SCSI or ATAPI Slot Load DVD-Rom Drives

[lhgpoobaa]

u dont necessarily need a controller card for more than 2 drives.

many motherboards nowerdays have an onboard riad/ide chip + 2 extra ide connectors, so you can run raid 0, 1 or 0+1 or ata setups with up to 8 drives.

but if u do want an external raid card then promise is a good brand.

difference between the 106S and the 116 is trayless and tray versions. oh yeah... i think the 106S has digital audio out, the 116 just has standard analogue.

i watch dvd's occasionally on my PC. they arnt too bad. course i also rip some of them.

Anything i think of as 'Decent' is unlikely to ever become 'OEM'

 

[Vince604]

hmm okay thx.
Well what's the point of Raid though?

kk guess I'll go with the 106S then.

haha alright then I see. Don't your eyes get tired from the monitor?.....

 

[Crashman]

Anything you choose to put on SCSI will help reduce the strain on your crappy IDE controller (all IDE controllers are crappy). Say you want to burn to an IDE burner from the DVD drive-well, you're less likely to get stalls with the newer BURN-PROOF drives, so you get faster burns. And drives without that protection will get fewer buffer under-runs.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[Vince604]

Of course SCSI will do better than IDE. Just the PRICE is high for SCSI. Well lets say I have a pretty high-end computer with quite a bit of ram. Would it matter if I'm using SCSI or IDE from there?

 

[Crashman]

Probably not much difference on single drives, but if you really had a high end system you would want RAID, and SCSI RAID is far superior to IDE RAID because the SCSI card has it's own processor, and because SCSI doesn't have to stop accessing one drive to start accessing the other as IDE does.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

well if you HAVE the cash you may as well go for it... superiour performance plus u get to brag to your friends

P.S. with mysetup ive had no problems doing an on the fly burn from dvd to cd-rw when they are both on the same IDE cable & channel.


Anything i think of as 'Decent' is unlikely to ever become 'OEM'

 

[Vince604]

Okay thanks for the information.
How high is high end?
I know SCSI will beat IDE for sure but is it really necessary for SCSI?...

 

[Vince604]

well won't the pricing come down eventually soon? Since ultra320 is coming out I might as well as go with ultra160 if prices were down..

Okay then thanks!

 

[lhgpoobaa]

doubt it.
SCSI seems to operate on a different financial rate to IDE. alot slower for starters.

Anything i think of as 'Decent' is unlikely to ever become 'OEM'

 

[Crashman]

I would only do SCSI RAID if you are wealthy! Ultra 160 already exceeds the 133MB/s bandwidth of the PCI bus, the only way to benefit from Ultra320 is to have 64-bit or 66MHz PCI bus connections as found in some server boards. Also, and old dual channel Ultra80 card gets the same performance from using two channels that Ultra 160 gets from one channel, and could save you a bunch of money. I'll sell you a nice Ultra80 3 channel board that supports 45 hard drives, with 64MB cache, for $100.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[Vince604]

argh so SCSI prices won't drop much eh... Guess I might as well as stick to IDE.

Yes I understand that Ultra 160 exceeds the 133mb/s bandwidth and I took a look at some server boards. But seems to me is that server boards with dual processors are quite expensive and are NOT very attractive. I mean you have to basically have all the special software which costs TONS of MONEY to actually get some actual performance off a server board. The most you can do on the server is probably multi-tasking if you don't have the software designed for dual processing.. but even now there are already P4's that can perform the same operations as a dual at the same speed if the dual is using regular software... So that's why I decided getting a normal motherboard instead of a server.

Sorry Crashman not really interested in that but it's a good price. Well I'm not wealthy and I'm not poor for all I can say... just average... really wanting the P4T533 from Asus.. And I don't need the very best but I just want something that will last.

 

[lakedude]

Sorry to join in so late. Pooba-dude has been giving you good advice. On any single drive it matters very little if you have SCSI or IDE now that IDE has DMA.

If we are talking Hard Drives then you can usually buy faster SCSI drives then IDE but they cost a ton and spin very fast which could shorten lifespan. SCSI is the bomb for HDs but is generally not worth it.

DVD players are completely different. No DVD player even comes close to stressing the limit of modern IDE interfaces. SCSI DVD players are usually one generation <b>behind</b> IDE DVD players and are SLOWER. There is no good reason to get a SCSI DVD player in a home system. In the old days with slower CPUs and before DMA, IDE slowed a system down a bunch. With DMA IDE is perfectly fine for a home system and modern IDE controllers do not generate a significant CPU load. I know what I'm talking about because I have both SCSI and IDE systems myself.

