Want to jump onto the SCSI bandwagon...any suggestions as to which combo to get?

[plucky duck]

I have had a computer for quite a long time now and never stepped foot into SCSI party so thought hey what the heck...

I want something that's FAST. Need not be big but fast. I am looking at along the lines of either the Seagate X15 or the Quantum ATLAS 10k 18Giggers.

As for controller here's my current options:
Adaptec U160 RAID 32mb SDRAM cache controller - $199US
Adaptec U160 39160 controller - $150
Adaptec U160 19160 controller KIT - $189

The first 2 are not kits.

I've never setup SCSI before, are they as simple as setting up IDEs'?

I'm also thinking though for the price I'll be paying I can get dual IBM 75GXP 60GIG HDs and a Promise Fastrak 100 Raid controller and still have excellent performance.

All input welcomed and appreciated http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Plucky

[canit]

I think both your ideas are good. If your going to add external devices like scanners, an external drive, etc then scsi is a good choice. For HDD's I would put my money into the raid/IDE combo, then try stripe and mirror or maybe add another drive and do both.

[NDC]

As for the Adaptec U160 39160 controller, it supports up to 30 devices, not 15, it has 2 SCSI channels, it's 64bit PCI. And I find that both will not be an important issue because most likely, your M/B doesnt even have 64bit PCI slots. And secondly, I don't think most users connect 30 SCSi devices on their home system. I would recommend the 19160 model, beacuse it seems more practical for home users. I use an 29160N on my system and it costs a bit more than 19160 models but I'm very happy with it.

Here is a link here that will help you narrow down your choice:
http://www.adaptec.com/products/guide/ultra160scsi.html

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 10-03-2000).]

[plucky duck]

Wee! Here's what got:

Quantum ATLAS II 9.2G 10K 8mb Ultra160 HD
Adaptec 19160 Kit

Now how do I go about installing this?

Do I install and setup the SCSI card first and then attach the HD? What about the software configurations and such?

I have no experience as far as SCSI goes.
Any help in this area is greatly appreciated http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Plucky

[qball]

As you appear to be adding to existing system, follow the installation instructions for the Adaptec card. It should be able to walk you through setting up the card and HD. Post back with any problems.

[plucky duck]

Got the setup going. It wasn't as hard as I first thought.

The 68-pin Internal U160 LVD cabling is thin, weak, stiff, and very fragile8(

The HD is emitting quite an amount of heat.
I have another HD directly above it.
There's no airflow to this area at all.

Should I have to worry about heat around the HD or is the HD made to handle such environments?

I was trying to setup dual-boot on the new HD today. Win98SE installed first then tried to do a clean install of Win2k. Sad part is I never got to finish installing Win2k as the first time after reboot from the install process, the setup application gave me this error *0x4,0,0,0*

Here's the system specs:
MSI 694D Dual Mobo
2x700E@1gig (only 1 cpu used for all OS installs)
128mb PC133 SDRAM
30G WD Caviar 5400 UDMA33
LinkSYS 10/100 NIC
Diamond V330 Riva128 PCI (bah!)
Adaptec 19160 SCSI Controller
Quantum 10K II 9.2G U160 SCSI Controller


Any help in this area also is appreciated http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
Plucky

[Mr.Goodbytes]

10K drives run hot as far as HDD's go. I recommend getting some active cooling kit for the drive. You don't want to risk data loss.