SCSI Hard Drive recommendations?

[SimonTemplar]

Hi all,

I just built a new system: Abit IS7-E, (no onboard raid), P4 2.4C, 512 Mushkin Black. I had onboard raid on my old abit KG-7 and it worked great in 0. I would like to get the best performance out of my system (alot of video editing and such) and want to get scsi drives and a controller card. I've been looking at a highpoint scsi ultra 320 controller card supporting raid 0 and 0+1. Also 2 - 37 gig hitachi 320 drives. They are 10000 rpm and 3.6 seek time. Currently I have 2 IBM 40 gigs just on regular IDE controllers. I have no experience whatsoever with these drives or controllers so I was looking for a little help. Should I get the 15000 rpm drives, or is that just overkill? LMK. Thanx!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Xaotic]

Start with the mainboard, using a controller faster than a U160 is going to be of little use. That board has a PCI 2.0 32bit 33Mhz bus and maximum theoretical data transfer through the bus is 133MB/s. You can use a U320 controller, but it's high end capabilities will be wasted. Save some money and get a U160 controller. U320 drives will run on it fine on a U160 controller. If you are running on a single channel controller, there will be some latency in the bus due to writes to multiple drives. Additionally, RAID-0 configurations tend to have slightly slower seeks(how much depends on controller, amount of cache, controller processor speed, etc). I haven't run into a Highpoint SCSI RAID controller yet, but their IDE implementations are driver or software implemented RAIDs, rather than true hardware RAIDs. So consider that there might be some processor loading with their controller. Reliability, is another question and how safe does your data need to be? Which model of controller is it and further information will be available.

The drives you are looking at are most likely IBM designed(HGST just bought IBM's STD storage division) and will likely be stable performers on the lower end of the performance curve.

If you are planning on using the array for things like video editing(OS on another drive), the array will perform well with high sustained transfer rates. If you wanted redundancy, then RAID-1 would be a good option. If you'd be using it for a RAID-0 OS installation, I'd recommend saving a lot of money and going with a single or dual channel U160 controller and a 15K RPM drive for the OS and using large IDE drives for storage. I would probably go ahead and get the U320 drives, cables and terminators, in case you go to a workstation motherboard that will support faster controllers.

[SimonTemplar]

Much Thanx. Basically I just want to be able to manipulate large mpeg files and play games with this machine. Lets see if I have this right. I should just get a ultra 160 card and 2 160 hd's? Which card would you recommend for raid 0 only. These 7200 rpm single ide ibm's are slow as crap compared to when they where running in raid 0 with the onboard raid kg7. I am looking for pure speed. Which card, drives, and rpm's would you recommend? Thanx!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mate88]

Simply,

Get the 18.4 GB Seagate 15k RPM! They only exist in SCSI though.
They should be fast though but probably they are too small enough for you. But i would give it a shot. Visit this link:
15 k Seagate

Regards

[Xaotic]

You have several options with this board and going pure SCSI will be very expensive. Have you considered a WD Raptor on the Serial ATA interface, using an IDE RAID card with the 40s for working files and using a large IDE for stroage and backup. The Raptor will give you a responsive OS, the array gets high STRs and you have conventional IDE for backup and storage. Unless your pockets have money falling out of them or already have the SCSI drives, I'd go with the above route. Once the RAID(in either form) gets fired up there will likely be contention on the PCI bus and using the SATA interface will help. If I remember correctly, it has a separated bus. Hope this helps, or at least gives you something else to consider.

[sm8000]

Go to www.hypermicro.com and get an IBM 18GB or 36GB Ultrastar "Piranha" drive (Z-15). When you order, put SR-Z15 in the comments and you'll get a free LSI Logic U160 controller card. All you need to buy then is a cable and terminator. You won't spend more than $230ish, tops.

EDIT: Looks like some prices have gone up a bit, but still some great deals to be had.

[zepper]

I second sm8000 if you want SCSI. HyperMicro just got in a bunch of Quantum 10k2 U-160 drives that you could combine with that LSI host adapter for a reasonably fast setup at low bucks.
. Otherwise, you might consider a Silicon Image based ATA133 RAID card (see the Syba unit at dealsonic - $20. shipped). And have the same setup you had before.
.bh.

[sm8000]

"HyperMicro just got in a bunch of Quantum 10k2 U-160 drives that you could combine with that LSI host adapter for a reasonably fast setup at low bucks."

Ah, but to get the card free you have to at least get one of the IBM drives.