SCSI Help

[jinkies3]

I don't know jack about scsi. Happen to have bought 4.2 and 9 gig scsi sun hard drives on ebay. Can these work on my pc? I read that they won't work with a pc. I found a post about using one of these for just the o/s. That sounds good to me.

Sanity was that friend of mine that I accidentally pulled the trigger on

 

[Keezah]

Sun? as in these 2 hd's were used with having the Sun OS installed on them? If that's the case, all you'll need to do is create new partitions & filesystems to either FAT/FAT32 or if ur using win2k or Xp, u could use NTFS. Find out what type of scsi they are, # of pins and bus speed, eg. Ultra-scsi, wide-scsi, etc... then buy the corresponding controller card.


AXP 1.8+ on A7A266 1.03
Samsung PC2100 256mb
Seagate X15 on Adaptec 29160

 

[jinkies3]

Sun as in Sun Microsystems is the manufacturer. The hard drives are: Sun 4.2GB Hot Swappable 80-pin 1" HD, and
SUN Cheetah 9.1GB, both are 10k.

Sanity was that friend of mine that I accidentally pulled the trigger on

 

[jc14all]

<font color=green>Hot Swappable 80-pin 1" HD</font color=green>

Those HDD's are for rack mount RAID configuration, or at least one of them (4.2GB). Single Connector Attachment (SCA) is a special 80 pin hot swappable connector usually connected to a SCA backplane.

If you are planning to go SCSI as the post above mentioned you will need to know which protocol you will use; Fast/Ultra/Wide-Ulta-2/Ultra-160. Here is some <A HREF="http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/scsi/" target="_new">information</A> to read.


<b><font color=red>Cast your vote with your $,</b></font color=red> <b><font color=blue>shed your pride with your opinion.</b></font color=blue>

 

[Lars_Coleman]

He can get a <A HREF="http://www.scsimasters.com/adapintmic68tosca80.html" target="_new">80 - 68pin conversion kit.</A> Not really the best way, but it sure is better then spending a boat load on a SCSI backplane isn't it?

I didn't know that Sun made their own hard drives? They were probably made by one of the High Rollers (Seagate, IBM, Maxtor/Quantum, etc.)?

<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>

 

[jc14all]

Yes, you are right he could go that route, but since he was unfamiliar with SCSI architecture I thought he need more information before making a big decision like that. Plus those drives are older technology. The 80-68 pin adapter would work, do you think it would be worth the time and money for such a small setup? The real question is what will he be using the system for?

Sun does build the SPARC stations but not sure about HDD's.
<A HREF="http://www.sun.com/products/processors/" target="_new">SUN</A> Yeah, I think the other HDD could possibly be another manufacturer.

<b><font color=red>Cast your vote with your $,</b></font color=red> <b><font color=blue>shed your pride with your opinion.</b></font color=blue>

 

[jinkies3]

Isn't scsi better than ide? It is faster. Here is what i bought. I bought the 4.2 gig from someone else. I got the 9 after, when I found out I needed the mounting bracket. I don't want to spend a lot of money. I only paid 20 for what i have.

You are bidding on a New Sun Seagate 9.1GB, FA-CL, 10k RPM Hot Swappable Hard Drive Model Number: ST39102FC; still in its anti-static bag. This Drive has nver been used. The drive comes with the hot swappable Spud bay bracket, and 8 screws to mount the drive to it. This Has everything you need to mount the drive and make it hotswapable.

RE:The real question is what will he be using the system for?

Why? What are the applications? I just thought it was faster. Faster is better. Right?



Sanity was that friend of mine that I accidentally pulled the trigger on

 

[jc14all]

Yes, SCSI is fast and NT is optimized for SCSI to give you true <A HREF="http://personal.cfw.com/~tkprit/ui/multitasking.html" target="_new">multitasking</A> as opposed to Win 9x/Me's <A HREF="http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213094,00.html" target="_new">pre-emptive multitasking</A>.

Since you have the 40 pin SCA SCSI HDD I thought you were interested in RAID, which most people use the SCSI SCA HDD's for servers. However, as mentioned in the above post, you can get a 80-68 pin conversion kit to run your system as a workstation with those drives. Now, since you mention the model number I see you have a 40 pin SCA <A HREF="http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/fc/st39102fc.html" target="_new">ST39102FC</A> forget getting the 80-68 pin. You need the 40-pin conversion kit instead. It looks to me that you got a great deal!

I mentioned small setup in regard to the more advanced HDD's with larger capacity for the today's application/software program hogs that suck up most of your disk space.

Also, I said older technology not in aspect of being bad, but the new SCSI-3 technology has data transfer rates (160-320 MB/sec). The HDD you have is Fiber Channel Interface, which I think has a data transfer rate of approx. 100 MB/sec. Here is how you determine what you have by the <A HREF="http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/discmodelinter.html" target="_new">model number</A>.

SCSI is good for any purpose really, but more expensive that IDE. A lot of SCSI users that are into graphic design, CAD, video editing...etc. programs that require fast computations. Plus the ease of connecting up to 7 - 15 and more devices in daisychain fashion is a nice added benifit.

SCSI being better than IDE? now that's a question I would have to answer, that depends... Checkout some <A HREF="http://www.connectworld.net/cables/scsifaq.html" target="_new">FAQ's</A> based on some pro's and con's. IDE/ATA has advanced technologically speaking close to the speed of IDE, but not as fast.

<b><font color=red>Cast your vote with your $,</b></font color=red> <b><font color=blue>shed your pride with your opinion.</b></font color=blue>

 

[Ncogneto]

Model Number: ST39102FC

Ok what do you want to know? These drives can be purchased on ebay for <20 bucks. But you are going to need alot of other stuff before you get this baby up and running and if you just want to get this one drive working it is not worth your while. I have 4 of these drives cousin's the ST39103FC's.

What you will need bare minimum

tcard $50.00
HBA ( qlogic 2100 or simular) $50.00 to $100.00
HSSDC to db9 cable $15.00 to $30.00


This drive is going to test out on HDD tach at around 27,000 max read with an average of 22,000. it will give you a better access time around 8.8 ms(actual) than any IDE drive out there. But, you are better off getting a new IDE drive for what it will cost you to buy the hardware required to make this work.

Isn't scsi better than ide?

Not when you are comparing a SCSI drive of 2-3 generations ago to the current crop of IDE drives. SCSI drives do scale better then IDE drives when used in multiple drive RAID configurations. Now if you wanted to use 4 of these drives and stripe them all RAID 0 for a fast scratch drive then it becomes a little more reasonable cost wise as you still only need one controller and one cable, only the cost of additional tcards are neccesary ( one for each drive ).

As for the sun drive thing, that is merly the firmware installed on your drive, and for the most part Sun firmware is nothing much more than standard Seagate firmware with the SUN monikor placed on it. You can upgrade the firmware, I won't go into that now unless you decide you want to use this drive.

If you are still interested in installing your OS on a FC-AL drive, you are much better off going with a drive like this <A HREF="http://here" target="_new">http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/enterprise/family/0,1086,327,00.html</A> which is newer and much faster and will run you in the neighorhood of $140.00



It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!