[Gllug] Computer shopping

[Andy Farnsworth]

RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks

Where does Inexpensive come in to play here?

IDE drives have now reached 10,000 RPM spindle speeds while SCSI has both
10k and 15k for it's high end drives.  I personally prefer IDE, especially
if you get a good RAID card and IDE Drive cage that supports Hot Swapping.
The 3Ware controllers support Hot Spares, Hot Swap, and RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and
JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks).  If you buy the drive cage from 3ware then you
get true hot swap support for IDE, even though IDE doesn't support it
directly.  You have one drive per channel on the controller so get full
bandwidth per drive.  I do suggest you get a 64 bit PCI bus preferably at 66
Mhz for your server as you will severly limit your RAID performance if you
go with 32Mbit at 33 Mhz.  Remember that the more spindles per RAID volume
the faster it is, so 8 100Gb Drives would be faster than 4 200Gb drives.
Don't forget to make sure your PS will support the load of all these drives,
plus the hot spares (drives plugged in, but not used until a drive in the
RAID fails, then it will activate it and rebuild the RAID automagically
using it and you still have full redundancy).

Andy Farnsworth
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: gllug-bounces at linux.co.uk [mailto:gllug-bounces at linux.co.uk]On
> Behalf Of Christopher Hunter
> Sent: July 28 2003 07:59
> To: Greater London Linux Users Group
> Subject: Re: [Gllug] Computer shopping
>
>
> On Sunday 27 Jul 2003 9:26 pm, Mark Preston wrote:
> > Re:-
> >
> > >>/ PS If you are going to surgest SCSI your going to have to
> explain why
> > >> very
> >
> > />/> carefully because 18Gb hard disks do not compare well to
> 80Gb ones for
> > IDE />/> when SCSI cards are expensive too. If its needed I'm
> going to need
> > to say />/> /why/ and currently I don't know at all!
> > /
> >
> > >Three words...
> > >5 years warranty
> >
> > What is the sound like for SCSI drives, are they quieter or
> more noisy than
> > IDE drives? I've never had a SCSI hard drive, but if they run
> quietly I'd
> > quite like to know more details of where to get a machine with
> them running
> > - having had a couple of IDE hard drives fail lately.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Mark Preston
>
> In my experience, SCSI drives are no more reliable than IDE - the same
> mechanical flaws cripple both types, and it's usually mechanical
> failure that
> gets you!  SCSI are easier to configure and manipulate in *n*x as
> they are
> the default type, but I've never had a problem setting up IDE
> drives of all
> types.
>
> IMHO, there's no longer any reason to buy SCSI drives - they're
> just a more
> expensive option with little going for it.  The Warranties on any
> drive are
> usually worthless in the Real World [TM] - it's fine that a
> manufacturer will
> replace a dead drive during the Warranty period, but you've still
> lost the
> data!  It's as easy and much cheaper these days to build a RAID
> Array with
> multiple IDE drives - remember what RAID stands for - the word
> "inexpensive"
> is in there!
>
> Also - any SCSI drive I've ever heard is noisier than IDE ones!
>
> Chris
>
>
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