SCSI or RAID 0

[michaelsil1]

What I have is a WD 120GB JB hard drive, ASUS A7V333 Motherboard, Corsair 512MB XMS2700 RAM, Windows XP Professional. The more I fill up this drive the slower my access times become. I was thinking about going to 18.5GB 15,000rpm SCSI drives and adding and striping as I needed; someone told me that I could not add and stripe that it had to be done when first setting up the drives "bummer". Since this is very expensive I was thinking about running four 20GB Maxtor ATA133 drives with a Promise Fasttrack TX2000 Raid, set to 0. Does anyone know if this Raid setup will be faster than what I already have.

 

[poorboy]

If you want speedy response, go for the 15K SCSI drive. BTW, you can grow an array across disks, especially if you go for a Hardware RAID setup - check out the Adaptec docs online - and/or use NTFS. Note that you cannot expand a Windows *software* raid volume if it is the system or boot volume, but a hardware raid volume is ok. This is documented on the MS technet site.

If you can spare the cash, try to get a RAID card (preferably with cache), rather than just a SCSI card.

<i>It's all the same with the lights off</i>

 

[kief]

4x20 IDE will be much faster, but the seek time isnt nearly as good as any modern SCSI drive. If you are working with larger files the IDE RAID would be better. If seek time is more important (like for small files) the SCSI is better....

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[poorboy]

I would have to argue that. If you were using a Seagate X15 36LP, you can pull 45 to 60 MB/s, and have fast accesses with it. In theory, 4 x Maxtor D740X should give around 70-90 MB/s (bit of a guess). The last review I found of that card gave 30-50MB/s with 2 drives, but no mention of 4 drives. The onboard HPT controller on ABIT IT7-Max only scores 40MB/s with 4 drives, I think due to either a dud controller design, or IDEs Slave/Master issues...

So yeah maybe it is a bit faster overall, but not insanely so, and once you got your 4 disks, you stuck. SCSI can grow a bit more.

refs:
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/10/065209&mode=thread
http://www.harddiskinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=Promise+FastTrack+TX2000&Series=0&index=5
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MjkzLDU=

<i>It's all the same with the lights off</i>

 

[Ncogneto]

Doesn't matter as either scenario will saturate the pci bus ( unless you go to 64/66 ) thus capping your sustained transfer rate. This being the case the SCSI setup will feel more responsive do to its faster access times. Can you even get a DX740x in 20 gig?

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

 

[kief]

A single SCSI drive wont fill the bus. I wish I could find a decent board with 64 bit PCI though as my SCSI RAID does fill the 32 bit bus. The Tyan AMD760MP board is under 200 although I dont want a dual board really......still very tempting =)

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[siliconjon]

If you already have a 120WD 7200, then I would opt for a second drive of the same and set it up in RAID 0. Those drives can really make use of a RAID's performance enhancement.

But that's just me.

Kill a man, you're a murdered. Kill many and you're a conqueror. Kill them all, you're a GOD