• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Newbie- SCSI need help with RAID 0 Setup

A

alik4041

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 6, 2005
Messages
1,318
I am getting 2 of these bad boys

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__product.asp?pid=393&inf=dsc&wg=17

And a motherboard which doesn't have SCSI connections with a new conroe processor. I don't know if the mobo and proc will help in assisting my choose the right way to install these 2 drives in RAID 0. So I will need a SCSI host adapter I think (c this is y im a newbie lol). I also plan on installing a storage HDD which will probably be SATA. Another question, will my 7200rpm 300gb storage hdd make the boot time a lot slower, or unnoticeable. Cus my friend has these 2 in raid 0 with no storage hdd and u cant even c the loading bar of winxp when he pushes the on button. Anyways on the site it says they're 320pin, sca-2. I'm getting the NC btw.

Model MAU3036NC

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/support/disk/manuals/hdd_quick_guide_september_2005.pdf

I just need a way to get both inside my pc running raid 0 without a prob. I need guidance in installing them, installing host adapter drivers (if any different than installing sata host driver), etc. This is my first SCSI experience. Trying to learn as much as I can from u experts about this topic :p Thanks in advance
 
On top of just a host adapter you probably want one with build in RAID capability of some sort. The storage shouldn't slow things down other than a few seconds to initialize a second adapter if you have one. And as long as you don't install windows on it etc. If all the programs are installed on the SCSI drives it should be fast.

Installing the drives should be the same assuming the OS doesn't have drivers for the controller you're using already.

One thing you might look into is a SAS(Serial Attacked SCSI). You need a special controller for it but SCSI drives connect via a SATA cable and you can connect regular SATA drives as well. So you can have the SCSI performance and SATA storage capabilities all on one card. Probably at a premium still however.
 
SCSI driver install is no different than SATA drivers, hit F6 if they don't already come with windblows.

Since I assume that you will want to boot of the RAID-0 array, it will be a lot easier if you find a SCSI-adapter with built-in RAID capabilities. I heard that those are often expensive, but I do not know for sure.

Having SATA + SCSI only makes your PC boot 'slower' if you have the SATA drive auto-detect during bootup. Otherwise it won't matter.

Also, you know that the SCSI HBA will need to install its BIOS during bootup, which used to take quite a time and made my bootup time aweful (this was with an Adaptec UW-SCSI card back in the late 1990s).
 
Ebay is your friend for finding excellent SCSI RAID cards at a good price.
 
just remember, that there is always a risk associated with the fantastic speed of RAID0. if you lose one disk to failure, you lose the data from the other disk.

as long as your prepared to assume this risk, then power to you. i have a ultra160 SCSI RAID0 as my FreeBSD workstation, and its fantastic!
 
Once you get past the motherboard BIOS and add-in card BIOS, it's plenty fast. However, the SCSI HBA normally takes a while to locate the drives, spin them up, and start to read data off of them. On my LSI card, it added about an additional 10 seconds to the boot time with my Fujitsu MAU. On my Dell 2450, it takes about 20 seconds to read my two (old) SCSI disks. Ten seconds may not sound like a lot, but trust me, it's more than you'd expect. Luckily, you only have to do this when you turn on your computer. Once it's up and running, things go Zoom.
 
You are indeed going to want a hba that does raid and as mentioned, ebay would be the first place i'd look. Also those are 80 pin drives so you will need 80>68 pin LVD compliant adapters or a backplane. The adapters will probably set you back ~$10 a piece.


 
I don't think anyone mentioned this yet, but you mentioned 80 pin SCA drives, you will need adapters, or a drive cage to run those on any HBA. Ideally, if you're not getting a drive cage, you're going to want 68 pin drives.
 
k I'm sorry to sound like a lazy guy, but I really have almost no clue of what you guys are talkin about. I had an sata raid 0 setup with my 2X 36GB raptors, and I always used to reinstall the OS every 2 months just to make sure its fresh and backup the data I needed on my storage drive. But really, when it comes to those, I know nada, zip, nothin. So what I am asking of you guy is if you could make a list for me of what I need to buy? PLZ? The chances of buying something and having it not work out if I did this by myself is 100% so... Those are the 2 hdds I am going to use

Model MAU3036NC

Can u plz find me the best setup of what I could get? I don't care about ebay right now, just need the product, then I'll search ebay? Thanks in advance for your help. :) I hope I'm not asking too much.
 
Those drives connectors will look like this. So you are going to need adapters to hook them up to a 68 pin cable.

The alternative to using a 68 pin cable and adapters is a backplane. A nicer setup but you dont need hotswap functionality for level 0 and it will cost a good deal more relative to going the adapter route.To decide on which hba you'll need to know what kind of slots your new mobo has available, pcix or pcie.

If you are new to SCSI I'd suggest reading this. It is a different ballgame than ATA(S or P). There are a few "gotcha's" unlike ATA which when plugged in basically works or doesnt.


 
I am reading this, but this will take forever to read. So what i'm askin is if you can plz tell me what to buy, from whom to buy it, and the way I should set it up. I am reading the FAQ but it is very long.
 
