I almost dropped my teeth!

[Stu Olson]

So I am pretty excited today (OK, I am easy to entertain) because all of my PC parts are suppose to arrive.....and my boss told me to take the day off of work.....and I got my wrenching all finished on the Jeep this morning before it got really hot.

So.....I realized (after reading the factory user manual for my new motherboard that I found on-line), that I neglected to order a 2nd Ultra ATA-66/100 HD cable for the 2nd drive. Stupid me, I should have known that the Raid controller does 1 drive per cable per port.

So, after wrenching at my friend's house this morning (seperate rant on that topic yet to come), I stopped by the local computer superstore place....CompUSA.

Now, I paid $5 for the cable from the mail order store, so I figured I would pay 2 to 3 times that price at the retail store. Wrong.....$29.99 for an 18" cable and it is NOT spec'd for ATA-100 operation, only ATA-66 bus speed. That is when I almost dropped my teeth on the floor (lucky I don't have dentures (yet)).

I don't mind a retailer making a profit, but why do they think I need to send their 1st born child to college on a single purchase?


http://www.stu-offroad.com

[TObject]

That’s because you got a wannabe raid controller. SCSI raids can work on a single cable no problem. I’ve got two 15ooo RPM drives configured to run Software RAID 1 under Win2000 on a single cable no problems.

CompUSA is an expensive store for “do-it-yourselvers”, if I have to buy local, I usually go to one of those Asian Mom-and-Pop shops.

[Stu Olson]

I won't argue the Raid controller point and that SCSI is much better.

My problem is not with the controller, it is with CompUSA. They would no doubt charge 4 to 6 times more than the mail order store would for an internal SCSI cable. I don't doubt that for a minute.

I guess I did not mention it. I did NOT buy the cable. I'll pick one up at another store or mail order it or piggy back it on my friend's PC order which will probably be going out in a week or so. Until then, I'll use one of the drives on the Raid controller and add the 2nd one when I get the cable.


http://www.stu-offroad.com

[Sephiroth]

SCSI more and more is becomming a thing of the past, raid the right IDE drives and you can smoke most SCSI setups and run cooler to boot.

Stu its the same cable for ATA-66 and the ATA-100
there are no cables spec'd for ATA-100
If someone told you this their wrong and if there sold as spec'd for ATA-100 dont be a sucker.

01 Sport, Auto, Silverstone , D44 with Trac-Lok and 3.73:1 ,Harry B Sux, Tera S3T 3" Lift, Currie steering box brace, Currie steering damper, Bilstein Shocks, GY MTR 33x1250-15 on rockcrawler Rims, Sun Performance rocker skids.

[Scott Hill]

well how can a 100Mb eide smoke a 160Mb SCSI.

I am doing my math wrong

and how does 4 devices smoke 15 devices OK 14 cause the card uses 1 of them.

please explain what I am missing

a little TJ with a few mods check her out at www.real-jeeps.com

[TObject]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Don Palese:
SCSI more and more is becomming a thing of the past, raid the right IDE drives and you can smoke most SCSI setups and run cooler to boot.
[/quote]

Obviously you have never heard about vitamins.

IDE will never beat SCSI in terms of reliability, parallelism of access, and length of the cable.

Why don’t you pay a visit to a mission critical data center and tell them that SCSI is thing of the past and that they should switch their storage area networks over to a couple of IDE drives. Shish!

[Sephiroth]

Oh I see your running this setup at home? We are talking about home servers are we not?
Scott your running 15 SCSI hard drives at home? My god what did that 160mb card cost you?

What im talking about is a simple home raid setup and yes dollar for dollar the performance of the SCSI vs IDE the little difference of the SCSI is a waste of money.



<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Scott Hill:
well how can a 100Mb eide smoke a 160Mb SCSI.

I am doing my math wrong

and how does 4 devices smoke 15 devices OK 14 cause the card uses 1 of them.

please explain what I am missing

a little TJ with a few mods check her out at <A HREF="http://www.real-jeeps.com<HR></BLOCKQUOTE" TARGET=_blank>http://www.real-jeeps.com<HR></BLOCKQUOTE</A>>

01 Sport, Auto, Silverstone , D44 with Trac-Lok and 3.73:1 ,Harry B Sux, Tera S3T 3" Lift, Currie steering box brace, Currie steering damper, Bilstein Shocks, GY MTR 33x1250-15 on rockcrawler Rims, Sun Performance rocker skids.

