scsi cards?

BudBud Chesterfield, Va
edited December 2003 in Hardware
i was looking at the scsi drives geeky pointed out and was thinking of running 4 drives im not sure if i would raid configure. I was looking for a controller card (the drives are 80pin) was thinking of 4 drives. Any ideas of a decent controller that doesnt cost a arm and a leg, like $20-30 if possiable. also do you have to run exact same drives on scsi card? like all 18gb

Comments

  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    Not going to find an 80 pin controller card, afaik. You'll need an 80 pin -> 68 pin adapter.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited December 2003
    Do you have the drives now? You didnt mention if they were u160 or LVD or ??? I can help ya pick a card but I need to know more about the drives. And for $30 your talking like used on ebay right? No decent controller costs anywhere in that range. Your gonna pay about 10 bucks a pop just for the sca (80pin) to 68 pin converters. You can get really cheap ones for maybe 8 bucks but.... you get what you pay for also...

    Tell me about the drives and I'll pick you a controller. Is that a deal or what?

    Tex
  • BudBud Chesterfield, Va
    edited December 2003
    i was looking at this drive for 10 bucks i thought 3-4 would be awesome.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited December 2003
    Awesome.... Not really. They would be respectable with the right raid controller though. We all use atto to judge drives str. A new maxtor 8mb cache ide is like 60,000 on atto with a 8 to 9ms access. Those scsi's are maybe 7 to 8ms access with 15 to 20,000 on atto for str. Thats why they cost what they do.

    Now that we have that out of the way.... If yourt still interested and want a controller you really need to scarf eBay and get a perc2/dc or a Elite 1500. They are the same controller really with differant firmware. But with the 128mb cache they can make those old drives seem much faster. I have bought a couple used for 30 bucks or so minus the stick of ram. Its just 128mb ecc sdram.. You might have something laying around that might work. But for 30 bucks you will have to be patient. That controller cost a 1000 bucks new. But ultra2 isnt real hot anymore so they are cheap now. You can get one on ebay every few weeks for 30 to 40 bucks.

    But if you don't raid them ... with a hot controller... you would be better off spending it on a hot ide drive. I run big fast raid-0 scsi arrays on all my servers and all of them also have a Maxtor 120gb 8mb cache to backup to. Todays fast IDE's smoke scsi from a few years ago. SCSI in and of itself is no magic bean to performance. When matching the right scsi drives and controllers the performance is awesome. With four of those drives in raid-0 with the controller I mentioned you will be pleased for the money but... By the time you buy four drives and a controller and pay shipping you could have a brand new 8mb cache maxtor thats twice the size and dead silent... with a warranty in place and runs queiter and cooler.

    I am not poo-pooing scsi. I am a scsi guy but... scsi from 5 or 6 years ago really has no advantage over the fast ide's of today for most people running normal desktop PC's.

    You really might want to rethink your choice.

    Tex
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    Those are 7200rpm drives; they have 10,000rpm ones for a few $ more, which is what i was looking at.

    Also, one thing I didn't see in Tex's post is that the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM speed for you is probably going to be 133,333MB/s; taking into account bus overhead, anywhere from 100-120MB/s is probably more realistic.

    32-bit, 33MHz PCI is limited to 133.33... MB/s, so unless you have a dual Athlon, p4-xeon, or high end p3/p3-xeon board, you'll be stuck at somewhat less than that.

    The reason I was looking at them is that I have a dual amd board, which has 64 bit/66MHz PCI slots, which should be good for 533MB/s maximum (~500 is probably more realistic). If you don't have a 64-bit slot, I wouldn't bother.
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