You may already have it figured out but drives are generally sold based on the maximum speed that their electronics can go 33/66/100/160/320/whatever but all drives are mechanical and if you dig you will find the maximum transfer speed of the mechanical part of the drive. The electronics are zooming along but most of the time they are just waiting for the mechanical parts of the drive to feed them info. This is very similar to the way a CPU works. CPUs zoom along at 10 times the speed of main memory and the only thing that can keep up is the cache. If you get cache misses the CPU will be waiting doing nothing until memory can feed the CPU.

Here is a link showing actual drive speeds:<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/01q3/010905/performance-05.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/01q3/010905/performance-05.html</A> Notice that the interface is IDE/DMA 100 but the fastest the drives get is about 35kB/s or about one third as fast as the electronics can go.

If you really want speed for the buck consider an IDE raid multi drive setup.

Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.

 

[Vince604]

So SCSI would be an older technology than IDE?..
But don't SCSI have the controller cards which is suppose to help utilize less on your computer?..

DMA = Direct Memory Acess right? You know what PIO stands for? or IDE?

Well if you have both SCSI and IDE systems which one would you prefer?.. I mean are there any daily advantages with SCSI over IDE that you will notice significantly?

Yeah I figure that their write and read speeds are only at certain points.. But are you sure kb/s?? Isn't it mb/s?

Thinking about raid but that means I would need two exact same hard drives right?.
Thx for the info.

 

[lakedude]

If cost were no object I would prefer SCSI hard drives (single or raid) and IDE dvd players. SCSI is better then IDE but in the case of dvds they develp the IDE drives first and scsi second as a after thought. As a result even though the SCSI part of the drive is better the mechanical part is one generation behind (10x instead of 16x). Hard drives are not done this way. High dollar server hds are developed first with SCSI I presume because SCSI is used by "professionals" on a company budget who can afford SCSI. If you need both speed and fault tolerance you can't beat a hot swap SCSI array.

SCSI = Small Computer System Interface
IDE = Integrated Drive Electronics
ATA = Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface
PIO = Programmed Input/Output
DMA = Direct Memory Acess, correct

"So SCSI would be an older technology than IDE?.."
I don't know.

"But don't SCSI have the controller cards which is suppose to help utilize less on your computer?.. "
Yes and in the old days it made a huge difference because your cpu was slower so it had less to give and before DMA IDE was very inferior. Now it does not matter near as much because DMA causes IDE to also lessen the load on the cpu and also cpus are much faster so they do not use much of their time dealing with the hd.

"But are you sure kb/s?? Isn't it mb/s?"

B = Byte = 8 bits
b = bit
M = Mega
m = mili


kB is incorrect and so is mb it is actually MB I got the kB from an error on Tom's chart.

"Yeah I figure that their write and read speeds are only at certain points.. "
If you follow the link in my last post you will see charts that cover speed over the entire survace of the drive.

Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by lakedude on 04/29/02 03:36 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Vince604]

I see. Well even if you have a DVD player at 16x it only plays at 1x or 2x I thought?.. Unless you're ripping or copying em...hehe...

Okay if I compared them without being in a raid setup will there still be big performance difference? An 15,000rpm Ultra160 SCSI HD compared to a 7200rpm 8mb IDE HD... Without the raid setups and only using it on it's own are there still great performance differences??

Ah thx for the terms!

Well would you happen to know any sites that will give you info on ATA, IDE, and SCSI? not just comparison but generally info. based on how it works?...

Ah so having a new computer wouldn't have to big a load on the cpu anyways then..

opps! MB/s I mean..
Yeah I looked at the page and the problem is that the performance never stays at a constant level which sucks.. but guessing I'll just go with IDE since there still a lot cheaper...maybe because I'm wanting the WD1200JB so bad..
Anyways thanx for the info!

 

[lakedude]

Yes dvd players only need to go 1x or so to play a dvd movie but 16x is nice for er backing up movies you er own to your hd.



