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Looking for some FACTS on scsi setup.

S

SoniCraze

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 4, 2005
Messages
230
About 3 or 4 years ago I was making good money working at this little comp shop doin repairs and builds. I wanted the best of everything for my (at the time) new build. When i came to harddrive choice it was either a 2mb cache WD IDE... or scsi. (sata wasnt out yet let alone raptors) So i decided to make the pluge and picked up a ultra320 Seage Cheeta 15krpm 20gig and a cheap LSI (ultra 160) pci controller for it.

Now ive been using it for years now as my C: drive, and i store all my games on a second sata drive. I have a little extra cheese now and im thinkin about upgrading the hardrives again. I was goin to just get anouther 20gig cheeta and a new (better) controller and do some stripeing. A friend then brought up the fact that the pci bus is only so fast and that even with 2 scsi runnin @ 320 striped.. it wouldnt do much for me because of the pci bus. Should i just throw in the towell on scsi and get a couple raptors?

Dont get me wrong.. i love this hardrive.. its been awesome and the seektime is insane! I just dont want to waste my money..
 
That drive is so ancient now, striping will not bring its performance inline with current SCSI hardware. A drive of such low density will struggle to keep pace with current 7200RPM drives in desktop performance. Pick up a Fujitsu MAU series unit, and you'll realize another huge boost in performance, even with your current SCSI HBA.
 
DougLite said:
That drive is so ancient now, striping will not bring its performance inline with current SCSI hardware. A drive of such low density will struggle to keep pace with current 7200RPM drives in desktop performance. Pick up a Fujitsu MAU series unit, and you'll realize another huge boost in performance, even with your current SCSI HBA.
Click to expand...

If what he said is true, thats only 1 generation past. the U320 Cheetahs were 15k.3s, which were either slightly slower or as fast as 15k.4's right now. The x15 Cheetahs were U160, which would get blown away by current gen SCSI drives.

Yes, the MAU or Atlas 15kII would be faster than his 15k.3, but not _that_ much faster. I wouldn't call it a "huge" boost in performance, anyway.
 
Check out this SR Comparison, you'll see the MAU cooking along at least 20% faster than the Cheetah 15K.3, and it's a whopping 25% cheaper than the Seagate on ZZF :eek: (prices compared between 36GB models, $171 for MAU, $249 for Cheetah 15K.4, $255 for 15K.3) IMO, you'd be crazy not to go with MAU if you've already got a SCSI HBA. It is simply untouchable in desktop performance.
 
DougLite said:
Check out this SR Comparison, you'll see the MAU cooking along at least 20% faster than the Cheetah 15K.3, and it's a whopping 25% cheaper than the Seagate on ZZF :eek: (prices compared between 36GB models, $171 for MAU, $249 for Cheetah 15K.4, $255 for 15K.3) IMO, you'd be crazy not to go with MAU if you've already got a SCSI HBA. It is simply untouchable in desktop performance.
Click to expand...

Ah yep, you're right. I guess I should check my numbers next time rather than try to recall data I read months ago from memory. ;)
 
SoniCraze said:
I was goin to just get anouther 20gig cheeta and a new (better) controller and do some stripeing. A friend then brought up the fact that the pci bus is only so fast and that even with 2 scsi runnin @ 320 striped.. it wouldnt do much for me because of the pci bus. Should i just throw in the towell on scsi and get a couple raptors?

Dont get me wrong.. i love this hardrive.. its been awesome and the seektime is insane! I just dont want to waste my money..
Click to expand...

Another thing taht I wanted to bring up is that PCI bus will not get saturated with 2 SCSI drives in RAID0. The theoretical max bandwidth of the PCI bus is 133MB/s. Your SCSI setup has a Theoretcal max of 320MB/s. Remember these are theoretical. I have a Fugitsu MAS3735NP drive that is U320 15k and is the series older then the MAU series. Niether these drives or any otehr 320 drive will saturated the PCI slot. It would take a bunch of these in RAID0 to do this. (In the past i had 2x 15k 36.7 gb cheetah HD's in RAID and my fugitsu is faster then those were). My Fujitsu drive has a transfer of about 70 MB/s, and even though RAID0 is supposed to double your bandwidth, it does not, it only looks like it in benchmarks.

