Some Questions About SCSI

[Umfriend]

I _really_ think you're underestimating the amount of noise that a fast SCSI drive makes. I mean, we're talking "low flying aeroplane" noise levels here. Seriously.

The Seagate X15.3 appears to be relatively silent (www.storagereview.net), about 9.7 dB/A less @ 18mm . My two Quantum 10K's make lots of noise though.

If you go SCSI, go 15K i'd say. not worth compromising if you spend already.

Umf

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by VJ
Well, I admit, it makes a lot of noise, esp. during seeks. The Quantum is a lot noisier than the IBM wrt. spinning noise (whining) and short stroke seeks.

I can imagine that some people would mind, I personally don't... although I won't use my computer to watch dvd movies, and I prefer it switched of when I watch TV (a few metres away). The sound is "muffled" somewhat by the 4x80 mm fans that are cooling the case. I do intend to put some noiseblocker mats on the inside of the case, just to isolate it more.


Jörg

I'm pretty much in the same boat here - I've got a Quantum Atlas III (10K-RPM) in a case with four fans (plus HSF/PSU/video card fans). I've also got a WD1200JB (7200RPM IDE). The fans drown out the hard drives - you only hear the Atlas when it's spinning up initially, or when it's seeking a lot. (I do intend to put quieter fans in there, perhaps with thermistors.) It is a fairly noisy system, but it's all from the fans. I'm quite happy to work with it (although I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't be). When I listen to music while working, I do so through headphones, and gaming/watching movies is loud enough to make it background noise (or I use headphones again). I'm sure I wouldn't be able to sleep in the same room as it, and a friend of mine who does a lot of music recording says there's no way he could record music with it. But as I said, it's all from the fans.

Incidentally, it's possible to set a spindown timeout with most SCSI drives these days, but it's not a standard feature as with EIDE, and you really have to get the technical documentation for the drive and know where to look. I haven't bothered doing this with mine (yet).

Oh, and FWIW, I went with SCSI partially for the performance, and partially because EIDE is such a horrible kludge-fest.

[Gurm]

VJ,

There is no such thing as XP server...

.NET server is still in early beta. Won't be out until 2003 anyway.

And any reviewer that says a 15k drive is "silent" is either deaf, lying, or speaking in relative terms.

Even a 7200rpm drive isn't "silent" anymore. My IBM 5200rpm's... were SILENT. Same drive, 7200rpm? Whines. Not bad, but it's there, especially when you get two or three of 'em whining in slightly different keys. Bleh.

10k drives are just plain loud. 15k drives are loud AND whiny. Yuk.

- Gurm, using IDE and saving $$.

[KvHagedorn]

I have 3 10k Cheetahs in my case, sitting 2 feet from my head. They don't make nearly that much noise (my fans drown them out in any case , and even they aren't that noisy), and the reliability factor is what sold me on SCSI long ago. That advantage has not changed.. with only a 1 year warranty on IDE drives now, I would say it is even more pronounced.

If you want a really noisy drive, I have a 1st generation 9GB IBM 10k drive (half height) I can sell you.. this thing sounds like a dremel tool in a live room, and gets too hot to touch (heatsink/fans absolutely required).

[Gurm]

Admittedly they are BETTER now...

As for reliability, I wouldn't buy a drive with a 1-year warranty. Who has that now?

- Gurm

[thop]

samsung still has 3, and some WD series also have 3. all other have 1 (2 here).

[Gurm]

Yikes. That sucks. Guess I have to keep buying WD.

- Gurm

[BuddMan]

Hmmm, I am watercooling my system, but if I do get SCSI, should I get a HD cooler seperate from my watercooling system to encase the SCSI drive with? Would it dampen the noise? Any coolers anyone would recommend?

And if I don't go SCSI, isochar made the suggestion of getting a 3GHz P4. Do you guys think it would be worth the investment vs. going with SCSI and a 2.8 (I've found out that I can actually work out a 15k rpm and 2.8GHz design). Any suggestions are welcome.

