Hard Drive Interfaces (SCSI, SATA, Etc)

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vonfeldt7

New Member
Hard Drive Interfaces (SCSI)

I'm looking at hard drives for my new build, and I'm starting to get a little bit confused with the different interfaces available, and what my motherboard will support.

Components:

I've looked into all of this a little, including Hard Drives 101. Basically I'm wondering if any of the above will work with my mobo, or if I would have to purchase an SCSI controller or something?

Thanks a bunch.
 
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Not out of the box. You would need a SCSI controller. The SAS drive and ultra 320 use different connectors so be careful what controller you buy if you choose to go with SCSI. It will get expensive as well.
 
Raptors are overpriced. I would just get a large SATAII drive with 16MB-32MB of cache. If you really want speed then setup a RAID 0 or RAID 5 array.
 
[-0MEGA-];829678 said:
Raptors are overpriced. I would just get a large SATAII drive with 16MB-32MB of cache. If you really want speed then setup a RAID 0 or RAID 5 array.
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Yeah, I actually just looked into this a few minutes ago, and I think I'm going to get 2 150GB HDD's @ 7,200RPM and setup a RAID 0 Array, this would actually be faster than one 10,000RPM Raptor wouldnt it?
 
vonfeldt7 said:
Yeah, I actually just looked into this a few minutes ago, and I think I'm going to get 2 150GB HDD's @ 7,200RPM and setup a RAID 0 Array, this would actually be faster than one 10,000RPM Raptor wouldnt it?
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I would go with the 320GB 16MB Cache SATAII hard drives for about $80.

It depends what you mean by faster, the transfer rates will be higher but the seek time and latency wont be faster.
 
[-0MEGA-];829678 said:
Raptors are overpriced. I would just get a large SATAII drive with 16MB-32MB of cache. If you really want speed then setup a RAID 0 or RAID 5 array.
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This is actually not true. 1 high speed sata HD is faster than two regular sata (or any type of HD) in RAID 0. RAID 5, in a desktop? Yeah, I hope you have lots of fans, and money for a desktop. RAID 5 is more of a server side technology.

The thing is, the raptors have a very fast seek time, way faster than your average HDs, add in the 10,000 RPMs, and the 5 year warranty on a Raptor, it is the better HD.

Do not RAID 0 your desktop for gaming, you will get zero performance increase. RAID 0 is only really beneficial when you are actually utilizing its advantages. RAID 0 does not increase your fps, it does not give you a better frame rate, it does not make anything run smoother, it does not make really anything on a basic level run faster. Office applications, web browsing, all of that is going to perform the same. Now, if you are editing video or recording audio or something where you are working with multiple files at once that are all many gigabytes in size, then yes a RAID 0 can be up to 40% faster. For a home user, its not worth it.

Go compare the average latency on a Raptor to every other HD, in most cases they are twice as fast.
 
Then what if I purchase a 10,000rpm Raptor (150gb) with my OS/games on it....can I purchase purchase another 7200rpm (500mb) to store all of my music, movies, pictures, etc?

Basically I just want a main drive (Raptor) and a secondary drive as most of my storage...without RAID..could I do this?
 
vonfeldt7 said:
Then what if I purchase a 10,000rpm Raptor (150gb) with my OS/games on it....can I purchase purchase another 7200rpm (500mb) to store all of my music, movies, pictures, etc?

Basically I just want a main drive (Raptor) and a secondary drive as most of my storage...without RAID..could I do this?
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Yes, and that is basically the idea. You put your OS and apps on a fast drive and your data on a slower one. RAID 0 also puts you in the chance of a full system crash since data is shared amongst 2 or more drives.
 
tlarkin said:
Yes, and that is basically the idea. You put your OS and apps on a fast drive and your data on a slower one. RAID 0 also puts you in the chance of a full system crash since data is shared amongst 2 or more drives.
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I'm not too worried about the chance of a system crash ...

also I was thinking, and you said that the Raptor would be faster than 2 7,200rpm in raid 0 because it [the raptor] has faster seek times, write times, etc...but since the 2 7,200rpm drives are in raid 0, wouldnt they be faster? even if the write time on both of the 7,200rpm drives is slower than the write time of the raptor, wouldnt they be faster sense each drive only has to write half of the data (since they're in raid0) while the single raptor would have to write all of the data itself?

^^I don't know if that makes any sense...I tried to explain it as best I could.
 
vonfeldt7 said:
I'm not too worried about the chance of a system crash ...

also I was thinking, and you said that the Raptor would be faster than 2 7,200rpm in raid 0 because it [the raptor] has faster seek times, write times, etc...but since the 2 7,200rpm drives are in raid 0, wouldnt they be faster? even if the write time on both of the 7,200rpm drives is slower than the write time of the raptor, wouldnt they be faster sense each drive only has to write half of the data (since they're in raid0) while the single raptor would have to write all of the data itself?

^^I don't know if that makes any sense...I tried to explain it as best I could.
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Here is a quote from an article from Toms hardware

The Raptor-X's performance is even good enough to beat a RAID 0 array consisting of two modern 7,200 RPM drives, except in terms of pure throughput, of course. In addition, it is nicer having only one drive to install, and the data safety of a single drive is better anyway. Speaking of safety, we should refer to the five year warranty, which should give you a good feeling.
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Basically in pure through put a RAID 0 usually wins, but in Application performance (this is what you want over data transfers) the Raptors are faster.

If you feel like reading through the whole pain in the butt article, which some of it is fluff, here it is.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/06/wd1500ad_raptor_xtends_performance_lead/index.html
 
Okay thanks...I guess I'll get a 150gb raptor, and a 320gb (or maybe 500gb) 7200rpm hdd..which I really don't want to do...because it's more expensive..but oh well. I was looking at benchmarks (found here) a few minutes ago, and the Raptors were only slightly better than a few other 7,200rpm drives...is this even worth it?

Also, I heard that there may be new Raptors coming out soon? Is this true?
 
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RAID 0 drastically increases the chance of data corruption and system failure. A malfunctioning hard drive isn't the only culprit, a user could "accidentally" delete the RAID array by messing around with the BIOS, or there could be an issue with a drive as we saw not too long ago with a S.M.A.R.T. error.

I'm a perfect example of this since I have four hard drives in RAID 0. However I perform a backup virtually every day onto an external 500GB hard drive, so in the event that it does occur, all of my files, saved games, desktop, local settings, and application data will be recoverable.
 
So if two 7,200rpm drives in raid arent better than a slingle raptor...what about three or four 7,200rpm drives?(in raid 0, or maybe 5)?
 
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vonfeldt7 said:
What about 75? 100?

^Kidding...alright I see your point...I guess I'll just purchase one Raptor and one 7,200rpm drive after all.
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Maybe if you had like a million in RAID 0, but then that could go so fast it could create a small vortex in your room, and turn everything into anti matter. I don't think you want that.

When it comes down to it, RAID technology is really only best for massive data throughput. So, for example, if I have lets say an Open Directory or Active Directory Master server with 5,000 users on it. Attached to that server is a 6TB RAID 5 array for home directories. Each user gets 1 gig of space on their home directory and they are constantly reading/writing data from it. That takes up 5TB of the drive there, and only leaves 1TB of free space, and also it has 5,000 users pegging that array constantly through out the day. The drives need to be able to read/write data very fast and do a lot of it at once. That is where the array comes in handy. My example is a bit over board too, i don't think you would ever want to host 5,000 home directories on one server, but I just used it as an example.
 
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