SCSI vs SATA ?

ITR

ITR

ITR

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Hello people, thought it was about time i signed up here after nearly a year of lurking about :)


Anyways, a couple of questions regarding SCSI vs SATA. First off I was thinking about buying a couple of WD Raptor 150's and running them in RAID 0, but then started looking around at the new (ish) SCSI Ultra320 15k stuff..

I used to run a SCSI setup years ago when Ultra wide first came about, but then IDE stuff started getting bigger, cheaper and faster.. so i ditched it and switched to IDE. Anyways, im starting to ramble on here a bit, so i'll get to my questions :-

1. How much real difference would there be between 2x RAID 0 Raptor 150's and 2x 36GB Seagate Cheetah's in RAID 0

2. The Adaptec SCSI controller card is a PCIx card that fits into a x16 slot. Will this affect the graphics card in the other slot ? Will i have to set the bandwidth down to x8 for each slot ? :confused:


Cheers in advance,

Rich.
 
Really it's not that much faster, unless you want 5 seconds faster loading in to games etc. Be prepared for an insane amount of both noise and heat. I'd just go for a high performance high capacity single drive like a Deskstar.
 
I'm running a couple of Cheetah 15K's in a raid 0 as my games drive (18Gb each) and a single Cheetah as my windows drive. Only notice the noise when I defrag (and that is pretty impressive when I set them all off at the same time :D )

My load times for Oblivion are tiny, and I noticed I was always first in on BF2 maps (used to laugh at my mates down the Ventrillo server as it would take them considerably longer to begin each new one!)

Realistically they're probably not worth the added faf/expense, but I wouldn't change mine for the world! There's something quite satisfying about knowing that I had to learn about them before I could even get them up and running, and that they leave everything else out there standing!

Mine are only running off an old Pci-x (don't ask) card so not true U320, lord only knows what the new Pci-e controllers will be able to achieve!

Considering how 'cheaply' you can get into 15K ownership, I'd definitely give it a go!
 
Depends what your doing

Browsing the web - no difference

Playing games - provided you've got plenty of ram and a fast cpu\graphics already, then sounds like a good idea.

Never had experience with anything SCSI but do mess about with raid0

It will obviously make things load a fair bit quicker - prolly a similar jump in performance as from going from a Deskstar in RAID0 to a Raptor in RAID0.

Its very unlikely your going to find someone here who knows what their on about...no offense but there's a fair amount of misinformation on RAID0 and most peeps don't even believe that it offers a benefit.
 
Just took a look at some scsi hard drive prices there £449 for a 146Gb drive!!! :eek: Ive seen a hitachi scsi with a seek time of 3.3 ms man thats fast!!! :D To be honest though at those prices id just go for a raptor
 
ITR said:
2. The Adaptec SCSI controller card is a PCIx card that fits into a x16 slot. Will this affect the graphics card in the other slot ? Will i have to set the bandwidth down to x8 for each slot ? :confused:
Click to expand...
Yes, I think there is some info in the manual about how to set the jumper blocks to get two 8x lanes

I don't think it will hurt the performance of the videocard much but have no evidence supporting this.
 
ITR said:
Hello people, thought it was about time i signed up here after nearly a year of lurking about :)


Anyways, a couple of questions regarding SCSI vs SATA. First off I was thinking about buying a couple of WD Raptor 150's and running them in RAID 0, but then started looking around at the new (ish) SCSI Ultra320 15k stuff..

I used to run a SCSI setup years ago when Ultra wide first came about, but then IDE stuff started getting bigger, cheaper and faster.. so i ditched it and switched to IDE. Anyways, im starting to ramble on here a bit, so i'll get to my questions :-

1. How much real difference would there be between 2x RAID 0 Raptor 150's and 2x 36GB Seagate Cheetah's in RAID 0

2. The Adaptec SCSI controller card is a PCIx card that fits into a x16 slot. Will this affect the graphics card in the other slot ? Will i have to set the bandwidth down to x8 for each slot ? :confused:


Cheers in advance,

Rich.
Click to expand...

