Time for Heresey!

[zx]

Burning CD's DVD's sucks. Santilli, why do you say that IDE access times suck, and then tell us to burn CDs/DVDs to solve capacity problems. CD/DVD access times are 80 to ms, and that's not counting the time used to get the cd and put it in the computer.

So between capacity and speed, capacity is more important. It's far more productive to have everything on a decent hard drive than to have a minuscule ultra-fast SCSI drive with intsalled programs on it, and CDs to carry the rest. ATA disks are able to bring that capacity and decent speed to most people.

Now if you have enough storage space, and some money, then you can think about scsi.

In fact, I have 240GB of storage and I don't need more space right now. The last purchase I made was a pair of WD400JB'sfor performance. Frankly, i'm not really satisfied with the performance. They do light office work quite well, but as soon as I do something demanding, they are much slower. Since I have some budget, i'm in the process of getting SCSI. But if I also had a capacity problem, i'd go for a big ATA drive instead.

 

[Santilli]

Prof Wizard:

What I've found is that if you shop carefully, you can setup scsi for little enough more then IDE, that in the long run, you save money.

I bought an oem uw scsi card 99 dollars, with cable, and have a 10k cheetah hooked up to it for an old mac.

It's not huge, 18 gigs, but for the bucks, it will last forever, and still be considerably faster then any ide drive, though the raptor might actually change that, finally.

I guess I've just had better luck with scsi. I try not and buy top end, waiting for the 15k's to drop after initial release, and, I would not suggest anyone else be insane enough to raid 0 a bunch of drives for a boot disk.

How about a LVD card, good ones for 100 bucks, cable, and the latest version of cheetah? You get blinding access times, and the cheetah is right at the limit of the LVD card. GREAT boot setup.

As for not wanting to use CD's for back up, that's your call. I figure I have to back up everything anyway, because I KNOW the drives will fail, eventually, and I have no one to blame but myself if I don't.

The cheapest, easiest way is to burn the stuff, but, if you want to store it on ide drives, then you should have it stored, mirrored, on two separate drives.

Still, each person has their own likes, and dislikes. I don't like having massive amounts of data on my hard drives, unless I back it up, and even then I don't really like it. I like free space on the drives. Somehow I think the system is a bit snappier, the cleaner it is.

So, in conclusion, I find the financial arguments inapplicable, since I use adequate backup methods for data, and, with the constant change if ide standards, the neccessity of buying a controller card minimizes the financial outlay that ide have in it's favor.

As others have said, the cheetahs are faster, have longer life, and better support, then the other drives I've used, and, therefore become a better investment, in the long run.

If you buy carefully, you can find deals that make scsi a better investment, over longer time.

Buy no means does the purchase of a scsi drive, and card, for a boot drive mean you can't have your cake, or storage, if you would, and eat it
too.

No reason you can't have a scsi boot drive and a large, cheap, ide for data storage.

I am not saying scsi is for everyone, but that depending upon your needs, you can find a reasonable route if you are after that additional speed, and reliability.

Stop setting up a class struggle that doesn't exist anymore, investment wise, and choose wisely.

s

 

[zx]

No reason you can't have a scsi boot drive and a large, cheap, ide for data storage.

Money?

 

[jtr1962]

One thing never mentioneed in the IDE vs SCSI debates are that 15K drives are quite a bit noisier and hotter than IDE. I know I wouldn't want a 15K or even 10K drive in any machine I'm using unless it was in another room. Then of course there are the usual cost and capacity issues. SCSI has it's place but it's mostly not suited for desktop use unless the person has plenty cash to spare. If I had to guess I would say solid state IDE drives will make the IDE vs SCSI debate irrelevant. Within a few years you should be able to get a nice 20 GB SSD at CompUSA for $99 or less. This will be well suited as your boot drive, and you can use conventional IDE for mass storage needs.

 

[Santilli]

"47.0GB, SCSI-II, 4MB Cache, 68PIN, great from RAID systems!"

