What do you need for a SCSI setup?

Mikey1280 · 28 Jan 2006 at 21:32

My mate wants to get a SCSI setup, will it be much faster than his sata 150 maxtor? What does he actually need, I assume just a SCSI HD (is 80 pin better than 68?) , cables (do you need terminators) and a SCSI controller. I saw that these 15k hard drives can run at 320mb/s, how is this possible if PCI bus is restricted to 133mb/s? Will it be worth the upgrade? If he buys a drive second hand will he be able to get the drivers from the manufacturers website?

basmic · 28 Jan 2006 at 21:41

I believe the 64-bit PCI slots (non standard on standard motherbards), which allow 66MHz bus speeds - which I would assume allows speeds in the region of 266mb/sec.

Understand that it is rare for even a single SCSI drive to be able to reach speeds of 100mb/sec, let alone 266mb/sec. This is where RAID comes into play. :cool:

I made the mistake of plunging into buying an old SCSI card, without realising the costs for a drive and the rarity and speeds of the 50 pin drives. :eek:

I might just get a few old couple-gig drives for the SCSI card, and toy around.

Mikey1280 · 28 Jan 2006 at 21:51

Have you got a 50 pin drive? Is the latest 80pin, is this what my mate should buy? So it will not be a problem running on a standard PCI slot then, thanks.

AndyC · 29 Jan 2006 at 10:52

I'd go for 68pin to avoid any issues with adaptors, although these are a tad harder to find as most are 80pin for server hot swap.

You also have different speeds such as ultra, u160 and u320 - the same with cards and cables which are overlooked.

I went for a 10k 73GB u320 drive and a cheapish u160 card but I have an issue that the max rate is stuck at 40MB/Sec for some reason - I also use a 68 to 80 pin adaptor.

I was using a 120GB IDE Maxtor before and its almost 1/2 the access times and games such as HL2 the stuttering stopped, can really tell the increase even though mines not working 100% even windows feels faster.

I guess its the drive thats makes the biggest difference.

Sure some of the other members who know a lot more than me can help you out more.

My setup cost in total about £180 2nd hand

but to me it was well worth it.

Andy

Jeff Crawly · 29 Jan 2006 at 12:55

Ultra 320 Adaptec 39320 SCSI card
Maxtor Atlas II 15k SCSI (68p)
IBM/Hitachi 15k SCSI (68p)

Got the above running on my server/downloader, I can extract a 4.36Gb DVD in 58 seconds :eek:

Mikey1280 · 29 Jan 2006 at 13:00

Thanks guys, I think I'll tell my friend to go 68pin then and to look for a 15k drive or does it matter whether its 15 or 10k? What is the average transfer rate of your Maxtor Atlas Jeff?

smids · 29 Jan 2006 at 13:24

Jeff Crawly said:
Ultra 320 Adaptec 39320 SCSI card
Maxtor Atlas II 15k SCSI (68p)
IBM/Hitachi 15k SCSI (68p)

Got the above running on my server/downloader, I can extract a 4.36Gb DVD in 58 seconds

Could you do an HDTach for that please? - I'm getting more and more interesting in SCSI.

Mikey1280 · 29 Jan 2006 at 13:39

I thought SCSI was too expensive smids

! I would be interested to see the HDtach times as well.

smids · 29 Jan 2006 at 13:43

Mikey1280 said:
I thought SCSI was too expensive smids ! I would be interested to see the HDtach times as well.

Shush you

!!! I'm just generally interested as I spotted some real bargains recently + I don't have to keep the 150

.

Mikey1280 · 29 Jan 2006 at 13:50

Lol, I saw quite a few SCSI drives 2nd hand for good prices as well, how long have you had your raptor, is it being abandoned already?

smids · 29 Jan 2006 at 13:55

Mikey1280 said:
Lol, I saw quite a few SCSI drives 2nd hand for good prices as well, how long have you had your raptor, is it being abandoned already?

No, no. I've had it about 2 weeks

! I've just been looking around. I'm currently waiting for PCI-E scsi controller cards though, so I've got a wait as I have no PCI slots free.

Mikey1280 · 29 Jan 2006 at 14:01

That could be a long wait for a PCI e scsi controller, although I did see some pci e x8 scsi controllers but they were very expensive. Its annoying on these new motherboards that they are replacing the good old PCI slot with PCI e x1 which have no use so far. I have three useless Pci e x1 slots, hopefully they will bring out something for them soon. Anyway, Jeff where's the HDtach times?

Jeff Crawly · 29 Jan 2006 at 14:04

SCSI is not expensive if you shop about!!

I bought my Adaptec U320 (Dual Channel) card brand new off 'the big auction site' for £75 (retails for £250+ :eek:

)
Then the Maxtor Atlas II was another bargain off ebay for £90

Here are my HDTach results for both drives. (neither drive has been de-fragged and are pretty full up with files if that makes any difference?!?)

smids · 29 Jan 2006 at 14:04

I actually have a PCI-e x1 SATA RAID controller (SiI 3132 controller) 2 port card. Excellent value for money (cost me £17 and was great as I had run out of SATA ports). Bear in mind PCI has a shared 133MB/s bus whereas a mere PCI-e x1 slot has 250MB/s dedicated in each direction (500MB/s effective).

Nice score Jeff - however remove the word 'online market place' as you are not allowed to mention competitors to OcUK on these forums

.

Mikey1280 · 29 Jan 2006 at 14:08

Looks very nice Jeff, dont quote competitors though! Smids, has your Pci e x1 controller speeded up access times and transfer rates signifcantly when compared to the Nforce 4 ports?

smids · 29 Jan 2006 at 14:09

Access time is the same, transfer rate is improved by 3-4MB/s.

Mikey1280 · 31 Jan 2006 at 17:05

Anyone know if you need drivers for a SCSI card as my friend bought one 2nd hand without drivers or will windows auto-detect it?

Jeff Crawly · 1 Feb 2006 at 00:13

Mikey1280 said:
Anyone know if you need drivers for a SCSI card as my friend bought one 2nd hand without drivers or will windows auto-detect it?

Depends how old/well known the SCSI card is! My Adaptec U320 card had drivers in Windows+Sp1 but obviously for best performance I updated with the Latest drivers from Adaptec's homepage.

Can he not get the latest drivers from the SCSI card manufactures website?

Mikey1280 · 1 Feb 2006 at 08:12

Thanks Jeff, I'll tell him to try and get the drivers from the website.

Jeff Crawly · 1 Feb 2006 at 12:24

Also if he is intending to install XP on the SCSI HD (as he should) then he will need to slipstream the SCSI adapter drivers into his XP disc otherwise the SCSI HD will not be detected during XP install.

The best and simplest way to do this is to use the wonderful nLite. (see link below)

http://www.nliteos.com/