You already have the drives right? If so, you need the controller, a cable/terminator assuming the card does not come with one, and the adapters.

The adapters I linked to would work fine. For the controller I'd probably go with this one for pcix, or this one for pcie. Quite a difference in price there. pcix is going to offer you more options as far as a controller goes and will be cheaper. I have not seen a scsi pcie controller that only does raid 0, 1, 0/1 meaning you are looking at a few hundred bucks to get in the door.

These (blind) controller suggestions are very fast and loose. Two things you will need to come up with are, which mobo you have (which slot) and a budget. I know there is a lot of reading there but scsi is more complicated than ata.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
dirtydr said:
You already have the drives right? If so, you need the controller, a cable/terminator assuming the card does not come with one, and the adapters.

The adapters I linked to would work fine. For the controller I'd probably go with this one for pcix, or this one for pcie. Quite a difference in price there. pcix is going to offer you more options as far as a controller goes and will be cheaper. I have not seen a scsi pcie controller that only does raid 0, 1, 0/1 meaning you are looking at a few hundred bucks to get in the door.

These (blind) controller suggestions are very fast and loose. Two things you will need to come up with are, which mobo you have (which slot) and a budget. I know there is a lot of reading there but scsi is more complicated than ata.
Click to expand...

It's going to be for my pc that I will be building at the end of this year. So it will have, pci-e, etc. I just want to know what you would buy in my postition if you were going with pci-e and top of the line.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Anarchist4000 said:
Controller: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816118027

That's the only PCI-Express controller for SCSI I found on newegg so it's the only one listed. Slightly pricey. Not finding any of the converters listed so might have to look around.

Converter: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-SCA-80Pin-6...802393739QQcategoryZ11160QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Hopefully that link works. You'll need one of these for each 80 pin drive you're using. Gives you an idea what to look for at least.
Click to expand...
ty, but pci-e motherboards have pci slots so I'm not limited to pci-e. But ty for telling me that I will need a converter for every 80pin I have. I just have 2 question, arent there any host adapters that support 80 pin?and do I have to make these drives external because the input for the scsi connection is outside the pc?
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
the vast majority of pcix cards are backwards compatable with pci so you could go for that single channel adaptec I linked to for ~$150 and slap it in. not the most optimal route but it would work. I dont believe a 2 drive array would saturate, or be bottlenecked by, the pci bus.

edit: this card is a much better deal if it works. the seller claims that the original cables, which would have the terminators you need, are in a sealed bag.

there are no hba's that 'support' 80 pin in the sense your talking about. they would have to pass power for all the drives that could potentially be attached, through the card. this is where the backplane comes in. the rear of a backplane has power and 68 pin scsi connections and handles joining the two into 80 pin.

im guessing your 2nd q is about the vhdci connection on the back of the card(?). that is only used for external arrays so its not exactly either or. rather if you had an external cage you would use that connection but no, you cannot / dont have to use your drives externally. most scsi raid controllers will have internal 68 pin and external vhdci connections.


 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
dirtydr said:
the vast majority of pcix cards are backwards compatable with pci so you could go for that single channel adaptec I linked to for ~$150 and slap it in. not the most optimal route but it would work. Im dont believe a 2 drive array would saturate, or be bottlenecked by, the pci bus.

edit: this card is a much better deal if it works. the seller claims that the original cables, which would have the terminators you need, are in a sealed bag.

there are no hba's that 'support' 80 pin in the sense your talking about. they would have to pass power for all the drives that could potentially be attached, through the card. this is where the backplane comes in. the rear of a backplane has power and 68 pin scsi connections and handles joining the two into 80 pin.

im guessing your 2nd q is about the vhdci connection on the back of the card(?). that is only used for external arrays so its not exactly either or. rather if you had an external cage you would use that connection but no, you cannot / dont have to use your drives externally. most scsi raid controllers will have internal 68 pin and external vhdci connections.


Click to expand...

Thank you for your help. About the card that you suggested the 29320A-R, why is it being sold for around $30 on ebay, but $300 retail? And I didnt see those internal connections, thank you for pointing that out. Last question is about the 80pin connection. There is no performance lost, or advantage or disadvantage between having to hook it up with a converter than a normal 80pin connection?
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
No problem :)

That is indeed the magic question. Notice the seller has the as-is disclaimer which is why I said 'if it works'. There is still a day+ left on the auction so I'd expect the price to go up a bit but it looks like people are bidding as if the card is dead and the cables are good to play it safe. These deals come up all the time so dont feel pressured to jump on it especially in your new system is 9 months away. But if you're willing to take the risk, if the card works and you can snap it up for ~$100, it would be a good deal.

No performance hit using lvd compliant adapters. The cons are introducing another point of failure into the system and the fact that you'll have a nasty looking circuit board clipped on the back of your drives. Think of the adapters as breakout boards. They seperate power and signal connections into regular molex and 68 pin scsi lines. You will also have to set the SCSI id via jumpers on the adapters as opposed to the backplane doing it for you.


 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top