SCSI speed

[Homerboy]

So I find myself with 8 of these:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/scsi/st336704lcv.html
and a nice Adapatec RAID 0/1/5 controller card.

I imagine 2 of these SCSI drives in a nice RAID0 would be snappier and quicker than a new SATA drive but how much quicker? and would it be worth it?

BTW I do have these drives for sale too if anyone wants... just PM me I have a thread in FS/T

 

[Merlin]

Why not get an external enclosure annd run them all in RAID 5? That would be super duper fast and give you a little more safety than a plain raid 0.

 

[alimoalem]

i was gonna say how can 15k be slower than 10k but now i see it's 10k vs 10k. go with the SCSI but it'll be better for server purposes. it'll still compete with SATA

 

[Lord Evermore]

Yeah may as well go all out if you've got the drives for it. Although you might hit the limits of the PCI interface if that's all you're using.

 

[Homerboy]

you know how loud 4x SCSI drives are? I actually have 2 external enclosures that these were in in their previous life. Besides it will be sitting in my den I don't want a super computer whirling away.

I use RAID5 on my storage server in the basement... Im not overly worried about data loss on my workstation. Important folders and files are backed up nightly to a remote site (and to the file server in the basement). Worse thing I could lose on the worstation would be some saved game and lots of settings on apps and such. But thats what disk images are for.

 

[corkyg]

Big differences in speed between SCSI I, SCSI II, and SCSI III.

 

[Sundog]

Originally posted by: Homerboy
you know how loud 4x SCSI drives are?

It completely depends on what model drives one purchases. I have 4 scsi drives running in an open case on my desk 27" from my right ear. I can hear my CPU fan and over the drives.

 

[Homerboy]

I actually have a "4-bays-in-3" enclosure (sitting in a 5 bay external enclosure that I guess I could take out, toss in my server and toy around with... RAID5 over 4x36GB give me nice soeed I assume.

 

[phelan1777]

I have two Ultra 320 146GB, and two 36GB, just can't afford a controller card, I am not sure to sell them, or use them. I am trying to find someone that has a SCSI card that I can borrow just to test teh drives and makre sure they work.

I mean with my Opty, decent RAM, my vid card, and OCing the W$%W$ of the computer I could have a mad little box.

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: phelan1777
I have two Ultra 320 146GB, and two 36GB, just can't afford a controller card, I am not sure to sell them, or use them. I am trying to find someone that has a SCSI card that I can borrow just to test teh drives and makre sure they work.

I mean with my Opty, decent RAM, my vid card, and OCing the W$%W$ of the computer I could have a mad little box.

$.05 if you beat my 2.8Ghz OC on my 3000+ w/ stock cooling

 

[phelan1777]

.05?

WEll if I get a FX60, we would not even be in the same state not to mention track

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

If you have a hardware RAID 5 card, use it. It's a lot more convenient than having to do backups and restoring.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
If you have a hardware RAID 5 card, use it. It's a lot more convenient than having to do backups and restoring.

RAID isn't backup, though. Delete a file off the array, or virus-infect it, or save over it. A real backup solution lets you undo those, and worse too.

~ hey, why's the building's alarm system going off this morning? ...and where are the servers...? Uhhhhh ohhhhh...

 

[Pariah]

I imagine 2 of these SCSI drives in a nice RAID0 would be snappier and quicker than a new SATA drive but how much quicker? and would it be worth it?

No, they won't. They will be considerably slower, even more so if run on an Adaptec RAID controller. Not worth it at all. Sell them for whatever you can get for them.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Homerboy
So I find myself with 8 of these:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/scsi/st336704lcv.html
and a nice Adapatec RAID 0/1/5 controller card.

I imagine 2 of these SCSI drives in a nice RAID0 would be snappier and quicker than a new SATA drive but how much quicker? and would it be worth it?

BTW I do have these drives for sale too if anyone wants... just PM me I have a thread in FS/T

Just one 10K SCSI drive would be faster than most SATA drives. If you are going to do RAID 0 why stop at just 2 drives? Why not use all 8 for a B****in fast raid 0 array?

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: alimoalem
i was gonna say how can 15k be slower than 10k but now i see it's 10k vs 10k. go with the SCSI but it'll be better for server purposes. it'll still compete with SATA

I hate how people assume SATA is fast just because of the interface. Some tests have shown that old ATA133 is faster than SATA in transfer and seek tests. The interface does not necessearly determine drive speed. A 7200 RPM SCSI drive may be slower than a 7200 ATA100 drive!

