Re: setting up a file server


"Mark South" <mark.south@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.12.15.20.51.41.429960@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 08:48:01 -0500, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>
>>> Are S-ATA drives good enough, or is the extra cost for SCSI drives
>>> worth the money??
>>
>> I do not know. It is going to depend on what you mean by "good enough"
>> and
>> even then, I believe you are going to have to rely somewhat on your
>> intuition.
>>
>> * I do not know the top speeds fo S-ATA drives. I know the SCSI drives
>> will
>> run up to 15,000rpm. Depending on throughput requirements, you may need
>> very
>> high speed drives (and then again, you may not: only you can tell this).

SATA currently tops out at 10,000 RPM. The resultingly better seek time has
to be balanced off against the fact that memory is much cheaper and caching
much improved, so you don't churn little chunks of data to disk as often as
we used to.

> SCSI is hugely more expensive per storage unit, and vastly superior for
> very high throughput uses.

"It depends". If I can use the same $20,000 and buy 3 times as much storage
and backup for it, and never have to put stuff on tape, that can be a huge
win. If I'm manipulating huge databases where I have no hope of storing it
all in RAM and I have to search disk for complex queries (such as some
indisutrial Oracle setups), SCSI wins hands down.

> SATA drives are normally identical to the PATA drives of the same spec,
> but with different cables.
>
> Are SCSI drives better made? Well, Maxtor, for one, offers a 2-year
> warranty on their PATA and SATA drives in Europe. The SCSI drives get
> a 5-year warranty. What would you think?

Except that with the money I save buying SATA instead of SCSI, I can often
get twice the amount of space, and look at replacing the whole array in 2 or
3 years, decommissioning the old array for less critical uses.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: SCSI vs SATA
    ... It's just I've used SCSI for so long, ... SATA drives at the same time. ... Spec's for the drive had access time at 9.0 ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Hardware for SBS 2003?
    ... I am going to look at Dell and HP hardware. ... What they fail to mention is the basic design of SCSI vs. IDE, ... > Greg, that use to be true, but I can buy SATA drives with the SAME MTBF ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: SAS vs SCSI
    ... My subjective experience is that for a typicel SBS ... users) running on SATA drives in a RAID-1 setup with a hardware RAID ... always a SCSI Tape drive. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: Motherboard, CPU recommendations please
    ... DDR 333 RAM and two hard drives, Maxtor 80GB and Western Digital 120GB ... I have one CDRW and one DVD RW drives plus an HP SCSI ... possible and would like to upgrade where feasible. ... IMHO Vista is not worth the money. ...
    (uk.comp.homebuilt)
  • Re: SATA vs. SCSI, RAID?
    ... > However going from SATA drives with software RAID to SCSI ... There is no added security from HW RAID SCSI here. ... > use to convince the owner that additional money for SCSI ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)