Above from Pricewatch: 29.00

Just keep adding drives until you have enough storage, with scsi, 15 devices limit.

Oh, ide is only two per channel?

You loose...
:mrgrn:

 

[Santilli]

JTR: What did you say???

Noisest thing in my box is the cooler on my cpu.

I do, on occassion, detect hard drive noise. I like that, since I've learned what they should sound like, and, I've been able to pick off virus problems a couple times thanks to weird drive writing noises.


If I was that sensitive to noise, I'd use earplugs anyway. Cuts out all computer noise, and air, etc.

Fast computer, or super quite room? Your choice, again. By the way, it is possible to both cool, and quiet down, with box design, scsi drives so that they have little, or no noise.

s

 

[CougTek]

"47.0GB, SCSI-II, 4MB Cache, 68PIN, great from RAID systems!"

The first and only 47GB SCSI drives that pops up in my mind is the brick-like Seagate Elite 5400rpm 5¼" size, full heigh drive. I remember someone (probably at SR) who bought a few some months ago. You can't put many of them in your enclosure, even if its a full tower, since they draw so much juice that they'll blow up your PSU (around 30W per drive IIRC).

 

[Santilli]

Wouldn't bother my power supply, but you are quite right, they would be better in an external raid box.

Alternative two:
What about hotswapable ide, or firewire drive setups?

Seems like this would be the best way to store data, in large quanities...

s

 

[Handruin]

I'm all for a SCSI setup, in fact I love the access time of my SCSI system. However, having much more space with a 120GB drive makes it so that I don't have to play around with switching CD’s and juggling space to fit files.

I have 10 CD's full of stock photography that I like to browse through to use for different designs. Almost 16,000 images takes up 5.4 GB of space. In the past I would have browsed the CD's individually, but the access time and transfer rate of the CD drive makes this a tedious process.

Point is, as much as I love my Atlas 10KIII in speed the space doesn't cut it for these images because they take up almost 1/3 of the drives space. Using a CD as an alternative is even worse because the speed and inconvenience of having to switch through multiple CD's is a pain.

 

[Santilli]

"I feel you pain."

:mrgrn:

Last time I was in the valley, one shop had a swapable ide drive setup for 10 bucks, and a few bucks for each additional caddy.

Seems to me this, or a firewire solution is ideal for such situations.

Anyone using one?


s

 

[Mercutio]

They don't work that way, and you don't want the $10 ones anyway. They're swappable in the sense that "if the power is off for the whole computer, you can change the drive". This is a very different thing from "hot swappable"

The $10 ones have crappy fans and crappy retention mechanisms, and if you don't buy all the bays and carriages you need, good luck finding more that are compatibile when you need them.

 

[Santilli]

Mercutiothat name keeps reminding me that I was once named Tybalt)
"Tis niether so large as,..."

Anyway, what have you found that is 'cold' swapable, that you would use in a computer you are building?

S

 

[Santilli]

Mercutiothat name keeps reminding me that I was once named Tybalt)
"Tis niether so large as,..."

Anyway, what have you found that is 'cold' swapable, that you would use in any of your systems?
s

 

[Mercutio]

For legacy reasons I use Kingwin enclosures on my lab machines. The fans are the usual (lousy) but the key and retention mechanism is decent enough. Honestly I don't think those tray things are worthwhile, period.

 

[Santilli]

Kingwin?
Link?
Thanks M
s

 

[honold]

lol!

 

[Fushigi]

Just a little BTW, if you support brand name servers and want trays for their SCSI disk racks, try http://www.scsitray.com. IBM, HPC, Dell, Gateway, Sun and some IDE units.

I haven't bought from them; I just happened across the link.

- Fushigi

 

[Mercutio]

They're newegg-able. The previous trays I had came from one of those hopelessly bad Taiwanese companies. The name was something like "Harmony Sunshine" or something similar. The Kingwin enclosures I use and do not like are, by some frickin' miracle, electronically compatible with my old trays (a couple other trays that I tried weren't).