[wfn]

Has anyone noticed this on /. ?

It's weird no one discussed it on here yet.

See: http://www.linuxhard...230&mode=thread


3 x WD2000JB per channel on Adaptec 39320-R for 1.2TB of RAID0 or JBOD storage at $2600

Similar (1.08TB) capacity with 3 x Seagate Barracuda 180's per channel and Adaptec 39320-R is $6200

Hmmmm.....

[destruya]

Not to knock your thread or anything - but the only reason businesses would choose the 6200 dollar option over the 2600 dollar option is that 35MB/sec max transfer rate (which seems to degrade rather sharply) would be pushing it even for a medium-use fileserver. The best use for these things would most likely be (forgetting the hundred-dollar pricetag) making CD-R/W or DVD-+R/W drives SCSI, much like Yamaha's done the past few years.

Just because a SCSI drive rotates at 7200rpm doesn't mean it's a slouch in performance. A three-drive Barracuda 180 setup would easily approach/exceed 100MB/sec on a motherboard with a lot of PCI headroom.

[docinthebox]

Never could understand how the Barracuda 180 180GB HD could sell for nearly 4 times the price of a comparable IDE drive (Maxtor Diamondmax 9 200GB HD). They're both 7200rpm, have comparable access time, transfer rate, and capacity. OK, the Barracuda 180 has 16MB buffer vs. 8MB buffer of the Maxtor, and it has 5 year warranty vs. 1 yr for the Maxtor, and SCSI firmware is more complicated than IDE. But still, the price difference ($1100 vs. $300) is unbelievable.

Why are SCSI hard drives so damn expensive?? :roll:

[wfn]

destruya,

Barracuda 180 str is 42.8mb/s in the beginning and 24.8 at the end. Western Digital 2000JB is 56.5mb/s in the beginning and 32.8mb/s at the end. If you're using those drives in a server configuration whether AMD or Intel based, you will have 64bit/66mhz PCI slots which provide up to 532MB/s bandwidth (theretically). Realistally I've seen ~496MB/s. With 3 x WD drives per U160 channel you will be maximizing your U160 throughput while with cuda's you'll be at 128.4mb/s per channel. The difference in access time between the cuda and WD is ~ 2ms in favor of the cuda. The cuda is a half height drive while the WD is a low profile. The cuda runs much noisier, hotter and it's harder to integrate due to form factor. I think people will choose a 59% cheaper configuration with WD drives in this situation.

I'm hoping that in the upcoming months someone (Eugene *hint*hint*) will test similar capacity/generation SCSI drives vs converted ATA drives. This would provide a lot of insight into the inner-workings of both interfaces.

[Jan Kivar]

Quote

I'm hoping that in the upcoming months someone (Eugene *hint*hint*) will test similar capacity/generation SCSI drives vs converted ATA drives.  This would provide a lot of insight into the inner-workings of both interfaces.

Yeah, this is very good idea. I wonder why there are two versions of this adapter, aren't all IDE devices compatible? Or is there some difference between the modes, as the one for the HDs seems to support ATA66 min.

Cheers,

Jan

[wfn]

there's 2 versions because ATAPI is not real ATA. ATAPI is a conversion of SCSI into ATA for MMC purposes. Hence it's only available on removable storage peripherals.

[PsychoStreak]

I can see these being of use to people transitioning to SCSI, who need the capacity now but can't afford the largely artifical premium for SCSI HDs of comparable capacity.

For myself, I want to move away from IDE altogether, and have the controllers and a couple of drives, but need a few 36GB drives or a couple of 73GB drives to completely excise IDE from the PDC I have at home. If I were hard up for storage space, I could see getting the IDE to SCSI adapter and hooking up a 120GB IDE drive for now. As it stands however, I'm just going to save up and just buy the SCSI HD's. And now with Plextor offering a new SCSI Burner, IDE will go away that much easier.

[[SOB]Turranx]

I too am very happy with SCSI and want nothing more than to ditch IDE. I'd love to see a comparison of IDE vs. SCSI drives of similar models. I read the review and found it to be enticing, but left me craving for more information. I want to see how they actually perform in a RAID setup and how well the CD-RW drives would stand up to a firm beating like www.CDRLabs.com puts their test subjects through.

My department recently inherited an old Dual Pentium Pro server made by Hewlett Packard some years ago. It featured an AMI SCSI card with Intel i960 processor and onboard cache. Attached to this card was six 4.5 gig drives set up in RAID 5. I was trying to figure out what to do with this machine since the available storage was small and slow but reliable. Eventually I got the bright idea to mount a 60 gig drive in it and use a PCI ATA100 IDE controller. I ran into a problem. No matter how I sliced it, I couldn't get the cable to reach from the controller to drive; 18" just isn't enough. The case resembles a big cube with two halves. The mobo is on one side of the case and the drives and redundant power supplys on the other. Unless I was willing to mount the IDE drive hanging off the back of the case and run the IDE cable out a free PCI slot opening, or mod the case, that drive wasn't going in.

Victor? SCSI wins again with it's superior cable length.

[wfn]

The official ATA cable length spec is up to 24". However if you use high quality insulation you can use a 36" one without a problem. I've seen numerous places online that sell longer ATA cables, you should have no trouble finding them.

[HisMajestyTheKing]

Quote

Never could understand how the Barracuda 180 180GB HD could sell for nearly 4 times the price of a comparable IDE drive (Maxtor Diamondmax 9 200GB HD).  They're both 7200rpm, have comparable access time, transfer rate, and capacity.  OK, the Barracuda 180 has 16MB buffer vs. 8MB buffer of the Maxtor, and it has 5 year warranty vs. 1 yr for the Maxtor, and SCSI firmware is more complicated than IDE.  But still, the price difference ($1100 vs. $300) is unbelievable.

Why are SCSI hard drives so damn expensive??  :roll:

Back when the Barracuda 180 came out it was by far the biggest hard disk around. Other SCSI drives topped out at 73 GB and IDE was barely reaching 100 GB I think or not even that. Today there seems to be little use for a drive like the 'Cuda 180 except in systems which need the maximum possible amount of storage.