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Scsi Gods Hear My Cry..............

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2003 8:43 pm
by DaMaN
I wanted to get a 15K smallish scsi HD for my main drive (OS and Apps) and don't know what card and drive i should get. I know nothing about scsi so i need some advice.
i want speed as i usually keep my stuff in storage IDE drives.

15K drives are expensive

9GB 10K can be had cheap(~20.00 on the forums).


Should i build an array?



If so what flavor RAID?


DocSilly i heard you are the man on this stuff......=)

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2003 8:56 pm
by TheSovereign
get yourself a nice barracutie
they rock

Seagate - Hard Disk Drives
Info...

ONLINE ORDER ONLY -
ST318438LW SEAGATE BARRACUDA 18.4GB 15000RPM ULTRA-160 WIDE SCSI 68PIN 1 INCH LOW PROFILE
(Part - -ST318438LW)
Price: $ 159
MinOrder: 1

Ship 1 : FREE GROUND- WEB ORDERS ONLY
Updated:6/27, 3:34 PM
$159.00 Great Minds
Info...

800-595-8288
909-479-0431


CA

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2003 11:17 pm
by DaMaN
got a scsi card suggestion?

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2003 11:29 pm
by TheSovereign
anything adaptec is good
symbios is good too
other just suck

a quick point scsi drives of today REQUIRE* cooling buy a hdd cooler

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2003 6:42 am
by DocSilly
You want to see the true SCSI speed everyone talks about?
Then you don't want to get and old slowpoke 9GB 10K drive for 20 bucks. Those are likely around 5 years old, I just retired one of those myself.

You also don't want a ST318438LW BARRACUDA cause those are only 7.200rpm drives. That Barracuda 36ES2 is SLOW and all newer IDE drives will beat it.

OK, so lets see, we want something with real performace, we want speed, that only leaves us with the 15K rpm SCSI screamers. Add about 40-80 bucks and you can get the latest generation 15K 18GB SCSI screamer:
- Seagate Cheetah 15K.3
- Maxtor Atlas 15K
- Fujitsu MAS3184
All above mentioned drives have about the same performance ... or when you want them somewhat cheaper go with an earlier generation 15K drive:
- Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP (2nd gen)
- Seagate Cheetah X15 (1st gen)
Just make sure you get a drive with SCSI Wide 68 interface, not one with SCA 80 pin. SCA drives have a single 80pin connector for hotswapping and you would need an extra 68-80 adapter.

You can live with an U2W SCSI controller when it's only a single HDD. U2W SCSI has a max bandwidth of 80MB/s and those SCSI drives scratch at that limit.
- Tekram DC-390U2W (retailbox comes with all the cables etc.)
but those are older and might even be more expensive than U160 cards, you can also check the newer:
- Tekram DC-390U3W (U160 card, I have that one in my PC)

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2003 6:57 am
by EvilHorace
I too own 2 Seagate Cheetah X15-36LPs (2nd gen and 1rst gen, #2 HDD) with the Tekram card and it's worth the extra $$$ and hassle IMHO too. Using that HDD made more of a noticeable performance difference than increasing cpu speed.