 

[Googer]

Here is the Storagerevew article for your drives.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200002/20000209ST336704LW.html

 

[Googer]

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200004/20000404ST318233LWV_1.html

 

[Pariah]

Neither of those articles is particularly useful. The first article is a review of the drive, but the drive is so old, that SR's website autogenerates the benchmarks for a newer testbed than the drive was tested on, so what you end up with is no benchmarks at all for the drive. The second link is to the 18LP which is the predecessor to the 36LP and performs differently. The closest useful comparison you can get is by choosing the 36XL which was a slight improvement over the 36LP and the most similar drive that was tested on the just retired testbed III so we can look at it vs a modern ATA drive. Taking into consideration that the 36XL is faster than the 36LP and the comparison drive, the Maxline III, is not the fastest 7200RPM drive around (probably the 3rd), the picture is not pretty:

Maxline III vs Cheetah 36XL

Maxline simply beats the hell out of the 36XL in all four of the desktop benchmarks by an average margin of 67%. You can compare all the stats sheets you want and try to imagine that the slightly faster access time (9.9 ms for a 10k drive is snail slow, and not much faster than today's 7200RPM) will make the 36XL feel snappier. It won't. One drive certainly will feel faster, and it's the ATA drive, because it is significantly faster. You could RAID 0 all 8 of those drives and it wouldn't make any difference at all, it would still get laughed out of the building by today's 7200RPM ATA drives.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: alimoalem
i was gonna say how can 15k be slower than 10k but now i see it's 10k vs 10k. go with the SCSI but it'll be better for server purposes. it'll still compete with SATA

I hate how people assume SATA is fast just because of the interface. Some tests have shown that old ATA133 is faster than SATA in transfer and seek tests. The interface does not necessearly determine drive speed. A 7200 RPM SCSI drive may be slower than a 7200 ATA100 drive!

i'm assuming the OP is a gamer and i'm going based off benchmarks for games. i don't think SATA will ever be better than SCSI but i was just saying that for the OP, it might not be the best economic choice

 

[mechBgon]

StorageReview's benchmarks notwithstanding, my 15k SCSI drive doesn't drop frames where my 8MB NCQ SATA drive does, and it still belts out an Office AIP install in less than half the wall time, too. Maybe no one told the SCSI drive it's supposed to be laughed out of the building, because it isn't payin' attention.

And that's on my ho-hum $35 LSI Logic Ultra160 card, nothing too spectacular there.

 

[Pariah]

What relevance does a 15k drive have to the 7 year old 10k drive in this thread?

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: alimoalem

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: alimoalem
i was gonna say how can 15k be slower than 10k but now i see it's 10k vs 10k. go with the SCSI but it'll be better for server purposes. it'll still compete with SATA

I hate how people assume SATA is fast just because of the interface. Some tests have shown that old ATA133 is faster than SATA in transfer and seek tests. The interface does not necessearly determine drive speed. A 7200 RPM SCSI drive may be slower than a 7200 ATA100 drive!

i'm assuming the OP is a gamer and i'm going based off benchmarks for games. i don't think SATA will ever be better than SCSI but i was just saying that for the OP, it might not be the best economic choice

SCSIO would only be worth it if the opening poster has PCI-X or PCI-express. If he attaches the RAID 0 array to a legacy PCI bus then If I were him I would not even bother with it.
http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/megaraid_320_2e.html

 

[Pariah]

Not sure what is wrong with your SATA drive either. I don't even have an SATA drives, but the PATA drives I have now have never had any performance related issues. They certainly are slower than my 15k drives, but I haven't found anything that the 7200 RPM drives can't do. Dropping frames with a modern HD? What on earth are you watching? 1080P uncompressed video?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
StorageReview's benchmarks notwithstanding, my 15k SCSI drive doesn't drop frames where my 8MB NCQ SATA drive does, and it still belts out an Office AIP install in less than half the wall time, too. Maybe no one told the SCSI drive it's supposed to be laughed out of the building, because it isn't payin' attention.

And that's on my ho-hum $35 LSI Logic Ultra160 card, nothing too spectacular there.

QFT...

op, honestly with 8 drives you are going to max out the pci slot unless you have a 66MHz pci board, which doesn't sound like it. also, those drives are loud due to the fact that they are a little older, being u160.

tha being said, don't stripe them, just use 1 as a sysstem hdd or all in a external enclosure with raid 5 or some combination if your card will allow. sure it will max out the bus but at least you will have redundancy.