SCSI Controller
 

Is the LSI - U160 any good? or should i opt. for Adaptec?

Do you have a modle number for that LSI controller? Maybe even a marketing name?

I currently am using the LSI Express 500 single channel RAID adapter w/ a 128MB cache and I love it. Vast improvement over my Adaptec 2940U2W adapter.

If you could post some more details, I could give you a recomendation.

Sorry, its the LSI20160, link here .

LSI isnt too bad. unfortunately I am writing this at work where a cluster based on 2 LSI RAID controlers has just failed baddly. hehehe

Looks good enough for me. What are you planning on running on this card if you get it?


Joe, sorry to hear about your missfortunes :)

2 18Gb 15000rpm drives, U160

I have the single channel LSI U160 card, got it from googlegear.com for under $60 I believe it was. Its a damn good card from what I have seen. I run it under a Linux Kernel with two 36GB Seagates (10Ks). If you want to see some performance numbers I have taken you can see that here -> Disk Performance

Phreenet, With two drives on a single channel, do u get the full 160Mbps or 80Mbps per drive?

When refering to the speed of the card, that is the MAXIMUM data transfer possible on a single chain at any one time. Hence both drives will have 160MBps available to both of them at any given time but if one drive is using up 50MBps, then the other one has only 110MBps for its operations.

I am guessing that you are going to be using Cheetah 15K.3 drives and if that is the case, you dont have to worry about your SCSI chain being the bottleneck. 15K.3 drives can put out between 45MBps - 75MBps streaming data each so you are within your chain limits. However, if you get that card, you will be limited by your PCI bus only able to deliver 133MBps at any one time.

Bottom line: it should work nicely.

Thanks guys!! you answered all my questions:D