SAS: CARDS, ETC. WORTH THE MONEY?
- Thread starter Santilli
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Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Not this shit again.
Greg, SAS is worth the money if you're going to hang a metric assload of drives you want to use. If you want a single, fast drive, buy an OCZ Agility for $400 and be done. Please.
Greg, SAS is worth the money if you're going to hang a metric assload of drives you want to use. If you want a single, fast drive, buy an OCZ Agility for $400 and be done. Please.
fb
Storage is cool
Maybe the SSD-drives doesn't generate enough heat for the cat?
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
Stereodude
Not really a
He could always get an old Prescott based dual core P4 to keep the cat warm if that's the problem. :cat:
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
Yes. I ended up donating them to Goodwill after getting the SSDs.
Santilli
Hairy Aussie
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Very funny.
I'm finding I need a bigger boot drive then 80 gigs. 300 would be good...
Haven't been watching SAS card and cable costs.
Let's see: Merc suggests a drive that's 80 gigs for 409 dollars. That's half the size I would like for a boot drive.
I'm finding I need a bigger boot drive then 80 gigs. 300 would be good...
Haven't been watching SAS card and cable costs.
Let's see: Merc suggests a drive that's 80 gigs for 409 dollars. That's half the size I would like for a boot drive.
Why does your boot need to be so big? Is teaming a SSD and say a Raptor 300 for whatever doesn't fit just not good enough?
Speed wise for desktop I don't think you will notice the difference between a raptor and whatever high end SAS you get. You will notice the much longer boot from the SAS host BIOS though.
Speed wise for desktop I don't think you will notice the difference between a raptor and whatever high end SAS you get. You will notice the much longer boot from the SAS host BIOS though.
Stereodude
Not really a
What all do you have on your boot drive that you need so much space?
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
Well, you will when it fails. I'd suggest just getting one of the far more reliable 500GB/platter drives. They're cheaper, too.
PS: The reason that I had to go with a 60GB SSD over a 30GB, is that I sometimes have temporary files bigger than the 4GB of free space I'd have left. I could work around it, but I'm lazy.
Maybe he has a plethora of games? Do they need to be on C:?
Last edited:
ddrueding
Fixture
It takes more work to put them elsewhere. That is why I only use one large drive on my workstations, but it comes at quite a cost.
Santilli
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You should have let me know. I would have changed my name, and, I'm already non-profit...
;0
Certain programs want to write large video files to C drive. I did do a work around, but, as David says, it's a pain.
Just think mulitple high speed downloads that reserve large amounts of disk space, while they download. I'll often have 4-20 different video items downloading at once, with varying rates of success.
The game/HTPC machine is over 100 gigs on the Raptor(thanks to David, great drive), and it's only 150 gigs. Not much to download to.
In the future, we will be downloading BlueRay, and, that will take massive amounts of free space.
My work around has been to use a SATA big storage drive, 200-640 gigs, clear some space, and use that as the download spot. Not ideal, but, so far it's worked fine.
And, yes, I do like SCSI drives, though SATA is pretty cool, storage wise.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a 640 gig or bigger drive, for a reasonable price?
All I see at Newegg is a bunch of drives that have 50-60% approval, or, in other words,
Deathstars all over again, with 3 year warrantys.
I was asking about SAS, since with SCSI, everything has come down so much, it's actually pretty cheap, and, MUCH more reliable then the current SATA offerings.
Sechs: WHY would you think the current 500 gigs are more reliable? They aren't. Just look at the customer reviews, and how many dead drives are shipped, or go bad quickly in SATA. I WANT to buy another big storage drive, but, I can't find one that gets over my thresehold review level to purchase, at the price I'm after.
SAS, SCSI are FAR more reliable then any SATA drive. Their rating for work hours, and warranty show that, not to mention my experience. I've had better reliability using refurbished scsi drives then any SATA drive I've ever had...
Lost is right, but, the great thing about having SATA is it's put pressure on SCSI, and, the prices have come down, huge, not to mention the refurbished drives, in drives, cables, and
scsi cards.
I was wondering if SAS had done the same...
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
They were on Craigslist for some time. It's your loss. You can call up Goodwill of SF and see if they still have them.
More than 30GB? Maybe you need a dedicated data drive.
Sounds like a job for a nice SATA drive.
Because they don't fail as often as the previous ones?
I will note, I've never heard of an SSD damaged in shipping. You can practically send one in the mail in a padded envelope.
You need to handle more drives.
I'm confused. You are doing something for a not for profit org, receiving multiple videos and using crappy software? I'd think it would make most sense to work with the providers to find a solution. Do you work on documentaries or similar?
OEM drives at Newegg are used for football practice and then thrown in a box with a little bubble wrap. Buy retail packaged drives.