[Sephiroth]

Tobject get your facts right, SCSI hard drives has a high rate of heat related failure.
So mission critical is running out of the home?
Im talking about simple home raid units dipp ****.

IDE will never beat SCSI in terms of reliability,

parallelism of access, and length of the cable.

Why don’t you pay a visit to a mission critical data center and tell them that SCSI is thing of the past and that they should switch their storage area networks over to a couple of IDE drives. Shish![/QUOTE]

01 Sport, Auto, Silverstone , D44 with Trac-Lok and 3.73:1 ,Harry B Sux, Tera S3T 3" Lift, Currie steering box brace, Currie steering damper, Bilstein Shocks, GY MTR 33x1250-15 on rockcrawler Rims, Sun Performance rocker skids.

[Scott Hill]

I am running 160Mb SCSI drives but only 4 hard drives and 5 CD drives and yes that is my server at home. oh yea and 2 tape backup units.


To me it is not bad but I could always use more hard drive space.

I also run my own web sites mail server and active directory. but then again I always go a little overboard.

a little TJ with a few mods check her out at www.real-jeeps.com

[Scott Hill]

as for cost I got a P3 950 with 2 160 cards and 128 ram and 9 gig drive with CD for less then 400 each. I have 2 of them. I added memory and drives from old server. it works OK and they are name brand servers Gateway 6400's

a little TJ with a few mods check her out at www.real-jeeps.com

[TObject]

Well I have a dual channel SCSI card. On one channel I have low voltage differential devices (which consume low power interface wise) – 2 hard drives at the time. On the other channel I have single ended devices: an older hard drive, a SyQuest drive, a flat bed scanner, a film scanner and a CD recorder all working at top speed and never run into each other.

Those IDE wannabe arrays are incorporated on a single or a couple of chips of questionable quality, newer tested for reliability, with buggy software and bad compatibility. Try to run one of those in RAID mode under Linux. Try to make a bootable Windows 2000 array on one of these.

What is the purpose of the RAID? The first and foremost purpose of the RAID these days is failure tolerance. And excuse me, I don’t want to build my house on the sand, and I don’t want to put in the core of my system a chip of questionable quality not backed by a reputable company. Let’s don’t forget, that those IDE chips support only basic kinds of RAID with a limited number of disks, and no hot swapping.

A lifespan of a typical IDE hard drive is 30 years. IMHO, you only hurting your system reliability by adding one of those wannabe RAIDs in the middle, because of the high potential of screwing up the data, especially when you are striping or spanning, makes that wannabe chip the weak link instead of increasing the fault tolerance.

As for SCSI drives having high rate of failure? What are you talking about? It’s like saying that diesel trucks break down more than gasoline trucks. Failure of what? Many hard drives are made absolutely the same for SCSI and IDE versions with only interface electronics being different.

If cost is an object I can understand why IDE is a better choice for a home machine or a workstation.

SCSI is just better, in all aspects, excluding cost of new hardware.

[Stu Olson]

Well, I was going to post a comment or two, but with all of the crap flying back and forth, I think I'll limit myself to correcting a previously stated comment.

I was incorrect in stating that my raid controller on my motherboard needed 1 cable per drive. It uses the conventional IDE style of two drives per cable. So I can have 4 drives in my raid configuration and 4 more on the regular IDE ports.

And yes, price was a consideration which was why I went with the config I did. I have SCSI on my old desktop box and it will mostly like continue to run as it is.

In case anyone is curious....the details of my wannabe (as it is called by some) controller can be seen at http://www.highpoint-tech.com and it is the HPT370 model. According to the company, it will boot a Win2000 O/S PC.

Anyway....I now return you to your regular SCSI hosted server, and I will return to my IDE equipped workstation.


http://www.stu-offroad.com

[TJRON]

We need a Nerd section on this forum......

[Scott Hill]

Boy all this and no reply from Don yet.

a little TJ with a few mods check her out at www.real-jeeps.com

[TObject]

Don is frantically searching the Internet for articles on why IDE is better technology than SCSI. Not finding any he is realizing what a dim-witted thing he posted earlier today.

