SCSI??? A little advice?

[Madwelsh]

Hi there, looking at being a little silly with a chunk of cash I've just been given.. I've only ever had ide, and now sata drives, I have 2 raptors in raid 0 at the minute.. However, I've always fancied the idea of toying with SCSI.. are they really that much better? as in to justify how much they cost? If I went this route, it'd probably be with a 70 gig drive, just for gaming really!!! I'm trying to put together a stupidly powerful computer, a vapochilled conroe 6700, 2 gig of gskill hz, x1900xtx (i only have a 19" monitor so more than adequate) but I have the money to have a scsi system too.

Am I right in thinking I need a controller card and drive yeah? I was looking at this card

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/SCSI_Cards.html

Adaptec 39320 Ultra-320 64-bit SCSI - OEM (CC-021-AD)


and this drive?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/SCSI_Drives.html

Fujitsu 73.5GB MAX3073NC 15,000RPM SCSI 8MB Cache (U320-SC2 80 Pin) - OEM (HD-011-FS)

How do you go about installing windows etc? Or is it best to install windows on a sata drive, then just use the scsi for games?

As you can see, I'm a complete noob, so I'm hoping someone here can explain a little, maybe mentioning the bonuses and the pitfalls..

Cheers in advance

Edit: I just have been reading some of the threads on here about scsi (hail 'search'!) Seems that until pci-e adaptors come out, and become reasonable in price, seems a tad silly to be using pci-x in a normal pci slot.. Cavemanoc seems to have got a pci-e adaptor.. any chance you can tell us who makes it and where you got it? Also does it work on all boards with pci-e? or just ones able to give x8 and x8?

TY again.

 

[Madwelsh]

Just do it!

Plenty of old threads on this kicking about (started many myself!) - you can now get the Dell version of the MSI Pci-e scsi (8x ) interface for about £100 off fleabay. That combined with a few 15k scsi's will knock socks off anything else out there. Personally I'd go for one Array of small drives for Windows and A larger array for your games drive (that's what I'm doing - 2*18Gb cheetahs + 2*75Gb's = much bling)

As far as speed is concerned - lets just say I'm always first onto new BF2 maps and I love stealing the jets (And there are no loading screens in Oblivion!)

Add that to the fact that installation under xp64 is painless and I think it's a winner - not cheap, but then the rig you're talking about isn't about leaning the budget!

can you give me the part number for the one you got cave? Does it have this battery pack and mem module too? Cheers bud

 

[Madwelsh]

ok.. here's what I'm going for:

Dell Perc4e/DC LSI MegaRaid 320-2e 256M TD977 PCI-e

is this any good?

what else do I need? I'm looking for about 30-40 gigs for windows and games, then a normal sata of 200-300 gig for files etc. I personally tend to only have two or maybe 3 games installed at any one time.

Are atlas maxtor drives the db's? Or will a couple of cheetahs do the job?

TY folks

 

[Madwelsh]

ok so I bought the megaraid controller, even with P+P was just under a 100. Just pray it comes from usa ok. Now waiting for that to arrive before buying any drives!!! On the subject of drives, ultra320 15k are ok? Do you have to have them the same size/make for raid0? Also if the drive is in a hot swop 'caddy', can you just take it out of the caddie so it'll fit normal 3.5" slot?

Also, what is best number of drives for peak performance? Say i could buy 2 drives = 150gig, or 4 drives = 150 gig, what should I go with? Also what modes can I setup etc? Sorry for being a complete noob, but I've had a little look on google but for setting up scsi systems, you seem to get loads of pages on the history of scsi, but sod all on the actual setting them up!!! If anyone knows some good sites where i can do a little research, I'd be most appreciative.

TY in advance

 

[Madwelsh]

oh, and btw, when can you pm members on this forum? Is it after 200 posts? Same as the members market? I hate spam, but I'm thinking that if you have belonged to the forum over 12 months, you should be able to use all the forum functions no? I'd like to get in touch with cave, so if you read this mate, I've a feeling I'll be needing your experience and skills

 

[Madwelsh]

The number of drives you can place on a channel is covered on the Dell site (and 15 rings a bell - but there are limitations on the combinations you can have)

The real problem is bandwidth - Still learning on that one - theoretically you get much better bandwidth with the Pci-e card which should mean it can cope with more drives without saturating the bus. I'll let you know if I ever get mine up and running

I find the biggest problem is space - these drives run pretty hot and I like to leave a gap between each drive which means that even in my Full Tower I'm rapidly running out of space with 3 scsi's 1*Sata and 2 DVD drives. Seriously tempted to build and enclosure and use the external cables, but we'll see - first I need to migrate from my Pci-x to the shiny new Pci-e.

Sounds like this is going to be a learning curve for both of us so feel free to fire away with your queries - I get the feeling I'm on;y about 1/2 a problem ahead of you anyway!

first question is did you get yours from the popular auction site? Secondly was it from lickwid8er? If you did, I guess mine will be the same lol.. I'm thinking that these actually will deal with 512 meg, let me know how you get on searching for the ram.. in fact if anyone knows where the ram and battery can be bought.. let us know..

I took a quick look at the dell support link lmao.. even after a few beers, (or maybe because?) it looked like gobbledy-gook.. should be fun trying to get this to work eh? I'm just off to pray you figure it out before mine arrives.. G luck

 

[Madwelsh]

Further to my last - I fired off an email to LSI with a couple of questions about the RAM and the iTBBU battery module and, impressively, they got back to me with this:



Unfortunately I don't quite get what he's trying to say - I asked whether it has to be ECC and pc2700 - so I guess we can use pc3200 (as expected) but it may still have to be ECC

I have no idea what the relevance of the 'Data in the Cache' - perhaps someone who actually understands Scsi architecture could help out on this one - does that mean that in the event of a catastrophic power failure, the data being 'processed' would be lost without a Battery Backup? But the Array itself would still be intact - that's my reading of it - would be silly to lose the whole array?

excellent digging sir!! I knew I'd be able to rely on you!!!! From what lsi have said to you, the battery simply saves what is in the cache.. so say you were transferring some files when the power cuts out, the battery will hold that info for up to 72 hrs, when power is restored, the files being kept in the cache are written to a disk. It looks like if that all the battery is used for, we're laughing. Coming to think about it, raid controllers have their own bios, if that's like mboard bios, it'll need a battery to maintain the settings Damn, this maybe a little more complicated than i thought!!!

On the subject of memory, if my controller doesn't come with the ram, then I'd be interested in going halves

 

[Madwelsh]

Having had a liitle look at the board I think the bios has it's own little battery anyway so the iTBBU is only for the Cache, NOT for the Bios - the Battery really is just a nicity from mission critical server ops that can't afford to lose data <- Not me then The memory on it's own will be more than sufficient - unfortunately it will not function without the memory - so pray yours has it - should be in the description on fleabay - it's a standard part so if it's removed it should say so! (Only the Battery is optional!)

on the bay currently is some ibm branded ecc 2x256meg ram modules.. are you garyb**** ? if so I don't want to outbid you lol..

Cheers