Scsi n00b needs help!

Morphes

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 16, 2001
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4,336
Hello everybody,
Well i was looking at upgrading my pc with a new hard drive, cpu or ram (maybe u read the post) but i just realized i have 6 scsi hard drives laying around! I bought this server from a thrift store for $25 and it had 4, 4.5 gig scsi hard drives (7200 rpm, i got 2 more from other wierd places), dual pentium 233mhz and a shiteload of edo ram! So anyway i got all these hard drives and was wondering how do i go about making them work in a normal pc? I am aware that you need to buy a card for them to work, but what kind of card, and how much do they run for? I am going for speed also, so which raid configureation should i go for? I was thinking maybe raid 0+1, i am kinda lost here so i was wondering if anyone could help me out, thanks!

-Morphes
 
This should be in the storage forum.

Honesty, those seem to be pretty old drives. If you need data protection, i'd say RAID5. If you want simplicity and speed, I'd say raid 0.

Look at Promise or adaptec, then goto newegg, for a decent controller you'r looking anywhere from $200-$350. Make sure you get the right pin count and pickup the right kind of cables.

Good luck,
>Br@d
 
Do be quite honest, those SCSI hard drives sound like older ones that are slower then todays modern 7200rpm IDE drives. I'm not sure if you even want to invest the money into getting these things up and working. If you did, then you would need to purchase a SCSI raid card (expensive for a good one) and set them up that way. You could also get a cheaper SCSI controller card and do some sort of raid through software but that would require an OS that supports the types of raid you are looking for.
 
well i got the cable (6 plugs... DAMN!) woah i dont plan to spend $200 i was just thinkin a $20 card or sumthin, anything cheap, just to run. I have another question, what OS should i run and what hard drive should i run windows on, i mean like a normal IDE then have the swap file on a scsi drive. does raid 0 take a whole other hard drive to make it double speed?
 
cuz i want the speed, they are 7200rpm drives, thats why i am intrested in em... i was thinkin of gettin a faster hard drive like 15k to give the all over raid 0 a faster performance. How much do they increase game speed?
 
Raid works best with identical drives.
If you use different drives in a raid array you will loose storage space / speed.

Look on the labels as to what type of scsi they are.
Also you need to check if they are LVD drives or just SE drives.

Luck........:D
 
I doubt these drives will give you much of a speed boost, they sound like they're fairly old SCSI drives. A modern 7200 RPM PATA or SATA drive should fairly easily match these drives in performance if not even perform better.
 
4.5 gig scsi hard drives (7200 rpm)

If you do not have a card already. I wouldn't worry about trying to use them. They are old and slow. For a storage setup maybe. I would say no for use as a OS drive config.

Give use the model # of the drives so we can see what they are. Being only 4.5 gig I am thinking 50 pin drives myself.
 
he told me over im they are 50 pin. i don't think they're particularly worth using either. not for speed especially.
 
no no, they arent, i have a 50 pin card thou, i was askin bout the converter to see if they would work with a 50 pin controller, since they are 68pin
 
oh shit yeah. im retarded.

This vacation has been too long already. i need to get back to thinking land :rolleyes:

They're probably still slow though.
 
It's not worth your time and there is no $20 raid card you can buy for them. Even with software I don't think XP or Server 2k will do anything but raid 0 and 1.
 
Lies.

I have a Mylex AcceleRAID U2W card that I got for close to $40.

Only can take a maximum of 16MB of on-board cache (in the form of EDO SIMM), but hey, it's SCSI Ultra 2 Wide technology, fairly old. :D

Anywho, Morphes, just poke around on eBay. You're likely to find something. If all you want to do is RAID 0, a RAID card would be choice, especially on such an older system. Software striping through Win2k/XP would be sluggish due to the lack of processing power.
 
Originally posted by Poop
Lies.
<snip>


thats some good advice ^

but what would be even better (at this stage)
is if you would post the make and model numbers
so we can get you pointed in the right direction
and give you a reasonable idea what kind of performance to expect
compared to the investment :D
 
Originally posted by Morphes
no no, they arent, i have a 50 pin card thou, i was askin bout the converter to see if they would work with a 50 pin controller, since they are 68pin

No! You'd be dropping those drives down to Ultra-SCSI speed (it sounds like they are UW because of the 68-pin interface.) Single-ended mode...bleh :p

Ice Czar, I can't tell if the "good advice" comment was sarcastic or not. If it's about the "Lies", that was directed at the fellow who said finding a $20 RAID card would be impossible. Just wanted to throw the point out there that they are available for Mr. Morphes. :D

But if you were serious, thanks :cool:
 
wasnt sarcastic

(I generally leave very little room for doubt) :p
 
there arent model numbers on the drive itself?
is it an IBM drive?
 
there are, but they are kinda out of date... i looked em up. about to go test out the setup so i will be back in like 20 min
 
okay its all up and running well one hard drive for now, what do i have to do to make windows see the hard drive? it dected my raid card (mylex dac960 just found that out from windows, thanks windows!) and my device but it doesnt pop up with a drive in my computer, what do i do?
 
Originally posted by Morphes
okay its all up and running well one hard drive for now, what do i have to do to make windows see the hard drive? it dected my raid card (mylex dac960 just found that out from windows, thanks windows!) and my device but it doesnt pop up with a drive in my computer, what do i do?
Partition/format the HDDs?
 
ya ummm how? it wouldnt let me in the windows setup thing, (iono why) and then windows just doesnt pick it up as an enabled device
 
Start > Run > (Type) Diskmgmt.msc > Rclick unallocated Space > Partition

If the space isnt shown, > Action button > Rescan Disks
 
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