Gotcha...

I'm clear on the AN-29160. I'll pick the one I can find cheaper, but I'll keep in mind that you recommended the 29160N.

I agree with the HDDs: Fujitsu sucks!!! Since I've always liked Seagate, I'll try to lean towards those. MAxtor probably isn't too bad either, but seeing some results on their 740DX line (ATA), where they turn out to be the most CPU intensive, I'd rather stick with Seagate.

While on the topic of CPU utilization... isn't it true that a SCSI controller will take a load off of the CPU, compared to ATA?

Also, nuclear pointed out that Seagate may offer their SATA drives with a 3 year warranty. Even if that's true, I wouldn't be able to run then in raid 0/1. I don't believe that most mobo manufacturers offer BOTH raid 0 and RAID 1 at the same time. Am I wrong?

Thanks for the cable tip!

Beware, ATA and SCSI lines are completely different, even from the same manufacturer.
Maxtor SCSI line was bought from the then-dead Quantum. So Maxtor drives are dubbed 'Atlas' and the 10K unit is as good as the Seagate one. There are so few differences between the 2 that the choice would be on price only...
For 15K units Seagate is the king, by far. Things may change though, Maxtor announced a new 15K Atlas...

As for CPU load: Wrong, its kinda the opposite.
With SCSI the controller takes the load. Adaptec controllers usually keep your CPU below the 3% bar.
With ATA the mobo chipset takes the load. The problem comes from IDE - a device claims the bus for itself during a transfer, thus blocking the chipset. In use one feels the UI is kinda "freezing" during ATA transfers, thats because all other chipset-related operations (FSB transfers, peripherals I/O..) are down to a halt.

ah the cable: if you happen to buy a nude card (ie "bulk" or "OEM") try to get a rounded cable at Plycon. They are neat.

BB2K
Highpoint already make a 4 sata channel card, the rocketraid 1540
It comes with 4 sata cable and 4 rockethead (sata to ata-100)

DOH
For the drive, seagate have changed the page and they are now back to 1 year.......
sorry for the misconception
seagate info on ssata drives
But they would have been better than the solution from maxtor or WD because they are native sata and not ata-100 converted to sata. If you read the review on lostcircuit (don't have the link for it on hand), they did great.
And also, they do not quote anymore the service life. So it seems they have reduced their waranty on every drive they make (IDE)

By the way GMAT, i know you were joking, as i was too, because in most sig, most have IDE drives :p
Also GMAT, if you use an external card, not the chipset (like a promise card, which is a software raid card) it doesn't use that much cpu, but it might be because i use quantum hd.

CPU load: well, that's what I meant:D

3%, that's good, that's what I'm looking for, thanks!

So much for the 3 year on SATA...

Ok, so can the Highpoint do raid 0/1? (Raid 0 and Raid 1 at the same time?)

[edit]
yes it can!
[/edit]

Yes BB2k
highpoint website
It seems to be a good solution. You can hook up 4 HD to it, each having their own channel.
Sorry for bringing the bad news about the drive, it seems they reduced it on october 1st, and the last time i checked before was like the 25th.

/edit
Seems like when I was writting this post, BB2K did an edit on his post
/edit

Sorry...

Well, given the load off the chipset, I think I'll still shoot for the 29160/N, and Seagate or Maxtor 160 HDD.

Controller: $189

HDD

Capacity: 9 or 18GB
Interface: ultra160
rot. speed: 7.2krpm, 10krpm, 15krpm. (15krpm quieter, as per gmat!)
Manuf: Seagate, Maxtor and IBM.

I'll look it all up in PriceWatch, and post later.

Ahaha :) It's 22:10 and i did not make the dinner yet.. GRRrrrRr i spent my evening on Pro/Forums. I stop tomorrow. Yes. Thats what i'm gonna do.

nuclear: 4 drives, ouchhhh... wait, wait, you've not tested a F-16 turbine to blow air on your rad yet :D hehe

BB2K: keep in mind that those 70MB/s transfer sessions (on huge files) will put a certain load on your *whole* system, regardless of the interface... And that depends mainly on the OS. An unix will handle that nicely (through pre-emptive multitask... nice your cp or mv commands to +5 or +10)... Windows is another story :p
(edit) 9GB drives dont exist anymore. The min is 18GB, and even those are phased out right now. Look at storagereview.com to know about latest news. And stay clear of IBM !!!

Go eat man! (Va manger!)

Ok, I'll stick to:
Capacity: 18GB
Interface: ultra160
rot. speed: 10krpm, 15krpm
Manuf: Seagate, Maxtor

Will report when I have time. Tmo?

GMAT
It's nothing compared to my 3 seagate 9.1g full height scsi hard drive :P
It can hear it even when i'm at the other side of my appartement when they start, kinda funny :P
but my 3 20g quantum 7200rpm make almost no noise.

whoa. With all that noise, one day you'll go nuts and you'll cut ppl down to pieces with a chainsaw or bomb your neighbourhood. Or you'll become deaf. Are you a Motorhead fan ? :p

BB2K: *burps* ah feels better. So you're up to 3 candidates right now, since Atlas 15K isnt showing up yet:
- Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (in stores this month)
- Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 (in stores next month, IIRC)
- Maxtor Atlas 10K IV (if it's out, i heard it was ready) or else 10K III.