As for a recommendation, i do highly recommend sticking with SCSI, keep the controller that you have and get either the 73GB fujitsu MAS drive (fastest 73 GB drive and you can get one for $300 off ebay), the 147 GB MAU drive from fugitsu (there is no 73 GB MAU Drive), or the Maxtor atlas 15K II (fastest 147 GB drive).

For a great comparison check this out:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200412/200412088E147L0_1.html
 
cooter said:
Another thing taht I wanted to bring up is that PCI bus will not get saturated with 2 SCSI drives in RAID0. The theoretical max bandwidth of the PCI bus is 133MB/s. Your SCSI setup has a Theoretcal max of 320MB/s. Remember these are theoretical. I have a Fugitsu MAS3735NP drive that is U320 15k and is the series older then the MAU series. Niether these drives or any otehr 320 drive will saturated the PCI slot. It would take a bunch of these in RAID0 to do this. (In the past i had 2x 15k 36.7 gb cheetah HD's in RAID and my fugitsu is faster then those were). My Fujitsu drive has a transfer of about 70 MB/s, and even though RAID0 is supposed to double your bandwidth, it does not, it only looks like it in benchmarks.

As for a recommendation, i do highly recommend sticking with SCSI, keep the controller that you have and get either the 73GB fujitsu MAS drive (fastest 73 GB drive and you can get one for $300 off ebay), the 147 GB MAU drive from fugitsu (there is no 73 GB MAU Drive), or the Maxtor atlas 15K II (fastest 147 GB drive).

For a great comparison check this out:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200412/200412088E147L0_1.html
Click to expand...
Nitpicking here, but 133MB/s is a bit ridiculous when you add all of the PCI devices that are share that measly bandwidth. Tack on a GB NIC, sound card, cd/dvd-rw, IDE devices and then the bus can be extremely tight. I don't think you were considering that small bit of info.

And the theoretical part...it's not theoretical...that is the max. 32-bit 33MHz PCI will be dead soon and I for one can't wait for it.
 
Awesome information thanks guys... few questions tho...

how fast is sata2?

I dont care about throuput.. i dont move lots of data on and off my drives... i just like VERY fast seek time and quick responce, this is what ive loved about my scsi so far. Maybe ill just keep my 100$ lsi controller and get a bigger scsi single drive.

Also, the controller is labeld as 64bit.... what ever happend to pci64?!!!!! :p i wanna use all the extra pins on the controller.
 
SoniCraze said:
Awesome information thanks guys... few questions tho...

how fast is sata2?

I dont care about throuput.. i dont move lots of data on and off my drives... i just like VERY fast seek time and quick responce, this is what ive loved about my scsi so far. Maybe ill just keep my 100$ lsi controller and get a bigger scsi single drive.

Also, the controller is labeld as 64bit.... what ever happend to pci64?!!!!! :p i wanna use all the extra pins on the controller.
Click to expand...

I believe Sata II is capable of speeds up to 300MB/s but I don't remember for sure. Either way it's not important because no SATA I or II drives are capable of saturating that much bandwidth. I imagine your current SCSI card is actually pretty good so I would keep it and just upgrade to a newer scsi drive. To use the 66mhz capabilities of your SCSI card you would need a 66mhz PCI slot that is commonly found on server motherboards.
 
SoniCraze said:
how fast is sata2?
Click to expand...
It's fast...but no different than SATA for single disks. SATA2 is going to chain channels together. 8 or something on one chain? Is chain even the correct word?

I dont care about throuput..
Click to expand...
i dont move lots of data on and off my drives...
Click to expand...
Last I knew throughput was anything involving the disk. Still has to seek then retrieve the data, it's no different.

i just like VERY fast seek time and quick responce, this is what ive loved about my scsi so far. Maybe ill just keep my 100$ lsi controller and get a bigger scsi single drive.
Click to expand...
Sure, your choice. You have all the info you need. :)

Also, the controller is labeld as 64bit.... what ever happend to pci64?!!!!! :p i wanna use all the extra pins on the controller.
Click to expand...
You should have known about this all ready. When you're ready to step out of the wuss market and plunk some some cash for a proper motherboard, you still wouldn't see the benefit of a 64-bit 66MHz PCI-X slot unless you were running a number of disks off of the controller, RAID/not RAID.
 
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