Connect SCSI Ultra 320 drive to Desktop?

[krang00]

Hello, I have an ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard and would like to connect the following drive as my primary OS drive:
HITACHI Ultrastar 15K147 HUS151414VL3800 (18P6270) 147GB 15,000 RPM 16MB Cache SCSI Ultra320 80pin Hard Drive

Any suggestions on the best way to do this? I'm assuming this will be faster than my 7200 RPM SATA3 8MB cache Hard Drive?

Thanks for the input!

 

[jeremyrailton]

i asked the same question in here once. long story short, gotta buy an expensive expansion card.

 

[ethel]

i asked the same question in here once. long story short, gotta buy an expensive expansion card.

Not true. You can just buy a second hand Ultra160 SCSI Adaptec PCI card, such as the 29160. You can pick them up from ebay for next to nothing. You'll need a terminated Ultra 160 / 320 cable too.

I have a 15k SCSI here as my primary drive and performance is awesome.

 

[michiganteddybear]

Not true. You can just buy a second hand Ultra160 SCSI Adaptec PCI card, such as the 29160. You can pick them up from ebay for next to nothing. You'll need a terminated Ultra 160 / 320 cable too.

I have a 15k SCSI here as my primary drive and performance is awesome.

yea, that will work, but you loose out on some transfer speed.. in theory, 1/2 of it. the more expensive U320 cards will let you keep the full speed of the drive.

Now, I am NOT saying U160 is slow. not by any means, but you loose the potential for more speed by using the 160 controller, as opposed to going with a 320 controller

 

[mike99]

If you only have standard PCI slot, PCI bus is max 132MB/s and single HD, even 15k will have limit on Data transfer. To use SCSI bus fully you need several HDs and a Server grade motherboard with PCI-X or 64bit PCI slot, with the correct(expensive) adapter card. Just get the AHA2940 or 29160.

Mike.

 

[ethel]

yea, that will work, but you loose out on some transfer speed.. in theory, 1/2 of it. the more expensive U320 cards will let you keep the full speed of the drive.

Now, I am NOT saying U160 is slow. not by any means, but you loose the potential for more speed by using the 160 controller, as opposed to going with a 320 controller

You won't lose out on transfer speed for a single drive. The maximum STR of the Hitachi UltraStar is 93MB/Sec, so a 160MB/Sec interface is enough:

http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php

Edit: and as mike99 says correctly the PCI bus delivers 133MB/s max, so that will infact be your limit - still enough for a single drive though.

 

[cpburns]

I would say that if you can find a decent, cheap 320 controller for a PCIe x1 or x4 slot, whichever your board has, and have a floppy drive to do the XP controller install with, you'd be flying.

 

[krang00]

Would a PCI Express X1 card be best for that (I have 1 slot)?

Would this card work for my motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118060?

Also, I'm assuming I would need an adapter like this one (SM-071) http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/scsi_adapters.html#sca-80 and also a cable and terminator?

Thanks all for the comments.

 

[ir_efrem]

Not true. You can just buy a second hand Ultra160 SCSI Adaptec PCI card, such as the 29160. You can pick them up from ebay for next to nothing. You'll need a terminated Ultra 160 / 320 cable too.

I have a 15k SCSI here as my primary drive and performance is awesome.

more specifically the "Adaptec ASC-29160N"

best advice here so far =)

i've gotten 2 ebay scsi controller cards so far - couldn't be happier =)

 

[raptorxt]

since you have a motherboard that doesn't have pci-x slot
go with the pci-express cards (they offer the best performance)


or if you want you could go with sas drives and have future upgrade ability with a lot more potential in years to come.

 

[raptorxt]

If you only have standard PCI slot, PCI bus is max 132MB/s and single HD, even 15k will have limit on Data transfer. To use SCSI bus fully you need several HDs and a Server grade motherboard with PCI-X or 64bit PCI slot, with the correct(expensive) adapter card. Just get the AHA2940 or 29160.

Mike.

mike is correct. you would need 2 scsi drives to get the best performance out of the drives.
i would go with 2 of the hitachis, and a 160 controller

 

[geofelt]

The 80 pin drive will also need a 80 pin to 68 pin adapter to connect to the adaptec controllers. The 80 pin drives are used in hot swap server environments. I would suggest a 68 pin drive instead. You can get 15k scsi drives and controllers cheaply on e-bay. It does not cost much for the experiment, and they do work. I actually did this with reasonable results. You get about the same performance as a 10k raptor. I had hoped for more. In the end, I abandoned the approach feeling that it was cleaner and simpler just to use a raptor. I used a 19160N as I recall, but the 29160 would work as well. A pci slot will not be a bottleneck until you go past two drives on a very active system.

 

[krang00]

Thanks for the input everyone, since I already have the drive I'm going to get the 29160 160 SCSI card and cable and give that a shot.

 

[ethel]

Good luck with it. Get the 29160N as IR_EfremMake said, or make sure the model you get is PCI compatible (some are PCIX only, which is usually only found in servers).

As geofelt says you'll need an 80 pin to 68 pin converter as well. Again, can be picked up from ebay for very little cash.