- Jan 13, 2001
- 10,886
- 2
- 0
Funny title because these drives WHINE like crazy. Not your typical whine that people complain about with desktop drives. I'm talking IBM Ultrastar Whine! :Q
Story time:
A friend of mine called me yesterday and asked me for help. He wanted to buy a pair of Raptors and run them in RAID0. Rather than talk him out, I was constructive and helped with the project...
It turns out that the Best Buy store in Springfield, VA had these things falling off the shelves... $199 for Retail Raptor with a SIIG SATA-150 controller. Not bad.
Well it gets better because the SATA controller can be flashed with the Silicon Image RAID BIOS and it's instantly a RAID controller. No soldering or wiring required! Splendid.
So I wound up doing all of the technical stuff for him. I also noticed that the card is PCI 3.3 volts and appears to be 33/66 MHz compatible. I said "well all be damned! "Let's get this running at 66!" (PCI-X slot)
After sucessfully flashing the card to make it a RAID card, I mounted the drives and connected everything. Hit the switch and was greeted with a high pitched whine. If this had been at work, I wouldn't have noticed! (as I've played with these drives before and they seemed so quiet--oh well!) It's NOT that BZZZZZZZINNNNG! sound you hear from typcial WDC ball bearing motors. It's much higher, probably a good 14 KHz. Tell you what, it sounds similar to my Tektronix scope here that has a noisy flyback. Like a TV but not in the 15k range. Well maybe but I'm not going to break out the B&K to find out! The damn thing SQUEALS!
My friend doesn't really notice (probably all those KISS, Floyd, Dead, etc. concerts taking their toll!) the noise, so all is well.
I get out the XP CD and load it and am up running in about 11 minutes! Pretty damn quick! Without a doubt, this was the fastest XP load I've ever seen! My SCSI arrays are faster, but when you add the boot delays, etc. the overall time is longer than this was...
Ok, I've run some benchies for those interested!
Here are some results
All I can say is WOW! For $400 (plus 4.5% sales tax) you have a kick ass (or he does) storage system. There is no cheaper way than this. I am impressed and I must say that I don't impress easily at all.
Like always, your mileage may (will) vary. Not everyone is going to see results like this, but they should be very close. When in doubt, ask questions! There is no such thing as a dumb question except the one that you never ask!
-DAK-
Story time:
A friend of mine called me yesterday and asked me for help. He wanted to buy a pair of Raptors and run them in RAID0. Rather than talk him out, I was constructive and helped with the project...
It turns out that the Best Buy store in Springfield, VA had these things falling off the shelves... $199 for Retail Raptor with a SIIG SATA-150 controller. Not bad.
Well it gets better because the SATA controller can be flashed with the Silicon Image RAID BIOS and it's instantly a RAID controller. No soldering or wiring required! Splendid.
So I wound up doing all of the technical stuff for him. I also noticed that the card is PCI 3.3 volts and appears to be 33/66 MHz compatible. I said "well all be damned! "Let's get this running at 66!" (PCI-X slot)
After sucessfully flashing the card to make it a RAID card, I mounted the drives and connected everything. Hit the switch and was greeted with a high pitched whine. If this had been at work, I wouldn't have noticed! (as I've played with these drives before and they seemed so quiet--oh well!) It's NOT that BZZZZZZZINNNNG! sound you hear from typcial WDC ball bearing motors. It's much higher, probably a good 14 KHz. Tell you what, it sounds similar to my Tektronix scope here that has a noisy flyback. Like a TV but not in the 15k range. Well maybe but I'm not going to break out the B&K to find out! The damn thing SQUEALS!
My friend doesn't really notice (probably all those KISS, Floyd, Dead, etc. concerts taking their toll!) the noise, so all is well.
I get out the XP CD and load it and am up running in about 11 minutes! Pretty damn quick! Without a doubt, this was the fastest XP load I've ever seen! My SCSI arrays are faster, but when you add the boot delays, etc. the overall time is longer than this was...
Ok, I've run some benchies for those interested!
Here are some results
All I can say is WOW! For $400 (plus 4.5% sales tax) you have a kick ass (or he does) storage system. There is no cheaper way than this. I am impressed and I must say that I don't impress easily at all.
Like always, your mileage may (will) vary. Not everyone is going to see results like this, but they should be very close. When in doubt, ask questions! There is no such thing as a dumb question except the one that you never ask!
-DAK-