If you're not going to buy it immediately, maybe the Atlas 15K will show up. Could be a serious contender.
Any other drive will be outdated, too noisy, too hot, too slow, or a combo of these options :p (well you know the story...)

(edit) Seagate units have been tested at storagereview, see them there.
Atlas units:
http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/sc..._15k/index.htm
http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/sc...k_iv/index.htm

Geez all you Adaptec people...

Save yourself some money and some issues with Domain Validation on your SCSI cards.

Look at the Tekram cards or the LSI Logic OEM cards and save yourself some money there...

I am running teh Tekram card myself and am quite happy with it. Since I upgraded to a XP1800+ though I do notice my drives don't seem to be as fast as they were on my K6-III+ box. Guess I should look into some 10K drives....


Best place on the web for you SCSI fix...
www.hypermicro.com


edit - stupid typos

All right. The Atlas 15K is rated with a max transfer rate of 75MB/sec, 3.5 ms seek. The Atlas 10K will do 72MB/sec, and 4.3 ms seek.

Lots of info, I'll have to review it in more detail, and check what storagereview.com has to say.

Something nobody has mentioned yet---used drives.
I got an IBM DGVS09U (Ultrastar 9ZX) 9.1GB used off Ebay that I'm more than happy with. Also, if you look around enough, there are still a few 9GB Atlas IV's around NIB for about $80 each--we run them RAID1 in our mail servers at work for OS drives, and put /var and swap on Atlas 10K III's running in RAID5.

And GMAT is absolutely correct--there is no comparison between using a machine with SCSI disks as opposed to one with IDE disks, especially if you make a swap partition beginning at cylinder 0 (sorry Win98 users...).
Even an old, used SCSI disk will in many ways outperform a 'modern' IDE one, and probably outlive it, too.

Oh, and as a personal anecdote, the 64bit adaptec's run just fine in a 32bit slot, as if there were any doubt. ;)

Thx dude :)

About Tekram controllers; they do their job but not as well as Adaptec's. The RISC chip on the board is critical, its power determines the maximum load the controller can take without hampering your CPU. Adaptec RISC controllers are way more powerful. All my experiences with Tekram boards (i have tried 3) were either unsucessful (driver problems with NT) or deceptive (more than 10% CPU load opposed to 3% for Adaptec under the same conditions).
Again you only get what you pay for :p
(oh besides, the latest Tekram U160 is $12 more expensive than the corresponding Adaptec 29160N...)

I took a gander at storage review, and decided that the Maxtor 10k3 would be a better choice for me (a user), than the Seagate 10k6. Now all I have to do, is wait for the Maxtor 10k4, and see if it's worth it, or if it'll at least drive the price down on the 10k3 ;)

One thing is clear though, the 160 controller is about to become a requirement, even for a single drive, since the latest drives are about to hit a transfer rate of 80 MB/s, the limit for the previous SCSI spec.

I know Adaptec too well to even consider using something else...

A year ago when I bought my setup the Tekram card was about $40 cheaper... It was a nice upgrade from my Diamond Ultra card (now used to run a scanner in the "left-overs" PC)...

So far I have been more than happy with my card. Works great under 2000, and of course it seems ALL contollers have problems with XP.

Yes. It needs registry hacking, and a good deal of voodoo incantations to get XP to work with SCSI. Anyway, for a personal use, wise persons should stay away from XP...
(for the others, there's a thread on storagereview's forums about it - and may the force be with you...)

BigBen:

Its been a while since I have last posted/read this thread BUT I will still throw in my last 2 cents.

I personally have had very good success with Quantum Atlas drives (now Maxtor Atlas SCSI line). As you can see in my sig. I am currently running 5 of their drives in my system; (1) Atlas V and (4) Atlas IV. I have yet to find any complains/problems with them yet and one of the drives has been running in my system for over 4 years now :)


For the rest of you in SCSI land, can anyone recommend a good Adaptec RAID 0 or RAID 5 SCSI adapter that is not affected by FSB OCing? I have an AAA-131U2 w/ 64mb cache sitting here on my desk because I found that using that controller in my system was SLOWER (in max throughput tests) than my AHA-2940U2W w/ software RAID 0. Did some more tests and found that with my FSB @ 150, the card ran slower than @ 133FSB. But even @ 133FSB the Array Adapter (AAA-131U2) was still not as fast as my Host Adapter (AHA-2940U2W) using software RAID 0.

