Quitting SCSI

[chaoliang]

I'm considering giving up my last SCSI HDD because it is too noisy, though really fast.

If I return to IDE: Is it better to get two SATA HDDs or one SATA and one IDE (because of the buses)? Which option is faster? I've attached one SCSI HDD to the controller as system disc and one SATA HDD for data till now.

[Chucky Cheese]

...when i left scsi i went to sata and i am one happy camper!!!

cc

[UtwigMU]

Generally SATA vs PATA don't make much difference if physical drive is the same. Some use more cache on SATA drives and of course there are 10k Raptors.

Except for TCQ/NCQ which is SATA only but really shines only in multiuser enviroments. Considering SATA is the future and newish boards have sometimes only one PATA connector which is neccessary for opticals which haven't moved to SATA en masse yet, I'd buy SATA drives unless I had expensive PATA controller. Also if you plan to buy aditional controller, go SATA route.

[xortam]

Got SATA II if you want to eventually support very large drives.

[MultimediaMan]

The newest SATA drives are really something: Fast, quiet (those with FDBs), oh and by the way, have cavernous amounts of storage space as compared to SCSI.

For nearline storage, even is a fairly busy fileserving environment, SATA is more cost effective by far. In NAS applications, SATA has a distinct cost advantage with no discernable performance difference and less than 1/3 cost per GB.

The chief advantage SCSI has over SATA at this time is phenomenally low CPU usage (though nowadays, with computing power being what it is, this is fast becoming barely worth mentioning) and better throughput in a high traffic environment (again NCQ and hardware-based SATA RAID controllers almost completely negate this limitation as well).

[Wombat]

Go SATA. Don't think "one SATA, one PATA." SATA won't have >1 device per channel until later. You'll want your PATA channels for your CD/DVD drives, so if you plan on keeping PATA hard drives around, get a SATA converter for them.

TCQ is nice, IF anybody ever does it right, which nobody has because it's damn near impossible.

SCSI in its current wide interface is really only for some very high end products. For example, I'm using Ultrium 3 drives at work, and they'll stream 110MB/s sustained. But I think maybe SAS will have some market ground, it should combine the best features of the protocols.

[schmosef]

I've had pure SCSI systems for much of the last ten years.

I have to say that I was deeply disappointed in the tech support I've received from Adaptec over the years. I remember this one time that their tech support denied that a problem I was having was with my new 2940U2W card and demanded that I do all these crazy things to rule out other possibilities. Basically, they cut me loose. They absolutely refused to accept that my problem was caused by their card. Even though an older model card already had a bios fix for my stated issue. They just couldn't believe that this newer card might have the same problem.

Well, within a few days a new bios did come out for my card and it contained specific fixes for the problems I was having. The bios must have been in the works when I was calling (and emailing) to troubleshoot my issues and I have to say that I was deeply offended at the time because I kept asking them to check with their higher ups to see if mine was a known problem and they kept telling me that I was the only one complaining of the issue. At one point a tech weenie had the audacity to tell my I shouldn’t be using the card I was because I didn’t have any U2W devices yet!

Anyway, I built a second dev machine about 8 months ago and I went SATA instead of SCSI. I have to say that it’s a toss up. I’m certainly happier with the cost and ease of compatibility of SATA and IDE devices. My 10K Raptor drive is pretty fast too. Not as fast as my 15K SCSI drive, but pretty fast! I don't think that I'll be going SCSI again any time soon.

[chaoliang]

Thank you all!! I think it is also time to upgrade my old 8x and 6x scsi CD drives. I don't even have a dvd drive! Yes I forgot that if I buy dvd drives, they can make use of the PATA interface.

[UtwigMU]

Well there's Plextor Sata burner.

Also only onboard and Silicon image chip based controllers take SATA opticlas. You'll have hard time finding SCSI DVD ROM (I think Pioneer makes one) and there are no SCSI DVD burners.

[schmosef]

I have a SCSI Pioneer DVD Rom and it's good, but I wish it was faster.

No SCSI DVD burners? Hmm... I was planning on getting a DVD burner for my SCSI dev system soon... I'll have to look into it.

[xortam]

My SCSI Pioneer DVD ROM quit reading DVDs on my older system but I still use it for CDs. It doesn't matter much since I do all my DVD work (mostly DVD-RAM) on the HTPC which uses S-ATA and P-ATA removable drives through a S-ATA - P-ATA converter (built into the bay). Makes for relatively inexpensive removable storage (on my 12th drive, averaging 200 GB a piece).

[dkazaz]

I quit SCSI a year ago and went the SATA route on my latest PC. I got a 74GB raptor and a large Seagate 7200rpm drive for storage.

The raptor is easily as fast in my single user system as may Atlas 10k.3 was and much more quiet. The Seagate drive is not that fast but I only use it for files and its fast enough given the price for 250GB.

You can read detailed reviews if you need hard scientific data at www.storagereview.com

I highly recoomend the raptor for your software and OS. For your files I would get a Fujitsu deskstar 400GB - you can see the exact model at storage review. Its fast, quiet and massive enough to last for years.

I suggest using a SATA-II controller or mobo (I think there are models out now supporting this). SATA-II supports some of the features SCSI did like tagged command queueing.

And for DVD-RW don't bother with SATA, PATA is more than enough, even for the fastest DL drives. I have a NEC3500 DL recroder and a plextor PX712A. Of the two I definitly prefer the NEC and the plextor uses a NEC chip anyway.

Hope this helps you.

[chaoliang]

Thanks, dkazaz, especially for the tip about software/OS disc. I use the Samsung SATA hdds for file storage since they are said to be most quiet. But for the system disc a faster one is better, as you suggested. But it should be as quiet as possible.

[chaoliang]

Any recommendations for a good SATA II controller?

[LvR]

Any recommendations for a good SATA II controller?

Realistically - imo if you have stuck to SCSI till now, then slapping a SATA controller on a PCI bus is not going to be the most effective way of entering the SATA market and your satisfaction levels will be low too .................

NCQ and SATA implies a new mobo that has a controller hanging off/out of the Southbridge that understands the new technology by design and are not limited by the PCI bus bandwidth.