Ever sense that discussion a couple months ago I have paid more attention to newegg shipping details and I am convinced they are complete crap. Putting something in the bottom of the box and covering that in peanuts is unacceptable. They seem to do the same be it a $40 video card, a $120 hard drive or a $500+ camera. Occasionally they get something right but now I am convinced they just didn't put enough peanuts in that box and due to the tumbling the contents ended up in the center instead of the bottom where it started. It is a testament to the ruggedness and factory packaging for retail that they most things get there fine but HDD just won't put up with that treatment. /rant again.
So at any rate I would not trust newegg reviews on DOA hard drives at all, unless you buy there. Unfortunately my local options have shrunk considerably.
Anyway I am still thinking that SAS with a HBA breakout cabling and a likely noisy SAS 15k Fujitsu drive don't make sense for anyone except a server that needs the IOPS and space at fair price. Makes more sense to me to just leap frog that mess and then progress well up the performance road and arrive at a simple SSD solution. Maybe even two drives in RAID0 to strengthen that throughput weak point and increase the size.
So at any rate I would not trust newegg reviews on DOA hard drives at all, unless you buy there. Unfortunately my local options have shrunk considerably.
Anyway I am still thinking that SAS with a HBA breakout cabling and a likely noisy SAS 15k Fujitsu drive don't make sense for anyone except a server that needs the IOPS and space at fair price. Makes more sense to me to just leap frog that mess and then progress well up the performance road and arrive at a simple SSD solution. Maybe even two drives in RAID0 to strengthen that throughput weak point and increase the size.
Santilli
Hairy Aussie
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I guess I'm not being clear. What SATA drives have our experts used here, and had excellent results with? I'm after feedback on a large number of drives, since I don't handle that many.
I'm after a 640 gig or bigger drive.
With my current gaming, I need about 150 gigs or better for a boot drive, plus a couple other programs that would work better with a 100 gigs to download on the boot drive, though I've remapped that, so it isn't critical.
I'm after a 640 gig or bigger drive.
With my current gaming, I need about 150 gigs or better for a boot drive, plus a couple other programs that would work better with a 100 gigs to download on the boot drive, though I've remapped that, so it isn't critical.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Almost all the drives I actually use for myself are Samsung 1 or 1.5TB drives. I think I have around 40 of them, between those two sizes. However, I've installed pretty much any recent-vintage Seagate drive from 160GB up to 750GB and I still have a stack of 250GB and 500GB Hitachis that I need to use at some point.
I normally consider Seagate drives to be the bottom of the barrel; they're typically slow and less reliable, but I still buy them because Seagate offers an OEM copy of Acronis TrueImage, which is very useful to me as a tech tool. I use Seagate drives only in "fleet" builds of client machines.
I don't really have a problem with Seagate notebook drives. I've had good luck with those.
Hitachi drives I keep on hand because some of the servers I built early this year have them as boot drives. I have nothing particularly positive or negative to say about those drives.
If you really want I can get exact numbers on how many drives I've installed and how many I've returned, but the numbers I have will be badly skewed for Seagate since I got a whole shipment of bad drives a couple years ago.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Also, nobody needs a 150GB boot drive.
Windows Vista and Windows 7 install in a space between 12GB and 30GB. XP needs around 2GB by itself. Absolutely anything else you care to install can go on a secondary drive, if you'd prefer to have a fast one for your operating system.
Windows Vista and Windows 7 install in a space between 12GB and 30GB. XP needs around 2GB by itself. Absolutely anything else you care to install can go on a secondary drive, if you'd prefer to have a fast one for your operating system.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
I thought most programs hiccuped if they weren't installed on the C drive?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
What gave you that idea?
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
For some reason this is too much work for Greg.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Yes, I can see how changing a C to a D or an E might be asking too much.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
Can't you mount a drive as a directory in Windows? In that case it would be just about seamless.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Most don't; where you set it in the installer is where it goes. However, some do. IIRC I documented some time ago how my wife's PC wound up with XP installed to G: (during the XP install the USB card reader got C:-F: ). It was a minor PITA for most things; just change the drive letter when installing and we were good to go. Some apps, specifically the HP software for my wife's printer/scanner, took G: in the installer but had C: hard coded in places. Some of that was fixed via regedit but some of it was hard-coded in the application itself & could not be fixed.
Eventually I reinstalled Windows on C:. I think it was after the old HD started to flake out.
Personally, I prefer my machines to have a single local drive. So when I go SSD I'll move most of my data to the server but will still want a drive large enough to keep some things local.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Yes.
Vista and 7 even support symlinks. It's almost like they're proper operating systems.
Santilli
Hairy Aussie
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Well, I was tempted by the Samsungs, but, went with a Seagate 1.5 TB for about 120, with shipping.
Hopefully it will work, and, if not, I've had good luck with Seagate returns.
I guess some of the stuff I use is old, and, doesn't give you a drive install option.