From wd high pro drives at: <A HREF="http://www.wdc.com/products/current/drives.asp?Model=WD1200BB#performance
" target="_new">http://www.wdc.com/products/current/drives.asp?Model=WD1200BB#performance
</A>

Transfer Rate (Buffer to Host) <font color=red>(What I'm calling electrial speed)</font color=red>
100 MB/s (Mode 5 Ultra ATA)
66.6 MB/s (Mode 4 Ultra ATA)
33.3 MB/s (Mode 2 Ultra ATA)
16.6 MB/s (Mode 4 PIO)
16.6 MB/s (Mode 2 multi-word DMA)

Transfer Rate (Buffer to Disk)
602 Mbits/s <b>maximum</b>
<font color=red>602Mb/s = 75 MB/s (what I'm calling mechanical)</font color=red>




From IBM 15,000 rpm product info:

Media transfer rate 453-647 Mbits/sec <font color=red>notice b not B</font color=red>

Sustained data rate 36.6 - 52.8MB/sec <font color=red> This is the actual speed of the drive in a single config.</font color=red>




IBM IDE at 7200:

Sustained data rate (MB/sec) 48 to 23 (Zones 0-30) 47.5 to 22.9 (Zones 0-30)

SCSI drives cost a bunch, have you looked into IDE Raid?



Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.

 

[Vince604]

hehe alright.


No I think I meant giving me sites about the general interfaces.... Like SCSI, IDE, and ATA...


I think the WD1200JB is better at:
http://www.wdc.com/products/Products.asp?DriveID=27

since it has an 8MB cache.


Well okay if I go into an IDE raid what advantage will I have with it? How much better of a performance increase will I get?

 

[lakedude]

for general info:

<A HREF="http://www.dirtcheapdrives.com/tech/" target="_new">http://www.dirtcheapdrives.com/tech/</A>



For details on scsi vs ide vs software raid vs hardware raid:

<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/01q4/011023/index.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/01q4/011023/index.html</A>

<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/01q3/010906/index.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/01q3/010906/index.html</A>

<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/00q1/000329/index.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/00q1/000329/index.html</A>



Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.

 

[Vince604]

Ah this is PERFECT!
Thanks.

This all means I need the exact same hardrive as another to do this right?..

 

[lakedude]

I do not know for sure but I think you can use diffrent hd's but the slower one will be the limiting factor for speed and the smaller one will limit size. <b>Warning</b> setting up raid for speed increases the chance of data failure. Also even though I do not think it is required it is still recomended that the 2 (or 3 or 4) drives be the same.

Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.

 

[Vince604]

Alright then.
Well I have two old 40gig maxtor ide hardrives so I guesss I'll try it..
But I'll still have to get an IDE controller at the same time right?... if I do then I just might wait for the Asus p4t533 since it will have on board ATA133 Raid 0/1.

Okay lets say I get speed increases from the hd's.. what will I be able to use them for with that kind of speed?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

More SCSI vs IDE info...
if you tootle over to <A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com" target="_new">http://www.storagereview.com</A> they have a recent article reviewing a 7200rpm SCSI drive... kinda for legacy devices mostly.

but the interesting thing about the review was the direct SCSI 7200rpm drive to ATA 7200rpm drive. the drives were basically the same, same cache, spin speed, very similar data densities.

the conclusion was that ATA drives are well able to keep up and often beat that particular drive (especially the 8mb western digitals)

the real benefits of SCSI are felt when:

A. you use a 10k or 15k rpm scsi drive (course IDE is limited to 7200rpm)

B. you have multiple drives and/or raid arrays.


<font color=purple>Win ME Slayer. And PROUD of it!</font color=purple>

 

[lakedude]

"But I'll still have to get an IDE controller at the same time right?... "

For hardware raid you will need a hardware raid card like the promise. Most MB have basic 4 device IDE "controller"s on board stock. You could go software raid if your MB has a IDE controler. You wouldn't need to buy anything for software raid.


"what will I be able to use them for with that kind of speed?"

Anything you want. The biggest speed increase would be from moving large files. Games will hesitate less or not at all between loads. If you do video editing in you will notice a big difference.


Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.

 

[Vince604]

Alright then thanks. Okay I know Promise sells good IDE controllers but I'm probably going to do a Raid 1 + 0, which is a combination of Raid 1 and 0. Most likeley going to use only 2 hardrives but I know for a fact that next month or two a Mobo will come out with a RAID controller. If I buy a Raid controller would I get any special benefits from it than a onboard Raid feature on a mobo?


So are you saying it will utilize less of my cpu?.. Okay if I do file transfer on a LAN wouldn't all the systems need be set in a RAID configuration in order for the speed to come in handy?

 

[Vince604]

haha then I don't think there would be a point in buying a 7200rpm SCSI hardrive..

Thx for the info as I now realize only buying the new 10 or 15k rpm hardrives it will make a difference and if you are creating a large raid system..

But even though SCSI spins at such a high speed doesn't it mean that they are more likely to have a drive error or failure?