Question regarding optimal SCSI setup

[wraithlok]

Primarily I am interested in using my scsi drives as gaming drives


Right now I am using

2x MAM3367MC (15k rpm 36 gig fujitsu drives)
in raid 0 with a

LSIU160 adapter card




My question is what's the best way to implement these drives in my system? Should I get a different card for better performance?

Additionally my drives have to be connected via a 320 SCSI Ultra4 adapter. (80 pin to 50 pin)... would this bottleneck my system at all?



any help would be great.. thanks

[Sterling_Aug]

And you expect to gain what out of an update if any?

You are throttling the drives by using an 80 to 50 pin connector. Get a real card and new cables to get the full benefit of the 80 pins.

You still won't see that much of a gain though.

[wraithlok]

all the cards I see are either 50 pin or 68 pin.. do you know of any that you can recommend that are 80 pin? or am I looking at the wrong place (newegg)

[Peter M]

The drives are 80-pin because they'd be hot swap capable if they were in proper hot swap drive bays.

What you should get is an 68-wire "LVD" cable w/ termination, and 80-to-68 "LVD" adapters for the drives.

That'll give you actual U160 operation on the cable, whereas your current 50-pin cabling limits you to U20 mode. Given that you're on 33 MHz standard PCI, that'll be 95 MB/s instead of 17. You'll notice.

[sm8000]

I don't think the LSI U160 offers RAID...

[Sterling_Aug]

SM: I agree. I can't find any mention of RAID anywhere.

[sm8000]

I know it doesn't ;) I've had one for years. Maybe he's planning software RAID?

[Peter M]

True, there's no firmware assisted RAID in that chip, but he still can run a host-based "soft" RAID as long as the OS is booted from elsewhere.

[G]

This is what I have with my LSI Logic LSI22320-R
64-bit PCI-X Ultra320 SCSI Dual-Channel Host Bus Adapter

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/scsi_hbas/lsi22320_r.html

Cables:
LVD Round to 68-pin (Product Name: ACK-68I3-LVD-LP-Round-U320)
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/cables/cables/int_scsi/

[wraithlok]

To clarify :)


1) i do run software raid right now, however, I was looking at possibly trying out a hardware raid setup (which would require me to buy a new card i know). I was wondering if the performance difference is notable enough to justify this (or if I should just stick with software raid)

2) my fujitsu drives only have 80 pin connectors and I was wondering if there was a bottleneck out there when using an adapter to input on my card.. it appears that there is no other way to do it though

since I can't find 80 pin cables anywhere and no cards have 80 pin internal connections ><




Thanks for the suggestion on the card I will defintely take a look at that :)


last question:

I'm assuming that I should defintely use a 68 pin to 80 pin adapter .. not a 50 to 80
( like I am now)

[sm8000]

68-to-80 for sure. There is no bottleneck unless you got a defective adapter. Don't know what to tell you about soft RAID though, could you tell us about your CPU(s)?

[G]

You will find high-quality SCSI adapters here and much more.

http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg01_adapters.htm

[G]

My card can be configured for mirroring, stripping or RAID but the firmware update is different for each.

LSI Logic LSI22320-R
64-bit PCI-X Ultra320 SCSI Dual-Channel Host Bus Adapter

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/sc...lsi22320_r.html

You may be able to get the HBA so cheap now it is worth circumventing the hassles you have for this HBA (Host Board Adapter)

I would have nothing else but SCSI as my main storage subsystem and this is what I have used through out my 10+ years using computers.

SCSI rules and nothing comes close even if you don’t use RAID.

Checkout Granite Digital, starting from their Home Page.
http://www.granitedigital.com/

[Peter M]

The 22320R is the most expensive of the series; the 20320R or 21320R would also do nicely.

Still, the OP will have to throw that 50-pin cable out and get proper 68-pin LVD equipment - cable, terminator, 68-80 adapters.

[wraithlok]

68-to-80 for sure. There is no bottleneck unless you got a defective adapter. Don't know what to tell you about soft RAID though, could you tell us about your CPU(s)?



Thank you all so much for your input thus far!


Currently I am running the following

DFI Lanparty nf4 ultra-d mobo
2 gigs of OCZ gold ram (4x512... switching to 2x 1g plat ram)
x2 4400




I understand the difference between raid 0 and raid 1 (reliability etc) .. is it worth it to run windows on my 15k rpm scsi drives as well as w/e game I am playing at the time (BF2, WoW w/e) or stick to what i am doing and run windows on my 500gig SATA drive and the games on the SCSI