Oh, boy, this is so embarrassing. I would not want to be Don today.

[Tumbleweed]

Everything you guys have said is in a foreign language on this end. Now if you want to discuss driveshaft carrier bearings-----------you get the idea.

[Sephiroth]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TObject:
Well I have a dual channel SCSI card. On one channel I have low voltage differential devices (which consume low power interface wise) – 2 hard drives at the time. On the other channel I have single ended devices: an older hard drive, a SyQuest drive, a flat bed scanner, a film scanner and a CD recorder all working at top speed and never run into each other.


First and formost I do not run a hobbiest OS that Joe and his sun bobby put togeather, I have been running XP Pro for quite awhile now and I also have XP server.
Windows 2000 bahahaha, two service pacs already to keep it from crashing. Again tobject you miss the point. You still do a dance around the heat factor and dont even say its not a problem with a SCSI running at 1500rpm even with cooling.


Those IDE wannabe arrays are incorporated on a single or a couple of chips of questionable quality, newer tested for reliability, with buggy software and bad compatibility. Try to run one of those in RAID mode under Linux. Try to make a bootable Windows 2000 array on one of these.

What is the purpose of the RAID? The first and foremost purpose of the RAID these days is failure tolerance. And excuse me, I don’t want to build my house on the sand, and I don’t want to put in the core of my system a chip of questionable quality not backed by a reputable company. Let’s don’t forget, that those IDE chips support only basic kinds of RAID with a limited number of disks, and no hot swapping.

A lifespan of a typical IDE hard drive is 30 years. IMHO, you only hurting your system reliability by adding one of those wannabe RAIDs in the middle, because of the high potential of screwing up the data, especially when you are striping or spanning, makes that wannabe chip the weak link instead of increasing the fault tolerance.

As for SCSI drives having high rate of failure? What are you talking about? It’s like saying that diesel trucks break down more than gasoline trucks. Failure of what? Many hard drives are made absolutely the same for SCSI and IDE versions with only interface electronics being different.

If cost is an object I can understand why IDE is a better choice for a home machine or a workstation.

SCSI is just better, in all aspects, excluding cost of new hardware.[/quote]

01 Sport, Auto, Silverstone , D44 with Trac-Lok and 3.73:1 ,Harry B Sux, Tera S3T 3" Lift, Currie steering box brace, Currie steering damper, Bilstein Shocks, GY MTR 33x1250-15 on rockcrawler Rims, Sun Performance rocker skids.

[TObject]

What does the rotational speed of the drive have to do with interface? You can put a 15k motor on an IDE hard drive, it’s not like it will heat up less just because of that.

Does the engine on your jeep heats up more when you slap on better tires?

[Scott Hill]

well just something to keep in mind, in the last 11 or so years I have worked on computers I have not seen many drive failures.

MFM drives about 30 but all where 5years old or older except the ST251-1's which had a design flaw that when you turned them off the head stuck to the platter

IDE about 5

EIDE 1

SCSI of any speed or interface 2, one was after I droped it

This does not count lap top drives.


So is RAID over kill or the home user YES what takes out most data is Users and viruses so a weekly backup on most home PC's is the best bet or if you are paranoid a nightly backup.

a little TJ with a few mods check her out at www.real-jeeps.com

[Sephiroth]

Just so we can end this thread and your pathetic references to jeeps for us to compare because you would rather insult the jeepbbs community by doing this becaue perhaps they wont understand unless they are put it in jeep terms.
Again you go off in the wrong direction.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TObject:
What does the rotational speed of the drive have to do with interface? You can put a 15k motor on an IDE hard drive, it’s not like it will heat up less just because of that.


Does the engine on your jeep heats up more when you slap on better tires?[/quote]

Whats your idea of better tires?? Tread?? size?? what??

01 Sport, Auto, Silverstone , D44 with Trac-Lok and 3.73:1 ,Harry B Sux, Tera S3T 3" Lift, Currie steering box brace, Currie steering damper, Bilstein Shocks, GY MTR 33x1250-15 on rockcrawler Rims, Sun Performance rocker skids.

[TObject]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Don Palese:
Whats your idea of better tires?? Tread?? size?? what??
[/quote]

Certainly not price.

Just because BFGs are cheaper I will never tell to a fellow jeeper that they are better than MTRs