Main differences between SATA and SCSI is that SCSI is more expensive, higher MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure), longer warranty and has a much lower seek time than SATA.

1) Seagates will probably be slightly faster but whether you'd notice it is another matter. But they'd probably be a bit louder. Seagates will have the faster access time (but not as significant as single SCSI/SATA drives).

2) PCIx != PCI-E . PCI-X is the server PCI slots (quite long, could be mistaken for ISA slots if you remember them). PCI-X have greater bandwidth available to them (PCI is limited to ~130MB/Sec where as PCI-X is 500MB/sec plus). Most PCI-X cards can fit in PCI slots but run at reduced speed (but not all cards do so check). More importantly, you can't run PCI-X cards in a PCI-E slot. You can get PCI-E SCSI cards but they do cost a fair bit (~£400 at the cheapest).
 
HD Tach clocks my HD's at 98MB/s. Their Maxtor Atlas 15K U320 36Gb. I raided SCSI but didn't notice enough speed increase to warrant the potential failure of Raid 0,1,5,JBOD.
Comparing them against my SATA2's or IDE is a joke. The only component in my rig with fast access time is a 133x Compact Flash 2Gb card.

I see the Adaptec 39320 Ultra-320 64-bit SCSI - OEM (CC-021-AD) is on offer at £58. If you have a pci-x, plus £150 for 1 SCSI drive, then go for it.
 
Dunky said:
Main differences between SATA and SCSI is that SCSI is more expensive, higher MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure), longer warranty and has a much lower seek time than SATA.
Click to expand...
SCSI drives also have much better logic than anything else, which is really handy in server settings where you have multiple users.

I'd go for Raptors for a desktop because the 150s really are very good - it's only in the multiuser area that SCSI becomes worthwhile imho :)
 
My PC is pretty old now and I am using dual AMD Athlon MP 2400+ with 2.5 GB of memory on a MSI K7D-L Master Dual AMD MP motherboard.

My SCSI card is a Adaptec 39320A-R and I have 3x Fujitsu MAS3735NP 73.5 GB, Ultra 320, 15,000 RPM 3.3 ms drives.

I don't use raid and have them set as 3 seperate drives. The drives score around 150 - 160 MB/s in HD Tach.

I have my SCSI card in a 64 bit PCI slot so I guessing that the performance will be a lot better with PCI-X.

The drives don't seem any louder than a standard drive except I can hear them a bit when copying large files or when using defrag.

Edit: The 150 - 160 MB/s is burst speed. 75 MB/s is the the average read.
 
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maxtor1hv.png


U320 15k SCSI rocks! :D
 
Hi xtreme.BIN,

What SCSI card are you using and what type of slot are you using it in?

My motherboard is around 5 years old so I'm guessing mine is limited because I don't have a PCI-X slot and am using a 64 bit PCI slot.

I think the age and spec of my system is holding the speed back.
 
Mikey1280 said:
If the system is 5 yrs old I wouldnt really bothe get scsi, the graphics card and cpu will probably be holding you back not the hard drive.
Click to expand...

I already have all the SCSI installed in this system. It's a dual AMD MP2400+ CPU workstation which came with an Ultra 160 card which was changed for a Ultra 320. I also had a good deal on 3 Ultra 320 drives.

I'm using them in this system at the moment as they are still fast even though they are in a standard 64 bit PCI slot. I hope to transfer them into a newer system with PCI-X in the future.

I'm just wondering if 150 - 160 MB/s burst speed and 75 MB/s average read is the best I will get from the limited bandwidth of a 64 bit PCI slot.
 
IIRC the max bandwidth of a 64-bit PCI-X slot at 66mhz is 500MB/sec (plus overheads). Also the fastest PCI-X slot (quad pump 133mhz to 533mhz) has a theoretical max bandwidth of 4.3GB/sec so bandwidth should be a problem unless you have lots of SCSI drives.
 
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