need advice on 32bit SCSI card

MrValentine

MrValentine

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm trying to connect my PC to a external RAID and it calls for a 68 pin VHDCI connection, but I have been unable to locate a card that meets this.

I'm hoping I don't have to use a HD to VHDCI connector.

Any model recommendations? I want the best possible performace I can get. (from 32bit that is)

Thanks
 
You should be able to use any card, actually, that has either a standard 68-pin connector or a VHDCI connector. The trick is to find the right cable then. You should be able to easily find a cable that will have either 68 pin to 68 pin VHDCI or 68 pin VHDCI to 68 pin VHDCI depending on what type of controller you end up with.

Pretty much any card that has two externally accessible ports will have VHDCI connectors and single connector cards may have either standard or VHDCI, but are most often standard 68-pin connectors.
 
forgive my SCSI noobness. :)

The Raid i'm connecting to allows for 2 channels to be used. Would there be any real benifit to using 2 SCSI cards (or a 2 channel card)? Or will the PCI bus already be at its limit with one channel?

and thanks for help guys.

Edit:: also. will a HVD card work on a LVD device?
 
MrValentine said:
forgive my SCSI noobness. :)

The Raid i'm connecting to allows for 2 channels to be used. Would there be any real benifit to using 2 SCSI cards (or a 2 channel card)? Or will the PCI bus already be at its limit with one channel?

and thanks for help guys.

Edit:: also. will a HVD card work on a LVD device?
Click to expand...

That question would depend on which what kind of speeds your Raid array can attain. If you get a U160 SCSI card a single channel will be fine because the 32-bit PCI bus is limited to 133MB/s anyway. If you go with some older 80MB/s cards then two of them may help but only if your SCSI array could push speeds greater than 80MB/s. Many external SCSI Raid arrays are split into two parts and would need dual channels just to get both parts to work. Can you give us any more info about this SCSI raid array?
 
sure. its a Promise 15100 going to be filled with 400GB SATA hitachi. (got a deal on the hitachi's, so i'll see how they do)

The promise controller does split the raid into two parts but has many different ways to configure it as so only one channel is needed. (drives are not in yet or I would have more hands on info for you). Its minimum transfer rate is 80MB/s and prferred is 160MB.

I'm using it to store large amounts of video. At work I am video editing and normally working with around 35-40 hours of video at a time. (although I normally break it up, so I don't go insane).

hitachi drives not maxtors.
 
MrValentine said:
forgive my SCSI noobness. :)

The Raid i'm connecting to allows for 2 channels to be used. Would there be any real benifit to using 2 SCSI cards (or a 2 channel card)? Or will the PCI bus already be at its limit with one channel?

and thanks for help guys.

Edit:: also. will a HVD card work on a LVD device?
Click to expand...

There may be a benefit to using two cards depending on how your system is designed. Higher end workstations or servers will have more than one PCI bus within them so the bandwidth may not be shared between certain sets of slots. What system are you putting this in and what type of PCI slots does it have? (conventional, 64-bit, PCI-X?)

In a standard desktop or low-end workstation, the PCI slots are generally all shared on one bus and will share the 133MB/s that conventional PCI 32/33 is limted to.


MrValentine said:
Edit:: also. will a HVD card work on a LVD device?
Click to expand...
In general, no. But any modern SCSI card (or even semi-modern) will be SE or SE/LVD only. You really have to go out of your way to find a card that supports HVD.
 
UICompE02 said:
....
In general, no. But any modern SCSI card (or even semi-modern) will be SE or SE/LVD only. You really have to go out of your way to find a card that supports HVD.
Click to expand...


Too true... those things aren't exactly easy to find aside from ebay (where you have no idea if the thing even stll works most of the time).
 
UICompE02 said:
In general, no. But any modern SCSI card (or even semi-modern) will be SE or SE/LVD only. You really have to go out of your way to find a card that supports HVD.
Click to expand...
Heh, Looks like i'm the scsi4me whore, as i picked up 2 of these from them to power an ADIC 100 + it's 3 internal HVD DLT drives. One of the cards had a bad channel and i had to RMA it.

As others said, don't plug an LVD device into a cable coming off of a HVD card. It could physically damage the drive, as HVD runs at a different voltage then SE/LVD.

If the external enclosure supports running across 2 channels, the Adaptec 39160 would be a better choice than the one i linked to, esp. if your mobo has 64bit slots.
If you need a dual channel SCSI RAID controller, then i'd stay away from adaptec and go for a LSI 320-2

[edit]
After reading the info on the page you linked to, looks like the enclosure has 2 VHDCI on it's rear. So you don't need a card that has an external VHDCI connector unless, it's dual channel of course. You could get a cable with VHDCI on one end for the array, and normal HD on the other end.
Then again, i don't really understand that enclosure. It's taking IDE drives on hotswap sleds, running off of a Promise controller [Red Flag!!!] and then converting it into a SCSI signal? [Red Flag!!]
I'm thinking you're only supposed t hook one scsi channel up to each server, so you shouldn't need a dual external channel card. And i also think the intenal Promise card [Red flag! Go read the horrars of PAM] handles the RAID calculations so you shouldn't need a scsi raid controller.
 
Correct. The promise controller will handle the RAID, not the card.

And ya, I know about the promise horrors. I had one of the first controllers like this for ATA drives, and it did give me hell for a long while. But eventually we came to an agreement. (most of its problem was the deathstars I kept feeding it, but thats a different story). While slow it does the job.

I gonna try and get a couple cards like the first one you suggested ambit. I'll play around with them and see which does better on benchmarks, 1 or 2 cards. I'll try to make sure I post all the different benchmarks if you guys are intrested?
 
I was not able to get an answer to this via that linked website. Do both channels have to be in use for all 15 drives to be available?
 
no both don't have to be used to access all 15 drives. but apparently they can be used together on a single machine. (until my drives come in I have no first hand knolege though)
 
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