a_zidane

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Hello to all... I am building my new pc, and have decided to use SCSI HDD because a friend of mine was telling me about their performance and reliability. I got two HP 36GB 15000 RPM 80 Pin BF03685A35 SCSI Hard Drives for 40$ and would like to run them in RAID 0.... now I know I need a controller card, but I know nothing of them. Can someone suggest a good one. I will be running Windows Vista 64bit, and will use them for my OS and installed programs. Thank you in advance for any help :)

PS: Will these two drive in raid 0 be faster than a velociraptor?
 
You left out some very important info about your system. Will you use a PCI-X (server or workstation motherboard required) or a PCIe RAID controller? Using a PCI port will not provide the performance level that you would expect from those drives. With a good RAID controller, the access time will be less than the Velociraptor (which is good), but the transfer rate will be lower (those low density drives don't have a very high transfer rate). In addition to a RAID controller, you need to buy a cable and adapters to convert your drives from 80-pin to 68-pin (unless your system has a backplane to install SCA drives).
 
Then you'll buy a PCIe SCSI RAID adaptor?

Here are a few that should meet your requirements:

Intel SRCU42E Storage Controller (PCIe x8)
LSI MegaRAID 320-2E PCIe RAID Controller (PCIe x8, x4 compatible)
Dell TD977 PERC 4e/DC SCSI RAID Controller (probably the least expensive - they can be found for $400 or less)

Google "pci express scsi raid controller" to find more.

In addition you require a cable and one adapter for each disk.

If I were you, I'd buy a Velociraptor.
 
The issue is that you might have to spend hundreds to set them up as a RAID0 boot disk. You need a RAID controller, SCA adapters and a cable. The SCA adapters should be Ultra 320 certified; otherwise your disk interface will run at 80 or less instead of 320.

Visit http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php and check the performance of a small 15K SCSI disk and other disks like the Velociraptor for the type of applications that you'll use them for.
 

a_zidane

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Ok, I think you are right, the controllers seem quite pricy... what do you think of 2x 74gb raptors or 2x 150gb raptors in raid 0?
 
Is the performance increase over a single Velociraptor really worth it to you? If so, then go ahead with that solution. You could also consider 2 WD6401AALS in RAID0. It all depends on your requirements. For fast random access, e.g., for a database, nothing beats low latency drives. On the other end, larger disks like the WD6401AALS are better if you transfer large files.
 

serpent1202

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Zidane, here's what I would do. SSD's are the way to go, but at the rate of improvements i'd wait 1 - 2months until the new drives are released. If you put 2 raptors in a raid 0, your access times aren't improving, it takes the same time for each drive to spin up. You'll improve your seq. reads to about 150 mb/s. If you wait a month or 2, you will have SSD's that in raid0 will give you anywhere from 300 - 450 mb/s reads depending on the drives you buy.

For right now, buy a WD 640 gig and use it for a few months until you get your raid 0 SSD setup. Those 640 WD's are pretty fast in themselves.