Scsi drives - the future?

[cavemanoc]

Was having a chat with one of the other forum members about the merits of Scsi and how much fun they are to play with. I did a couple of HDTach shots for him (Links below) -I compared the following:

1. 15k Cheetah vs Maxtor Sata
2. 2x15k Cheetahs (Raid o) vs Maxtor Sata

The graphical output (Burst and Sequential read speeds) was a little disappointing as always BUT... reading the numbers carefully really highlighted just how good the Cheetahs really are (Bearing in mind that I'm using a Pci-x controller in a standard Pci slot and massively limited by bandwidth)


HDTach Results

The top one is the RAID 0 2xCheetahs vs Maxtor 80Gb Sata

You can see that the access time of the Cheetahs is nearly a third of the Maxtor and the average read speeds is nearly 60% quicker, (I'm not sure why the Burst speed is so poor - but I suspect this is because the PCI slot is being saturated!)

The bottom one is the Single Cheetah vs the Maxtor

Again, The random access time is nearly 3x quicker on the Cheetahs and the read speed is nearly 50% better - just the burst letting it down, but TBH in real world terms that is pretty irrelevant - it's the sustained transfer rates than mean Oblivion loads lightning fast (BF2 really is a joy - *Always* first onto the new map )


Finally - since the PCI bus is real-world limited to about 100Mb/s (Pci-e would be good to beyond 2Gb

)- and you can see both setups maxing it out - just imagine what 5xCheetahs would do on a Pci-e card

- Just too bad they're so expensive - will definitely be scouring ebay over the next couple of years - If I could find one it would end the debate on Raptor vs Cheetah once and for all (just not prepared to pay the $750 odd they go for new )

Anyone know if there's any way to improve the burst speed of the Cheetahs - or am I simply saturating the bus and stuck at that speed until I can get a PCI-e controller?

 

[james32]

i got a pci e express 8x raid card, ill be setting it up in next couple of days
along with 2 maxtor atlas, got the card of ebay $250 drives cost £80 each with 2 year warranty the card retails here for £458

yes your pci burst is well limited their, 2 sata drives in raid 0 will limited that pci bus

and maxtors atlas 15k are well faster than seagates 15k

 

[monkeypants]

It'd be good to see a PCI-E SCSI RAID setup against a Raptor RAID setup. That'd be cool.

 

[cavemanoc]

$250 is an awesome price - what is the spec on that card?

 

[james32]

dell perc4 AKA MegaRAID SCSI 320-2E can take upto 30 scsi drives
dell bought these for there power blade servers but being dell they dont work correctly on intels sytems because of the pcie lanes split = x12 x4 for intel and crossfire chipsets, but on nvida they work great because nvida splits the 16x to x8 and x8 and the 8x is needed for this card to work correctly.

and the card was spanking new came with battery pack + special memory module

battery pack costs about £50
the speical ddr stick costs £190

all was included

 

[ITR]

and maxtors atlas 15k are well faster than seagates 15k

I think not mate.... Maxtor SCSI drives are only any good as door stops. Sorry.

 

[AMDPower]

dell perc4 AKA MegaRAID SCSI 320-2E can take upto 30 scsi drives
dell bought these for there power blade servers but being dell they dont work correctly on intels sytems because of the pcie lanes split = x12 x4 for intel and crossfire chipsets, but on nvida they work great because nvida splits the 16x to x8 and x8 and the 8x is needed for this card to work correctly.

but does it not only work with some motherboards, because with most motherboards if you don't run sli on the pci-16x then the other slot run in pcix1. now some of the dfi have a 4x slot. so it is very restrictive.

SCSI should be an optional future, mobo board makers sure put options of faster pci-x on the boards and let us choose.

why cant motherboard manufacturers make our life easy and just give us 64bit pic-x slot. looking to go scsi but to use the standard pci 33mhz, but still not sure if i can use raid 0 with 2 hd or not, would prefer raid 0 on one Chanel and to use a separate hd for the operating system on another Chanel. not sure yet.

 

[Toytown]

I think not mate.... Maxtor SCSI drives are only any good as door stops. Sorry.

Are you kidding, the Maxtor Atlas II 15k SCSI drives, are possibly the fastest SCSI drives available when used in a server environment. If you don't believe me, then check out storagereview and use the IOMETER FILE SERVER benchmarks, it basically the fastest performing drive they have.

If you believe there not then please post a link to some actual evidence, otherwise it would be pretty much assumed that you have no idea what your talking about, with such statements as above.

 

[TooNice]

I decided to throw a couple of SCSI drive, a Raptor and a fast 7200RPM SATA in the SR comparison tool.

Yea, it is pretty fair to say that the Maxtor Atlas 10k II currently reign supreme in a server environment, although it is also quite interesting to me to see that the Raptor performs quite admirably in the single user environment, even next to those 15k RPM behemoth. And consider that those 15k RPM drive -do- have a spindle advantage, I don't believe that SCSI is going to be the future for anyone but those who are willing to pay a premium to have the fastest machines. If WD, who do not have to worry about their SATA range competing with a SCSI range (since they do not manufacture SCSI drives) eventually move shift to a 15k RPM Raptor, then the gap will further narrow. I am not saying that the Raptor will eventually surpass the fastest SCSI drives, but it makes it very hard for SCSI to become "the future" for most users.

