

Two ATA drives will be far more reliable than one SCSI, because one SCSI might still fail. The whole point is to remove as many single points of failure as possible.

If the RAID is successful, even if you get a cheaper card without hot swapping, everything should be smooth on failing. If the server has be brought down for the new drive installation, it's not a big deal when it means no one can access it for half an hour, as long as no data was lost .

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Pariah
From your original post you stated that the ATA drive would be used for storing archived projects and rarely accessed. If that's the case, why would you have that day's work on it?

That's a very good point, sorry I wasn't thinking.

Thanks very much, you just lowered the cost of the upgrade by at least $100.

BTW thanks to everyone who has contributed so far. :beer:

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Cerb
However, if it is a file/print server, the drives will hardly be used at all.

That's exactly what it is.

No DB work at all. Just files, printers, and internet access. We're getting a 10MB/second pipeline to the 'net for only $80CDN/month. If anyone has any experience with Beanfield Technologies it would be great if they could give me some feedback. I'm concerned about their reliability. $80/month for that kind of service sounds too good to be true.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Pariah
I wouldn't even bother with RAID 1 for the internal drive, so long as you run daily backups to the external drive.

At first I thought you saved my firm $100 on the upgrade, then I read this again and realized that the backup to the external drive will be weekly. I'm thinking I should RAID-1 them.

 

[Blain]

When shooting for reliability with RAID 1...
Is it best to use a PCI RAID controller, such as a HighPoint RocketRaid in case the MB dies?

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: jose
What kind of motherboard do you have ? any 64bit pci slots ?
I would not use ide for any application server of any type... Ide hardware raid5 is fine (3Ware) for storing large amounts of data/files that are not constantly being accessed & modified .
ie a large database.

If you do have a 64bit slot then you should look at LSI's scsi raid controllers. scsi drives are so cheap , I just got a 10k4 73g for $169.. I've had servers running for 6+ years 24/7 on some poweredge hardware, no problems.

Ide is fine for a single user, but real slow when used in application server...

If you do go w/ ide you will regret it, but more important, your users will be mad.

For example
You could use the 2 18g drives in raid1 & get 3 - 73g for raid 5 on the same cntrl.

Regards,
Jose

Just to fully respond to this instead of quoting bits and pieces...

First, I don't know how you got your SCSI drive so cheap. If I could get 3 and create a RAID-5 array, that would be ideal. However, I'm thinking 3 drives is waaaaay outside the budget (not to mention the fact that they lack a backup solution which can be brought off-site).

As for your regretting IDE/mad users comment, I will be one of the users myself, and I have worked on networks where the server was running a single IDE drive. It was FINE. Just so all you techs out there are aware, architecture firms do not put a large strain on hard drives in servers. Whoever initially speced this server was a madman. I don't want to know how much the SCSI controller/caddy in the thing cost, not to mention the two 18GB drives back in the day. The tapes they back up onto are $40-60 a pop for 20GB.

The board may have 64-bit slots. I have yet to crack open the case, and I think I'm forbidden to do so by the uber tech (I think he built the server).

I'm starting to think I should become a consultant for building architectural workstations and servers. It seems as though most techs don't know what to specify.

Thanks for your insight re: RAID-5, jose. I'll have to consider it. How would it work? Two of the 72GB drives would be striped, and the other three would mirror the 144GB striped set?

The thing is, the other option gives more storage plus a backup solution for less money. I'm really leaning towards IDE at this point.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Blain
When shooting for reliability with RAID 1...
Is it best to use a PCI RAID controller, such as a HighPoint RocketRaid in case the MB dies?

According to mechBgon, the software RAID solution built into windows is the best way to go. I'm going to post his PM to me shortly, as the information is extremely useful (as per the usual from him).