Printable View
After installing star wars galaxies and fighting random crashes for hours on end... only finally realizing that it was b/c I installed it to my POS IBM 60GXP drive (also my swap file is there), I'm thinking about trashing this drive and moving to SCSI.
I need a SCSI card right? Are they all pretty much the same or are there brands to avoid and such?
Are SCSI drive much hotter than regular drives? Will a case fan blowing on it (2 intakes, 2 out) be enough to keep it cool?
Thanks for the help.
is your computer a web server or DV machine? if not, you don't need scsi, you just had a shitty IBM, so just get a good maxtor drive and be done
Well, games are getting bigger and bigger, needing to load more and more stuff off the hard drive when you change zones or cities. I think it is starting to look like an attractive option!
I've used SCSI on all my machines except notebooks since the original 8 bit SCSI in an IBM 80286 AT. I'm partial to Adaptec controllers however there are others on the market that are less expensive. I also have one box with LSI controllers. IMO the LSI drivers are not as reliable as the Adaptec drivers.
SCSI drives are built for 24/7/365 commercial use. They readily outperform consumer market drives.
yeah scsi is some good stuff, and unlike serial ata, there are many scsi cards that are widely supported across man platforms. I'm on an LSI controller (model U160, hehe don't ask). It isa great little controller for desktop boards espcially since it is cheap and you aren't paying a lot of money for pcix (which desktop boards currently don't have).
This card runs in 2 modes:
33Mhx/32bit in a regular pci slot
33Mhx/64bit in a 64bit or pcix slot
It lacks one of those 50pin scsi ports, but those things are ancient (except for cd drives maybe, don't now much about scsi cd drives though). The OEM version can be gotten at newegg for 42 dollars, and before any jackasses start to rant about newegg's warning against using it w/ xp, guess what, xp has drives built in (im actually running it in xp atm and it is fine).
It doesn't come w/ a scsi cable, and don't get the crap newegg sells. Get you cable from www.hypermicro.com , they have this nice spectra strip stuff. For 25 bucks you can get a 3 position (1 for the controller and 2 morem for other scsi drive, although w/ wide scsi3 you can have 15 or 16 devices) spectra strip cable w/ crip-on (means it isn't removable) LVD/SE terminator.
I personally prefer Seagate drive (wheather it be ide or scsi). Seagate is the leader in the drive industry, and they are on their 5th generation of scsi drives (I may be wrong), and on thei 3rd generation of 15K scsi drive. They definetly make the best stuff out there (IMO at least). I'm running on a 37GB 15K.3 atm, and it has been good.
Personally I'd take a scsi setup over the latest motherboard, ram and cpu setup. It is a good investment, and even if you don't exploit the full potention of you scsi drives you will still be buying quality.
I really can't comment on adaptec or lsi being better, but the lsi is much cheaper, and in some circles the brand is more respected and in some not. Goto the forums www.2cpu.com , you will find lots of guys that run scsi there.
that is my .02
Thanks for all the suggestions! No one has talked about excess heat though... I assume that isn't a problem?
Quote:
Originally posted by Paladyr
Thanks for all the suggestions! No one has talked about excess heat though... I assume that isn't a problem?
oh shoot, I meant to talk about that. Yeah scsis get hot, make sure you have a fan blowing a decent ammount of air it and that you have good case circulation.
Heat is not an issue. Both my Seagate x15.k3 and my Maxtor Atlas 10kIV run just fine without any special cooling. The Maxtor runs a bit hotter than the Seagate, but not by too much. As long as you put them in a place where there is a little bit of airflow, then you should be just fine.Quote:
Originally posted by Paladyr
Thanks for all the suggestions! No one has talked about excess heat though... I assume that isn't a problem?
The speed improvement in everything is noticeable when switching to SCSI. The LSI U160 card that heypermirco sells for cheap is rock solid.
heh, im just paranoid :pQuote:
Originally posted by Tripitz
Heat is not an issue. Both my Seagate x15.k3 and my Maxtor Atlas 10kIV run just fine without any special cooling. The Maxtor runs a bit hotter than the Seagate, but not by too much. As long as you put them in a place where there is a little bit of airflow, then you should be just fine.
The speed improvement in everything is noticeable when switching to SCSI. The LSI U160 card that heypermirco sells for cheap is rock solid.
hmm, get the card from newegg, looks like it is like 69 @ hm but 42 @ newegg.
I have a box with 2 Cheetahs. It doesn't have/need any special cooling.
My other box with 7 Cheetahs needs extra cooling mainly because of the dual Xeons. I replaced the case side with a 20" box fan.
sweet thanks!
heh, the myth at least seems to be that all scsi drives must be cooled. I have a pretty weak 120mm fan that does the job, guess I don't need to beef it up :).
I have a seagate UW drive that has ran for about 8 years nearly non-stop without any special cooling. Still works fine.
meh, it doesn't hurt to blow a little air over the drives, you gotta have some circulation anyways. Might as well set the drives up around where the air would be comming into your case.
That is plenty. I think the only time I'd worry about having them "cooled" would be if I had a ton of drives in a big RAID that were just getting slammed constantly with hits (not likely for home use). In that case, I might have a fan or two blowing on the array in a climate controlled environment, but I doubt even that would be 100% necessary.Quote:
Originally posted by pudad
meh, it doesn't hurt to blow a little air over the drives, you gotta have some circulation anyways. Might as well set the drives up around where the air would be comming into your case.
I have been running SCSI at home for a long time, but I can't really say that it makes any sense at all for home use. It's not really practical. Top level SCSI hard drives are still over $10 per gig, vs. about $1 a gig for IDE. The drives tend to be hot and LOUD. It's nice to be able to connect 14 devices to one controller, but the drives tend to be much smaller than IDE, so you'll probably have to mount several SCSI drives to replace a single IDE.
It's a little bit faster, but for gaming it doesn't make much of a difference. Multiple data requests is what SCSI is really great at vs. IDE.
I nearly went back to IDE, serial ATA looks pretty good. I would have had the WD Raptor not been so disappointing.
hey, he can alweays have a couple ide drives on the side for massive storage stuff. heh, only if those ide to scsi converters weren't so expensive, It would be sweet to have 2 or 3 more drives on the scsi bus that don't cost so much as a scsi does.
I've got a Raptor in my main rig and I think it's the shiznit.:)Quote:
Originally posted by michael.oakes
I nearly went back to IDE, serial ATA looks pretty good. I would have had the WD Raptor not been so disappointing.
Agreed, the raptor is nice stuff, I maybe getting one soon to test out, and I looks forward to it. But I prefer scsi, it has been around longer, and scsi is more flexible. Sata is too new for my taste.