Ultra160 vs. RAID IDE

[zyft02]

My previous systems have always been based on SCSI hard drives and related peripherals. But this time I'm torn between getting an Adaptec Ultra160 with a 18GB - 36GB 10K Ultra160 drive, and purchasing a mobo with the onboard Promise IDE RAID controller along with two WD 100GB 7200RPM IDE drives. My main concern is performance and not storage space. I do some light video recording (converting Hi-8 video to AVI files) but mostly run applications. I would probably be sticking to W2K instead of XP for the time being. Anyone have any benchmarks or links to articles out there?

I've searched the newsgroups and haven't really found anything concrete. I'll probably be purchasing a mobo with an AMD XP 1700+. Thanks.

 

[Adul]

Stick with the SCSI setup, it is still the better choice where performance is a must. IDE is great for storage though

 

[kadajawi]

Get the IDE RAID. You must see that the physical limit of a HDD is the problem. No HDD alone can transfer 160 MB/s. But if you let 2 HDDs (or more, you should get 4 smaller HDDs) you'll get really a lot MB/s transfered. I think Tomshardware has a pretty good article about IDE-RAID. About SCSI/Ultra160... well, when it comes to seeking times, yep, SCSI might still be the winner. Or to how much drives you can connect. Or how much CPU load the data transfer creates or if the files can be transfered parallel. But for normal application (to which I would count vid editing). Hey, and anyway, 36 GB is not enough HDD space, esp. if you capture videos. I got 26 GB and have a lot of trouble, only can capture 25 mins at once (with 352x288). Btw. the HDD speed is not so important, more the size. My captures are usually making 2 to 3 MB/s, which about every HDD on the market should be able to do. But you can see that there is a space problem after a while... esp. if you cap at higher resolutions.

 

[zyft02]

I was planning on using the Ultra160 drive as my primary drive (OS, applications) and later on getting a couple of 100MB WD's and putting them on the RAID controller. (for storage)

 

[CHHASmatroxuser]

That sounds like the way to go, a nice SCSI drive for the OS and IDE for storage.

 

[guzik]

<< My previous systems have always been based on SCSI hard drives and related peripherals >>




<< I do some light video recording (converting Hi-8 video to AVI files) but mostly run applications >>


As I understand you already have SCSI burner (CD/DVD?). Using SCSI subsystem for video convertion and burning will save you quite some time and trouble, allowing to do whatever you like else at the same time. You don't have to go for fastest available (15k) but make sure you have enough space. If you put two 18G instead of one 36G and stripe-em you'll get significant performance gain. (make sure you backup regurarly your RAID0 arrays regardless of interface!). Make sure you have adequate airflow or install additional cooling as these 10k or 15k drives can run pretty hot. If your video editing or CD burning is just marginal part of your computer use you'll be happy with Promise/IDE solution and have some cash left in your wallet. About MP3. If you can run your MP3 encoding aplication in multiple threads or applications (you'd encode several mp3s at once), then SCSI is the one for you.