[Guru]

BuddMan you should also keep in mind that video editing takes up a great deal of disk space so 36GB will not get you far! So imo you shoud be looking at the 72GB models preferably 2 so you can get them in a raid 0 configuration!

[isochar]

Originally posted by BuddMan
Hmmm, I am watercooling my system, but if I do get SCSI, should I get a HD cooler seperate from my watercooling system to encase the SCSI drive with? Would it dampen the noise? Any coolers anyone would recommend?

And if I don't go SCSI, isochar made the suggestion of getting a 3GHz P4. Do you guys think it would be worth the investment vs. going with SCSI and a 2.8 (I've found out that I can actually work out a 15k rpm and 2.8GHz design). Any suggestions are welcome.

Don't forget that next week you can invest some additional money in a Granite Bay mobo. IMHO, the better investment is first SMP/SMT, then RAID and/or SCSI. The MPX is rather outdated already, so that's why I'd shoot for the P4 3.06. The 3.06 with Granite Bay will probably go head to head with a pair of MP 2200+. (We'll find out next week!)

As for a recommended hard drive cooler, this is what I use for my 36gb x15-36lp:

http://www.coolermaster.com.hk/en/products/hdcooler/dcd-4002.html

[isochar]

Originally posted by VJ
On the XP/SCSI-issue...

Is this the definite solution ?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q308219

Or is the SCSI-performance still not at maximum ?

Jörg

This was released as a hotfix in March '02, and was just bundled with SP1. It does not fix the problem. BTW, RAID IDE setups are also affected.

The 70-90% of performance is inaccurate. Users at storagereview have compared SCSI drive to SCSI drive moves and found that Win2k is faster than WinXP by at least 100%!!

One of the partial solutions that recovers some of the performance is to convert the drives to dynamic from basic.

[BuddMan]

Originally posted by isochar


Don't forget that next week you can invest some additional money in a Granite Bay mobo. IMHO, the better investment is first SMP/SMT, then RAID and/or SCSI. The MPX is rather outdated already, so that's why I'd shoot for the P4 3.06. The 3.06 with Granite Bay will probably go head to head with a pair of MP 2200+. (We'll find out next week!)

As for a recommended hard drive cooler, this is what I use for my 36gb x15-36lp:

http://www.coolermaster.com.hk/en/pr.../dcd-4002.html

Heh, I'm already including up to 200 bucks for a dual channel DDR mobo for my system, so that's already accounted for. Is there a good site that sells a good variety of HDD coolers? If I get one, it will have to have a black bezel cause my case is black.

[isochar]

I personally don't know of any black bezel hard drive coolers. Here's a partial list of various kinds:

http://www.plycon.com/hard/hdcoolers.htm

*edit* Just took a look at Tom's review of the 3.06 and ran across a pretty cool video that shows the benefits of SMP/SMT:

http://www4.tomshardware.com/images/thg_video_5_p4_ht.zip

*edit2* If you do want to shoot for the 3.0, you might want to buy an inexpensive 2.53 right now and hold off until the 3.06 drops to ~$300 around March/April.

[BuddMan]

Errr...I just looked at newegg.com at the price of the new 3GHz processors....$715. No freakin way I'll pay that much just for HT. That's ridiculous...

Edit: Yeah, I think I'll just pass up HT and get it when I decide to upgrade my comp two years from now.

[Marshmallowman]

I nice set of IDE drives in a nice RAID 5 or 0 config will give you very nice performance and probably be cheaper including the controller. Which can give simialr read/write performance to some low end scsis stuff,(but not seek times)

SCSI is great, but you usually paying for very low seek times(nice to have..but) and ultra reliabilty...eg 24/7/365 performance for years..that kind of usage rarely occurs on a desktop system you are probably paying for something you don't really need.

However if I was fully cashed up and had no debts I would go for 10k rpm drives (with a nice MB/plater density), which don't produce to much heat/noise,
I would Get the biggest drive I can aford now then in a 6month or a year or so add another to go to RAID 0 another 6 months add another ...etc

5 year warranty YEAH, i still have some uw scsis in my old box that have just gone out of waranty, 5 years waranty and I have never needed it for a any scsi drive I have bought!!!