SCSI or No SCSI

[INM8]

I currently have 2x 250gb Samsung p120's setup in raid 0 in my computer. Iv started looking at SCSI drives because i want some more speed (iv discounted the raptor because i can get 15k scsi drives cheaper). The scsi drives iv been looking at are the Maxtor Atlas 15K II 36.7 GB SCSI Ultra320 drives. Has anyone had any experience with these? They seem to get good reviews.

I'v got an Asus A8N Premium motherboard which means im also going to have to purchase a SCSI controller card. Unfortunaltly i know nothing about SCSI, iv never used it, and i dont know what to look for I want something that is reliable, easy to setup, and relativly cheap. Does anyone have any recomendations for a good controller card?

At the moment, this card here looks fairly promising:

Dell 3DC PERC SCSI RAID controller card .

Would this be compatible with the drives im getting? Im fairly proficcient with everything else on pc's, and i build my own, but SCSI is new territory for me.

 

[MustISO]

That card is for a 64Bit PCI slot, you better check to make sure it's backward compatible to 32Bit. The card is also Ultra160, the drive you want is Ultra320 which means you won't be getting the full bandwidth. It looks like that card has 68pin connections, make sure the drive does as well. A lot of SCSI drives come with SCA connections.

 

[Yuriman]

Prepare to spend a LOT of money on a hardware raid controller.

 

[MustISO]

You can do SCSI and not do RAID. There are plenty of both on EBAY for good prices.

 

[Yuriman]

I think the transfer rates of those Samsung drives in RAID would be faster than the SCSI drive in question.

What are you doing that you need a little more hard drive speed? Heavy transfers?

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

The 15k RPM drives should be faster. Go with a 32-bit regular PCI non-RAID SCSI card. You can get a used one really cheap on Ebay. Unless you have a 64-bit PCI-X slot, you won't probably be able to provide enough bandwidth for U320 anyways.

 

[Varun]

PCI bus bandwidth is 133MB/s, which is less than you can likely get from the SATA drives in RAID0.

SCSI has some advantages over ATA, but the cost difference really doesn't make sense for the home computer, especially since the latest ATA drives have really come a long ways in terms of performance.

Save the SCSI for servers, you would just spend a pile of money to find out that you gain minimal performance. The only thing you would really gain on is seek times.

 

[mechBgon]

The Maxtor Atlas 15k II 36GB is quiet at idle, runs cool, and has seek noise sort of like a Hitachi 7200rpm ATA drive. Not inaudible, but not the metal-can-of-BBs-being-shaken noise of the old-school stuff, either.

Anyway, no surprise that I like mine, it is nice in the same way that my dual-core X2 3800+ is nice... the headroom may not always make its presence felt, but the performance delta can be quite large in some situations that cater to its strengths. I'm not using a fancy controller, either, just a vanilla LSI Logic Ultra160 card on 32-bit PCI.

Good luck making up your mind If you're a typical home user, it may or may not make you happy. But what you buy on eBay, you can turn around and sell on eBay if you don't like it.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

You probably won't be saturating your PCI bus, since the burst speed of RAID 0'd drives is probably only 133mbs. Steady rate is ~70 maybe. You should be fine with SCSI.

 

[Rubycon]

That card should work in a normal PCI slot but be warned that its performance will be far greater at 64/66!

 

[Markfw]

yes, its a waste to get that fancy card, and no PCI-X slot to use it. Makes a BIG difference, I know. Thats the whole reason I got the Opterons.

 

[Zepper]

Are the 15k IIs the latest generation of Atlas drives? If so, then you can probably only make use of one drive's bandwidth at at time on a normal PCU mobo. Unless you have 64-bit PCI and/or high speed PCI (66MHz or up) then you won't get the bandwidth from more than one drive either. IOW, you need to have an advanced PCI bus and a more expensive host adapter to take full advantage of two or more of the latest generation of 15k drives as they can each hit over 100MB/sec transfer rate at the outer edge of the platters. At that point, you're talking REAL MONEY...

