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SCSI what is good?

T

tunaman

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Apr 10, 2002
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I have always viewed SCSI as something that I did not need. That has changed however as I have my own business and I am finding that I need to make sure my data is safe. So I am looking at going to a raid SCSI setup in my desktop to use for data storage. I look though at SCSI stuff and I see soooo many different types, technologies, etc. So what would be a reasonably good setup for raid 1 with 2 SCSI drives of around 40 GB each? Would adding these into my desktop system affect performance of the computer?

Or... is all of this moot an I should just get a dedicated server for data storage purposes and not use my own desktop system for this?
 
If you want *nice* SCSI, you are going to pay for it.
I run 2 x 36Gb Atlas 10k IV's in RAID1 off of a LSI 20320-R as the boot drive in my main workstation. It is the fastest drive setup i've used so far.

If you're not ready to drop $200+ you could always startout with an IDE RAID1 setup. Won't cost as much and you'll at least have some kind of redundancy.

A DVD-R or external USB drive to backup to is a good start.
An older DDS or DLT tape drive is even better.

You can also take an older machine, throw in a PCI IDE controller and do some software RAID (though i don't recommend it, but it's still better than nothing) and make it your file server.
On a tight budget you could schedule an 'xcopy' from one machine to another of your imp. data and at least have a spare copy.

if you still want to go SCSI, you'll want:
2 x *modern* 10K (at least) 68pin drives. Maxtor Atlas 10K III's or IV's / Fujitsu MAN-series (?) / Seagate 10k.5 (or higher) are all very quiet and fast.
15k drives would be Seagate Cheetah 15k.2 or .3
If you're going hardware RAID you want at least an U2W (80Mb/s) controller. That will be fine for just 2 drives, adding anymore will be pushing it. An U160 or U320 controller will work fine as well.
You also need a Terminated, 68pin cable with at least 4 connectors. One goes to the card, 2 for the drives, and one on the end for the terminator.
 
Spending a few hundred dollars is no problem. I just want something that will protect me from data corruption and loss. While IDE drives are ok, I am a little leery about data corruption and loss. If SCSI is that much more reliable, the data is worth it to me. I will check out that setup that you mentioned.

Would it be ok to add that setup to an existing desktop system, or would it be best to get a seperate system to use as a storage server?
 
tunaman said:
Would it be ok to add that setup to an existing desktop system, or would it be best to get a seperate system to use as a storage server?
Click to expand...
Personal preference and budget, i guess.
There would be no problem adding that to an existing system, but a virus/power issue could destroy data on local drives.

A seperate machine means you'll be accessing files over the network, and the 10/100 (?) ethernet is now the bottelneck. You can get away with older/cheaper drives if this is going in a remote machine.
But now you have another whole machine to maintain.

I keep an 80Gb IDE drive in my workstation as 'scratch' space for temp stuff, everything important is moved to my file server, SCSI Raid1 for boot, IDE RAID 5 on a 3ware card for mass storage. It does a differential backup to a DLT tape every week, and shadow copies of modified files at 8pm and midnight (Win2003 feature).
Anything *very* important is put in another folder on the server that is xcopied to another file server running SCSI raid1 boot and SCSI Raid5 storage.

Between all those layers, i have yet to loose a file in a long, long time.
And this is only my home setup :D
 
SCSI is generally considered more reliable than IDE, but IDE has come a long way.

If it's just data protection you're worried about RAID 1 will protect against hardware failure and a regular backup schedule to some sort of archival media will protect against data loss from virii, accidental deletion, etc.

If you want to go SCSI, a couple of 10k drives running on a U160 card will be adequate for your needs.
 
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