SCSI hard drive: worthe the investment?

[whitewarrior11]

Hi there,

I want to learn more about *possible* SCSI setups for a future build. I am planning on going for 15k drives (I heard 10k drives don't offer much improvement over the SATA Raptors).

What do I need to hook up my drives? I already have a pretty old SCSI controller card (Adaptec 2940UW) but I think this card is too old for Ultra320 drives (thinking of Hitachi Ultrastar drives by the way). Do I need special cables? Again, I have 68-pin cables but would consider getting newer ones.

I was checking this to improve HDD performance in my computer. I already have SATA drives right now (2 x 80 GB in RAID 0 and 1 x 250 GB). Does 15k SCSI drives with a PCI (notice: not PCI-Express as my mobo doesn't support it) controller card would be significantly faster than my actual SATA setup? Let me know about that. And also about estimated prices for say the controller card + cables + 15k drive (36 GB for the OS and prog.files mainly).

 

[evilharp]

First, SCSI is expensive (everything costs considerably more than SATA or IDE).

Second, before you go any further look for proof that the "speed" is worth it. SCSI isn't in the desktop space for a reason.

Try http://www.storagereview.com/ for benchmarks.

For prices look at speciality sites like http://www.hypermicro.com . Newegg may sell stuff as well.

 

[PandaBear]

The interface means nothing but SCSI usually are built with better mechanics, more validation and testing, faster electronics, and sustain more abusive access pattern (100% utilization 247), and longer design life.

If you compare a low cap SCSI to a high cap ATA, the ATA may be faster in single user environment.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: evilharp
First, SCSI is expensive (everything costs considerably more than SATA or IDE).

Second, before you go any further look for proof that the "speed" is worth it. SCSI isn't in the desktop space for a reason.

Try http://www.storagereview.com/ for benchmarks.

For prices look at speciality sites like http://www.hypermicro.com . Newegg may sell stuff as well.

SCSI being overly expensive is a common myth. It's more expensive than mass storage ATA (which is 40cents to a gig). The issue is that if you pay retail for SCSI, you'll be paying around $5 per gig for the latest 15K drive. If you shop around eBay, you'll be paying around $2 per gig for the same drive. Controllers are a non-issue in the same sense. Paying retail for a new controller will be overly expensive, but second hand off eBay, a very nice Adaptec 29160 will cost around $25, which is not much more than SATA controllers.

Storagereview has the latest (hell even the last generation) 15K / 10K drives dominating the benchmarks.