Storage SCSI to SATA

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Frohicky1, 28 Feb 2010.

  1. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Hi all,

    One of my mates is a big Photoshop/Creative Suit user, and has noticed his page file is large and slow. I've recommended he put it on a second drive, but am looking to increase it's speed further. The photoshop website recommends putting on a seperate raid0 array, with as low an access time as possible.

    On ebay I've noticed lots of uber-cheap SCSI drives - 10k raptors, 10k cheetahs and 15k cheetahs. Two of these would be amazing for the page file and cheaper than a normal hard disk :D

    The trouble is they're all SCSI. From the little reading I've done, it looks like the more modern SAS is easily converted to SATA by a cable, but most of the ebay drives are Ultra-160 or -320, and the cards cost an absolutely ridiculous stupendous offensively insane amount!

    Anyone got any tips or websites for a way to convert SCSI to SATA as cheaply as possible?

    Thanks
     
  2. Captain Haddock

    Captain Haddock Blistering Barnacles

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    Beware :-
    10K or 15K rpm SCSI drives are NOT quiet
    If you use several then bring Ear defenders :D

    If you're only going to U160 speed then an Adaptec 29160 or 39160 card should be reasonably cheap enough on Fleabay.
     
  3. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    You can't convert SCSI to SATA, you need a SCSI card.

    Be warned, just because a drive has a high spindle speed doesn't necessarily mean it will outperform a modern 7200RPM SATA drive in any way but seek times.

    An Adaptec 19160 or 29160 would be cheap enough on ebay, and compatible with U320 drives too, but putting more than just one drive on the PCI bus would be a bottleneck. Keep in mind too that its very old hardware, I bought a 29160 for a few 10k drives around 10 years ago!

    A second gen raptor (WD***ADFD) would perform comparably, or even outperform all but the latest few generations of SCSI/SAS drives and is SATA so easy to just slot in.
     
  4. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Yeh, the throughput on the old raptors and cheetahs isn't good, less than any standard desktop hard disk. But because they're so cheap, two or three in raid0 would outstrip the throughput and seek time for even a velociraptor and for less cost than a standard hard disk . . . . except for the PCI card :(

    As for noise, I've heard them before, and they're pretty noisy :D i'll leave that choice to him.

    Thanks for adaptec recommendations, will check them out.
     
  5. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Btw, why would the PCI bottleneck it? How many lanes do the adaptec cards use?
     
  6. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    They don't. Old school PCI, ie limited to around 115MB/sec on a 33/32 bus
     
  7. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Rubbish. Sigh, and it could be such a cheap raid array . . . :sigh:
     
  8. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    SSD it!

    30-40GB SSDs are pretty cheap once you price up anything SCSI, have zero access latency and use a standard SATA bus.

    DONT get an Intel drive for it though. I've tried it, the limited write speed affects it and when the queue depth hits more than 4 windows locks up until it's done.
     
  9. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    You keep mentioning Raptors... you know Raptors are SATA, yes? Four first/second gen drives in RAID10 on an onboard controller would make for some pretty decent IO and sustained throughput figures and still be pretty cheap.
     
  10. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Yeah the Raptors are SATA. It's the old 36gb, 74gb and 150gb floating around on fleebay. I agree it would take three or four to make it worhwile, looking less and less attractive.

    Which SSDs u reckon Bindibadgi?
     
  11. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    30GB Vertex or Apex for ~£80?

    Only the 150/300GB upward raptors are worth it because of data density. The rest are very noisy and very old now.
     
  12. KayinBlack

    KayinBlack Unrepentant Savage

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    I'm picking up SAS drives for as little as 14.99 on Ebay right now. Sure, they need a controller, but a Dell SAS6i (capable of 6Gbps) is as little as 64 on there as well.

    I'm getting a PERC 5/i w/cache and BBU for around 140. I'm using it for RAID 10 across 8 drives for boot.
     
  13. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Yeh part of my problem is while the old 36gb raptor, and the cheetahs and atlas', have major spindle speeds, they're crap in just about every other way - no NCQ on some of them, uber-low density, noisy, hot. Having looked at some benchmarks on the net, looks like it would take three 36gb raptors in raid0 to equal my single velociraptor :jawdrop:
     
  14. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Post some HD Tune result as soon as its up and running :D:thumb:
     
  15. KayinBlack

    KayinBlack Unrepentant Savage

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    It'll be a bit, but I'll be glad to bench it when it's going.
     

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