HDD manufacturers wimp out: 1 year warranty

[bigben2k]

Originally posted by gmat
First, the 64bit version is more expensive. And next, if you don't have a 64-bit PCI slot (those are longer than conventional PCI slots) it's useless.
I *think* you still can use a 64bit card in a 32bit slot (do not take my word for it) so if you plan to get a duallie mobo (on which you'll find 1 or 2 64bit slots) you can buy the 64bit version. But before i'd check thoroughly if it's possible...

(nuclear): i was joking dude. But jokes aside, it's a geek site with ppl who watercool (or worse..) their PC. That is an expensive hobby, to say the least. Ah and i did put the disclaimer: "IF money doesnt count"

I checked, and the 29160 is backwards compatible to PCI 32 bit. The price would be the deciding factor, since the only extra with the 29160 is a 68 pin connector for ultra SCSI.

[mo]

Its an undeniable fact that SCSI is superior to IDE. That statement is never in question... The only questionalble item is whether its worth spending the extra money when you need tons of space. (In my case for example 200+gigs).

Most good boards nowadays come with a raid controler capable of both striping and mirroring. IDE drives that have a 8meg cache as far as I can see will not suffer the warranty drop. The price difference between the two is small enough not to matter considering the gains in performance and warranty.

Looking at what I believe to be the best IDE drive on the market today WD1200JB (8meg cache 120gig) at 298 dollars CAD that means you are paying 2.5 dollars per gig. Anything over that in size is still not worth it as the price rises exponentially.

SCSI on the otherhand looks like this. Cost effective units range between 73.4 gigs to 180 gigs at a price tag between 850 to 2300 dollars per device. We're talking about $12.5 PER GIG!!!! For someone buying a new system it also means they need to buy a SCSI controller which will set the person back another couple hundred dollars.

I just dont see the benefits of all this. Thats a LOT of money that can be spent elsewhere for better overall system performance. If you are looking for peak performance you can separate the disks that receive most traffic and give them their own Bus's and RAID the rest (If there is a rest anyways). Use a tiny little harddisk for your swap system and seperate your IDE devices and see how fast they will be. As for noise and heat , Thats extremely easy to resolve especially if you are watercooling. The innovatek HDD matic is just one example as to how you can deal with both at the same time, and there are many many other ways to deal with it.

I just dont see the benefit of SCSI as of yet for day to day usage unless you are running a mission crytical operation (Only one I can think of where the harddisk would be a bottleneck would be a REALLY REALLY busy website, but then you are making so much moola why not spend the money on scsi )

[gmat]

Well, for one why saying "i dont see the need of SCSI speed" then talking about setting up ATA RAID ? That is not consistent...
Personnally, as a gamer, and a geek who spends his life on his PC, i attest i *feel* the difference in day-to-day use, and i *suffer* when i get back to an IDE system... Overall "snappiness", cache / swap files loading times, etc.. all improve the overall experience.

BB2K try to stay away from Fujitsu's. They are not reliable, and they are closing their operations in most European countries... Stick to Seagate (Cheetah) or Maxtor (Atlas).
The 19160 has some problems, as i said. There is more than a mere connector on the 29160... Again, you get what you pay for.
Ah also, all boxed adaptecs come with full cables and software.

"I just dont see the benefits of all this. Thats a LOT of money that can be spent elsewhere for better overall system performance. "

Look, i have a watercooled PC with a top CPU, a top GFX card, a flat 19" monitor, a great Hi-Fi, a sports car and broadband access. I wont get back to cheap ass HDDs (and CDROM units as well...)

[mo]

heh. All Im saying gmat is that with the most recent IDE drives, if you run your drives on a separate bus , you will find the difference between SCSI and IDE to be much less noticeable. Thats all. Plus IDE Raid is something I mentioned in passing and only comes up if you need to use many disks. The moment your IDE drives share a bus, (especially OS/application/swap) thats when performance goes downhill. And my opinion applies to me at the end of the day and the choices I make, and was not meant to criticise your choice.. Heck.. I wouldnt mind it if I could afford it

[gmat]

Hehe i *always* run my IDE rigs (at work...) like this. But still it's noticeably slower.
Something i forgot to mention is noise. 1 HDD is less noisy than 2 HDDs. Since i'm in the process of building a zero-fan total-silence config, i'm limited to 2 drives (sandwitched around a HD block - aiming at Dtek's one). So it will be a 15K.3 for the speed-hungry things and a 10K.6 for bulky things.
Both drives will be around a HD block, the whole thing silenced with foam and suspended. My goal is to hear the pump.

(edit) to come back to the topic at hand would you trust a 1y warranty on a HDD ? I dont. And S-ATA will have that 1y warranty as well...

[bigben2k]

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!

[gmat]

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.

[nuclear]

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
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.

[bigben2k]

CPU load: well, that's what I meant

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

[bigben2k]

Originally posted by nuclear
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.......

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]

[nuclear]

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

[bigben2k]

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.

[gmat]

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 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
(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 !!!

[bigben2k]

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?

[nuclear]

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.

[gmat]

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 ?

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 (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

[io331]

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

[bigben2k]

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.

[Arcturius]

Originally posted by gmat
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 !!!

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.

[gmat]

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
(oh besides, the latest Tekram U160 is $12 more expensive than the corresponding Adaptec 29160N...)

[bigben2k]

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...

[io331]

Originally posted by gmat
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
(oh besides, the latest Tekram U160 is $12 more expensive than the corresponding Adaptec 29160N...)

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.

[gmat]

Originally posted by io331
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...)

[jtroutma]

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.

[Brad]

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.