I guess I will keep the Array Controller around for when I move all these 9.1Gb drives into a storage server BUT I am still looking for a good Array Adapter that will work better than my Host Adapter. Suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

I don't think is is really a huge issue, just spend a little extra money and get the high end 8mb cache drives with 3 years. All the power users will be doing that, while the average user that doesn't care about performance or a warranty over a year will just buy a 20gb 5400rpm drive anyway.

jroutma: Adaptec are the kings of standard host adapters, but they're lagging a bit behind in the RAID controller segment. Here are the results of a round-up i saw lately (in a french mag):
* LSI Logic / MegaRAID Elite 1650 : best all-around, admin software not working with Linux (but the controller is working OK). Lots of very good options, great performance, etc. The only bad point is it scans the disk array after each configuration change.
* ICP Vortex / GDT 6523 RS : no RAID 3, good software, admin software working perfectly with Linux. Bad point = registry hacking is mandatory to get it to work (covered by user manual).

Mylex and Adaptec controllers finished last...
RAID is a different beast :p And i've seen many other reviews that lead to the same results -> it seems LSI Logic is the way to go. ICP Vortex use an Intel chip and seems quite good as well.
Besides, Adaptec boards are known to be very touchy about PCI clock settings.

The source article is here (put it in babelfish if you cannot read French...):
http://www.01net.com/rdn?oid=191763&rub=3345

Maybe you can help me gmat
What would be better, 4 used 9.1 g cheetah x15 for 600$ with a scsi card (which i don't need since i have an on board adaptec 39160) or 1 new cheatah x15 36lp 36g for 608 (plus taxes, around 700$)?
thank you

* If you plan to use software RAID, the quad 9.1G drives (1st-gen X15's, 2nd gen start @18 and 3rd gen @36) will outperform a single 36G drive. But at a price:
- heavy CPU load
- possible only with NT (and 2000, try to avoid XP...) or Unix / Linux
- lots (!!!) of noise. It will sound like a jet aircraft turbine (1st gen drives...)
- lots of heat (same reason)
- heavy PSU drain
- depending on your RAID level, reduced capacity (for example ~24GB with striping mirroring and parity)
If you can cope with that, and maybe pick up a RAID controller somewhere you'll live happily in SCSI-RAID land.

* If you plan to use them as 'standalone' drives, to get a total of 36GB you're better off getting that new X15 (it's a X15.3, right ?), by itself it's faster than any other drive, including previous generations of X15's.
- it's silent (3rd gen drive...)
- its blazingly fast
- it's slim (only 1 drive to fit..)
- it wont kill your PSU
- its rather cold (for a 15K HDD...)
Besides you've already got the adaptec board.

To me the choice is rather clear: get that X15.3 :)

nope, it would be a 2nd gen, 3rd gen still are not on the market in canada.
For the PSU, well it's currently powering 2 athlon 1ghz, with 3 ide hdd 7200rpm and 3 SCSI 7200 rpm (full height) with the hardware raid card. I won't use the hardware raid card on the 4 hdd (if i buy them) because it's really an old model (40mb/s per channel, 3 channel with only 4 megs of cache)

In case some of you missed it...

here's a link to the SR thread about using SCSI with WinXP

MS sucks! (like we don't know that...)

GMAT
Isn't the size of the X15 series more like
first gen: 4.3 , 9.1 and 18
second gen: 9.1 , 18 and 36
third gen: 18, 36 and 73
So a 9.1 could be a fisrt or second but not 3rd gen.

Nope. 1st gen had 9GB per platter, 2nd gen 18GB and 3rd gen have 36GB per platter bringing the biggest at 144GB (and ~$970 ...)
2nd gen are X15-36ES drives and they come in 18,36 or 72GB flavors.
They all have a 5 year warranty.
BTW 3rd gen (X15.3) is just around the corner... prices have been announced, and 1st-tier reserved models are out. They should show up quite soon.

isn't it the 10k.6 that goes up to 144g
I just checked on the seagate web site and the 15k.3 goes only to 73g. The size for the 15k.3 are 18, 36 and 73. The 10k.6 goes from 36 to 144
seagate web page for the mainstream server

Mmhh my wrong then. But i'm sure the 2nd gen does not exist in 9GB - i've never seen it anywhere with that size. The only versions of X15-36LP (not ES, ES was the 10k) i'm aware of are 18GB and 36GB. I thought they would have taken the same path as their 10K line...

Here's what I found, from SR:
Seagate Cheetah 15k3
ST318453LW/LC 18 GB
ST336753LW/LC 36 GB
ST373453LW/LC 73 GB

Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP
ST318452LW 18.4 GB
ST336752LW 36.7 GB

Seagate Cheetah 10k6
ST336607LW/LC 36 GB
ST373307LW/LC 73 GB
ST3146807LW/LC 146 GB

Seagate Cheetah 36ES
ST318406LW 18 GB
ST336706LW 36 GB

Maxtor Atlas 10k3
KW018L2 18 GB
KW036L4 36 GB
KW073L8 73 GB

In order of (personal) preference, I'd put them in this order:
1-Seagate Cheetah 15k3
2-Seagate Cheetah 10k6
3-Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP
4-Maxtor Atlas 10k3
5-Seagate Cheetah 36ES

(never mind what I posted earlier)

This does not include the Maxtor 10k4, since it hasn't been reviewed yet.