I have no intention of moving to 7, until I decide, or have to, for some reason.
The pricing is kind of strange. 640 to 1 TB in the 80-90 dollar range, for a decent drive, and, a 50% larger drive for 30 bucks more?
Also like the 7200 drives for speed for me, and heat for the cat...
Hopefully it will work, and, if not, I've had good luck with Seagate returns.
I guess some of the stuff I use is old, and, doesn't give you a drive install option.
I have no intention of moving to 7, until I decide, or have to, for some reason.
The pricing is kind of strange. 640 to 1 TB in the 80-90 dollar range, for a decent drive, and, a 50% larger drive for 30 bucks more?
Also like the 7200 drives for speed for me, and heat for the cat...
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Re: price gradient. The case & electronics don't change; you're just adding a platter so the incremental cost is less.
Santilli
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SAM:
What does changing a drive letter have to do with the size, or kind of your boot drive?
Again:
Old software, no drive install option then C.
I see the pricing stuff, but, with a few exceptions, it seems the companies are using the 'Intel cutting edge price premium theory'
for the larger drives.
What does changing a drive letter have to do with the size, or kind of your boot drive?
Again:
Old software, no drive install option then C.
I see the pricing stuff, but, with a few exceptions, it seems the companies are using the 'Intel cutting edge price premium theory'
for the larger drives.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Greg, I will absolutely assure you that with the exception of some Microsoft Windows add-ons, everything you install is either so tiny that it doesn't matter where it's installed, or it has an option to change the install location.
This has been true for at least as long as there has been 32-bit versions of Windows.
I realize it's tempting to just keep clicking next through a software installation, but if you don't do that, I think you'll see that I am correct.
This has been true for at least as long as there has been 32-bit versions of Windows.
I realize it's tempting to just keep clicking next through a software installation, but if you don't do that, I think you'll see that I am correct.
Santilli
Hairy Aussie
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Last time I tried it, Quake 3 wouldn't play, so it's possible you are correct.
However, I'm still running a LOT of old software, so you may not be, and, I'm not deleting my entire install see if you are right.
Again:
WHAT does changing drive letters have to do with anything? I've often changed drive letters, and, this machine has 9 drives in it right now, so what's the big deal about changing drive letters?
I've done that a number of times.
It just dawned on me that you are talking about changing drive letters during software installation. I thought you meant changing drive letters during drive formating, and, or changing a D drive to a C drive, after doing a OS install by accident on a D drive.
However, I'm still running a LOT of old software, so you may not be, and, I'm not deleting my entire install see if you are right.
Again:
WHAT does changing drive letters have to do with anything? I've often changed drive letters, and, this machine has 9 drives in it right now, so what's the big deal about changing drive letters?
I've done that a number of times.
It just dawned on me that you are talking about changing drive letters during software installation. I thought you meant changing drive letters during drive formating, and, or changing a D drive to a C drive, after doing a OS install by accident on a D drive.
So you picked one of the most awful drives in recent times? I'd rather use two FALS in RAID 0. :eek3:
I recently got 2 Seagate 1.5TB drives at a real bargin. My local Best Buy had an open box 5900RPM 1.5TB drive for $80. I took it home, and it was bad (Didn't surprise me at all considering open-box). I returned it to the store, and they were willing to exchange it rather than return money, but when I went back to look, they didn't have any more 5900's but did have one new 7200RPM model. So I talked to the dept. manager and he was willing to exchange a bad 5900 for the 7200. Then I went to my local Office depot with the BB receipt in hand (saying that BB didn't have any more in stock but I wanted one more) and asked if they would price match. They said they would, so I got a second one for $80 (but only a 5900).
Yes, they are probably the worst of the 1.5's but the price was too good.
Yes, they are probably the worst of the 1.5's but the price was too good.
Santilli
Hairy Aussie
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One of the guys who had a bad one sent it to Seagate, and they sent back a 2 TB.
I've always been treated well by Seagate, so I'm not THAT worried about the newegg.com
football on it's way...
Also, the beta testing period by the public should be just about over...
And, the drive might be gold now...
I've always been treated well by Seagate, so I'm not THAT worried about the newegg.com
football on it's way...
Also, the beta testing period by the public should be just about over...
And, the drive might be gold now...
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
I haven't had an operating system installed to a drive lettered "C" for almost a decade. I've seen a couple of programs complain if your don't have a volume lettered C, but never a problem installing or having Windows on a drive of a different name.
If you get bored, try to install a program to a system reserved variable, and see if that works. You'd be amazed how often an installer will allow you to install to $MOUSE.
You send back drives with data on them? I damage the dying or defective Seagate drives as much as possible and then discard them.
ddrueding
Fixture
I'm not saying that you're wrong, just observing that you are a bit more towards the tinfoil side of the equation than average, and that Greg likely doesn't have state secrets on his drives...