.bh.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Zepper
Are the 15k IIs the latest generation of Atlas drives? If so, then you can probably only make use of one drive's bandwidth at at time on a normal PCU mobo. Unless you have 64-bit PCI and/or high speed PCI (66MHz or up) then you won't get the bandwidth from more than one drive either. IOW, you need to have an advanced PCI bus and a more expensive host adapter to take full advantage of two or more of the latest generation of 15k drives as they can each hit over 100MB/sec transfer rate at the outer edge of the platters. At that point, you're talking REAL MONEY...

.bh.

They are indeed the latest, sustained transfer supposedly tops out at over 95MB/sec. I consider the fast seek times and working command queueing to be the bigger assets, though... I could set the card for 8-bit (Ultra2 80MB/sec) mode and I bet it would still trample the ATA drives' best efforts in an Office2000Pro SP3 AIP self-install contest (to name my favorite SCSI showcase benchmark).

Also remember that the bottleneck only exists where the card meets the PCI bus. The drives can discuss matters amongst themselves at full Ultra160 or Ultra320 protocol, depending on what controller I own.

I would like a PCI-Express x4 Ultra320 controller, however. C'mon, LSI Logic, let's have some new goodies

 

[INM8]

Thanks for all the replys guys. Now i have more questions

Can you even get 64bit PCI on a desktop motherboard. Im almost 100% certain that my mobo (A8N PREMIUM) is just stock 33mhz.

Since yesterday...another deal has come up and i can now get two 2x 36.4GB HP U320 15k SCSI drives and a HP 641 U320 Smart Controller for $400 AUD. That seems like a pretty good price for what im getting. Is this a decent deal?

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
They are indeed the latest, sustained transfer supposedly tops out at over 95MB/sec. I consider the fast seek times and working command queueing to be the bigger assets, though... I could set the card for 8-bit (Ultra2 80MB/sec) mode and I bet it would still trample the ATA drives' best efforts in an Office2000Pro SP3 AIP self-install contest (to name my favorite SCSI showcase benchmark).

Also remember that the bottleneck only exists where the card meets the PCI bus. The drives can discuss matters amongst themselves at full Ultra160 or Ultra320 protocol, depending on what controller I own.

I would like a PCI-Express x4 Ultra320 controller, however. C'mon, LSI Logic, let's have some new goodies

I have a Maxtor Atlas 15K II 36GB (I bought one brand new with a warranty till 2010 off eBay for $80, can you believe it?) on an Adaptec 29160 controller using a normal PCI bus. It averages just under 90MB/sec transfer rates, and one drive alone can easily bottle-up the entire PCI bus.

I tried looking for PCI-E controllers (even a 1x is 250MB/sec), but apparently the only one I could find was a U320 raid controller for $650. Until you have a PCI-E, PCI-X, or the archaic 64bit PCI controller, U160 will max out a single 15K drive.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: dexvx

Originally posted by: mechBgon
They are indeed the latest, sustained transfer supposedly tops out at over 95MB/sec. I consider the fast seek times and working command queueing to be the bigger assets, though... I could set the card for 8-bit (Ultra2 80MB/sec) mode and I bet it would still trample the ATA drives' best efforts in an Office2000Pro SP3 AIP self-install contest (to name my favorite SCSI showcase benchmark).

Also remember that the bottleneck only exists where the card meets the PCI bus. The drives can discuss matters amongst themselves at full Ultra160 or Ultra320 protocol, depending on what controller I own.

He could use 2 drives per channel on a dual channel ultra 160 controller (total of 4) and still be fine with room possibly for a 5th or 6th. Average transfer speed of modern 15k scsi drives is around 65-75 MB/s, but the burst rate is much higher though I would not worry about it since it is not a sustainable speed.

I would like a PCI-Express x4 Ultra320 controller, however. C'mon, LSI Logic, let's have some new goodies

I have a Maxtor Atlas 15K II 36GB (I bought one brand new with a warranty till 2010 off eBay for $80, can you believe it?) on an Adaptec 29160 controller using a normal PCI bus. It averages just under 90MB/sec transfer rates, and one drive alone can easily bottle-up the entire PCI bus.

I tried looking for PCI-E controllers (even a 1x is 250MB/sec), but apparently the only one I could find was a U320 raid controller for $650. Until you have a PCI-E, PCI-X, or the archaic 64bit PCI controller, U160 will max out a single 15K drive.