Still if you guys can justify a SCSI drive in a desktop environment (I used to, but I pulled out because I just couldn't justify it anymore), you may want to know that the Seagate Cheetah 15k.5 has been announced. So the Atlast 10k II might have some competition soon

Oh, BTW. The "scouring ebay in a few years time" is -not- an option. By the time you can grab a couple of ebay for cheap, SATA drives would have moved on. My current SATA drives -are- faster the SCSI drives I've retired.

.. and the other thing is.. I wouldn't read too much into HDTach.

 

[james32]

I think not mate.... Maxtor SCSI drives are only any good as door stops. Sorry.

eh mate sorry your thinking about desktop maxtors
server class is a diffrent quality come with 5 year warranties

but does it not only work with some motherboards, because with most motherboards if you don't run sli on the pci-16x then the other slot run in pcix1. now some of the dfi have a 4x slot. so it is very restrictive.

you enable SLI to give x8 + x8 it also works @ x1 or x2 but not recommended
if your using loads of drives as the bandwith would be limited

boards that work are
asus most newer models with latest bios fixes a lot of problems
dfi lanparty ultra d dual DXG
Supermicro H8DCE

 

[cavemanoc]

Well, having had a little sniff around on the net, I was amazed how cheaply (relatively) the Pci-e cards are available. If it weren't for the fact that my second slot is reserved for the Sli setup I'll be installing when the shiny kit from Matrox discussed Here arrives, I'd definitely go for it - if the Gigabyte style boards do become more available with 4x 16x Pci-e in the future then I will definitely look again - in the mean time I'll just carry on snapping up old Cheetahs nice and cheap and find a new case to fit them all in

 

[james32]

watch where you buy from, as a lot of prototypes got fired on ebay
make sure it comes with battery ITBBU01 module and the heatsink is bolted down and is silver

the reason their cheap is because they work for nvida chipsets better than intel or ati, as Nvida offers more bandwith on the pcie lanes.

 

[Swanster]

Hi,
It seems I've got a very similar setup to you - 2x10k rpm scsi drives (in my case fujitsu man3184) in raid 0, and i'm getting pretty much the same result.
HD Tach graph
The graph is comparing these two drives in raid 0 to an 80gb WD pata drive.
And I've noticed the same about the burst speed - pretty low considering the average read.

 

[james32]

Hi,
It seems I've got a very similar setup to you - 2x10k rpm scsi drives (in my case fujitsu man3184) in raid 0, and i'm getting pretty much the same result.
HD Tach graph
The graph is comparing these two drives in raid 0 to an 80gb WD pata drive.
And I've noticed the same about the burst speed - pretty low considering the average read.

what motherboard are you using?
and 1 maxtor 15k rpm is about the same as your raid 0 drives (speed)
2x maxtors in raid 0 should roughly be 170 to 180 average read.

hmm just noticed are you using a pci slot by any chance?

 

[Swanster]

I'm using an old Asus (a7v600-x/via chipset) motherboard, and it's a pci-x card in a normal pci slot, hence the poor performance. However, I got the drives and card off a popular auction site cheaply (<£50), as I wanted a play with scsi and raid. Having said that, it's still a fair bit faster than the pata drive I was using, so can't really complain

 

[james32]

in a pci-x slot it would fly, your not even seeing any benifit running it thru pci slot, ok for 1 single drive but not raid 0

 

[Swanster]

Whilst I appreciate that it would be faster in a pci-x slot, I definitely am seeing some benefit to using two drives.
HD Tach graph #2
The above graph show one of the drives on there own compared to a raid 0 array of two of them; a fair difference I'd say.
It's also a fair bit faster than the pata drive I was using.
If I could afford a decent motherboard that had pci-x (along with either agp or pci-e) I'd probably get it. But I can't. The main reason I got the card+drives was to have a play with scsi stuff cheaply, as I've never used it before.

 

[cavemanoc]

A real shame about the Pci-x, seems like we'll never get them in the 'enthusiast' market, the only ones I could find were AGP, and even pci only - not really designed for the home market. Once the costing on the newer cards comes down though, it should get a lot more interesting. What I wouldn't mind seeing is a couple of scores from a pair of the new 150Gb raptors in a raid 0 - they should have the edge on the bandwidth from the onboard sata connectors - should be close!

 

[Swanster]

The only motherboard I'm aware of that has pci-e and pci-x is the Asus P5WDG2-WS. However at ~£200, it's well out of my price range

 

[james32]

. What I wouldn't mind seeing is a couple of scores from a pair of the new 150Gb raptors in a raid 0 - they should have the edge on the bandwidth from the onboard sata connectors - should be close!

search forum theirs plenty of raptors in raid 0 and theirs 1 person who has a setup here with 4 raptors in raid 0
found the link (bottem of page)
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17513871&page=6&pp=30&highlight=scsi+good

heres scsi with 2 maxtors 15k drives in raid 0
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17541383&highlight=scsi+good