Fiber Channel performance/setup questions

D

danyal711

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Messages
205
Hi, I have a few questions. Basically I want to create a setup to run my OS (Win XP). I was thinking of having 2 fiber channel drives in RAID 0 (just striping).

1) I wanted to know what fiber channel card would be the best for this setup.
2) Is it worth getting 15K drives? (the price isnt that much more but what about reliability etc?)
3) Are 15K drives very loud, and do they need a bay cooler?
4) The drives available are the 18.2 GB Segate 10K drive and the 36GB 15K Segate Cheeta.
5) Would either of these offer better performance than simply getting a raptor?

I would hook this up via a t-card loop.

Thanks
-Danyal
 
Modern 15K drives are not as loud as you might think. My Atlas 15K II is inaudible over my server's case fan. However, expect a high pitch whine out of older 15K drives. Active cooling is a virtual requirement for 15K drives.

An 18GB 10K Seagate drive is going to be slow. Very slow. Any 7200RPM drive with an 8MB buffer that you can buy new will deliver better application performance than any number of 18GB 10K SCSI drives. Obviously, those 10K drives aren't going to be anywhere close to a Raptor. The 15K drives will make it more interesting, but the Raptor is still going to deliver better application performance than any Seagate drive, regardless of spindle speed or interface. A Cheetah 15K.4 does do a better job as a gamer drive than a Raptor, that's it. Anything older isn't going to be even close.
 
So basically I should just go with a raptor? There is no fiber channel setup that would really be worth it? Also, why is this the case? Why is the 15K drive still slower than the raptor for applications?
 
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