I would avoid legacy PCI, if you have a motherboard that supports SLI then get an x8 PCI-express SCSI Controller card like the one from LSI
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/LSI-Logic-MegaRA...4QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-Perc4E-DC-LSI-...8QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

LSI is the oem supplier to dell for scsi, their products beat adaptec in terms of performance and driver support.
http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/megaraid_320_2e.html

 

[Zepper]

I've never seen anything but standard 33MHz, 32-bit PCI on standard mobos. You have to get a dualie at least before you get the good stuff. Of course, the current 64-bit AMD have PCI-Express, but the SCSI host adapters for that are ridiculously expensive when you can find them at all.

.bh.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Zepper
I've never seen anything but standard 33MHz, 32-bit PCI on standard mobos. You have to get a dualie at least before you get the good stuff. Of course, the current 64-bit AMD have PCI-Express, but the SCSI host adapters for that are ridiculously expensive when you can find them at all.

.bh.

Actually there have been several desktop boards that have incorporated PCI-X Gigabyte and DFI are the first two to come to mind

Gigabyte The gigabyte board first sold for $200 but now sells for almost twice that! Odd.....



DFI board- no longer sold by New Egg.com

 

[Pariah]

Supermicro sells a few as well. They are out there if you look.

 

[alimoalem]

ok for the cheap factor, there's only one way to go: the For Sale/Trade forum. i doubt you'll get as good a deal there as anywhere else...ebay is like double the price.

for reliability, without a doubt SCSI reliable. very fast too

for ease of setup, it may not be the easiest so u may struggle at first

 

[Jojo7]

I'll chime in here since I have several of the Maxtor 15k II drives. Let me just tell you, there's nothing like a 15k II drive paired with a good lsi scsi controller.

If you want THE best scsi controller, look at LSI Megaraid 320-2E. You can normally find those on ebay for $200-$300. Also just a tip: as Googer touched on, you can buy a Dell oem card from ebay much cheaper than buying the lsi branded card. Also, you can flash the dell card with lsi firmware.

If you don't have a motherboard with pci express, you can go for the LSI Megaraid 320-2X. The 320-2X doesn't have quite as fast of a processor and has slower memory than the 320-2E.

Personally, I own the LSI Megaraid 320-2 which I bought on ebay for $180 and I love it. I've got 2 Maxtor 15k II's in raid 0 and it screams.

 

[INM8]

Whats the name for dells OEM model of the LSI Megaraid 320-2E?

Are these parts 2x 36.4GB HP U320 15k SCSI drives and a HP 641 U320 Smart Controller for $400 AUD good value? They've been used for a month. That seems like a pretty good price.

Only problem is the HP 641 controller is PCI X and i dont have that on my motherboard. Im a bit worried about that SCSI controller saturating the PCI bus. Would it be better if i could find a PCI Express controller card. I looked for the Dell branded LSI Megaraid 320-2E but i couldnt find any.

 

[Jojo7]

Originally posted by: INM8
Whats the name for dells OEM model of the LSI Megaraid 320-2E?

Dell Perc4E-DC or sometimes called just Perc4/DC.
Note that any of the Megaraid 320-"Number" series are sometimes called Perc4/DC so be sure it's the one you want before buying.

 

[INM8]

ok, thanks for that. I checked em out on ebay and the dell branded controllers are still about $300 USD

What would you guys reccomend?

1 x 80gb raptor ($150USD)

or

2 x Atlas 15K II 36.7 GB SCSI Ultra320 drives ($180USD)
&
Adaptec AHA-2940UW ($30-35USD)

or

None of those

 

[bob4432]

what i recommend is 1x36GB 15k as os/app drive, and then a lage ata hdd for storage. unless you have pci-e or a 64bit scsi card any more than 1 of these drives will saturate the pci bus, unless you used 1 as a system/app drive and 1 as scratch drive (pretty expensive for a scratch drive) and they could talk to each other on the card, but then you would still need a u320 card.

also, are you getting these drives for ~$180/ea or both?

for a good cheap non-raid card look into the lsiu160 or adapatec 19160,29160 or 39160 (although it seems like more people like the lsi cards), you should be able to pick one up for ~$30.

and scsi is not hard, you just need to tell the bios to boot from a card or scsi and set a couple of jumpers on the hdd. set the main hdd as 0 and the card by default i think is 7. that is pretty much it. get a u320 cable that has a terminator.