SpeedPuzzle

[Guest]

Subject: Speed Puzzle
Hello, I'm having a bit of a perplexing puzzle time...
I'm hoping someone can lend a hand to my situation.

I have a computer which I use as the center piece in my multi-track recording studio.

It is a:
Twin 800 PIII Asus P2B-D board PC IDE controller is only an Ultra DMA/33 IDE.
All my PCI slots are full, I have a Creative Audigy w. it's half grade firewire port, and an Adaptec SCSI-UW card. All my IDE's are used. I have one or two SCSI channels free.

My problem is that I want:
-- More HD space [my combined total from 4 HD's is under 20gig] and faster access speeds [for video and sound editing].

I would just junk one of my older IDE drives I have but my controller is only a DMA/33... so that wouldn't really get me the faster transfer rates of a 100 drive, I'm assuming.

My SCSI card is an option, but it's not UW2, only UW. So it's really only a DMA/40, not to mention it's an expensive route to go.

I'd get a cheap IDE DMA/100 controller card but I have no more PCI slots left.

Firewire is an option, but I'm concerned that the throughput of the Creative FW port might not be up to par with a dedicated DMA/100 card/controller.

What should I do?

The options I see are:
a. Replace an IDE drive with a newer IDE drive
b. Get a newer SCSI HD
c. Get a firewire internal / external drive
d. Replace one of my cards with a new card that combines the functionality of two old cards... this is a tricky area. Are there any firewire to SCSI converters? or SCSI to firewire? How about IDE/DMA 100 converters to other things... or a card that combines with my 3com 100mbs network card?
e. Replace the MB with a new dual MB that is backwards compatible with my twin PIII 800s that has a newer IDE controller [this sounds like the dumbest and most unlikely]

Any idea's??????
=)

s.

 

[Lars_Coleman]

I really don't think any of those options are really going to give you the best performance or much more then you already have. Unless you replace the motherboard for a newer one that either supports ATA66/100. Or get a third party card that supports ATA100/133 while having to scrap one of the other cards. For the best performance I would replace the SCSI card with a newer one like the Adaptec 29160 and get a U160 hard drive. You can get 7200RPM U160 drives fairly cheap. Around $160-$400. That would help you with future upgradability.

DMA 33 -=- Burst 33MB/sec
SCSI -=- Burst 40MB/sec
1394/FireWire -=- Burst 50MB/sec

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

But wouldn't a new SCSI UW2 only achieve a burst of 40MB/sec?
What is the burst rate of a ATA100/133 - is it 100/133 MB/sec?
If so, it would seem like a waist of time or money to get a new SCSI card.
From your numbers it would seem like a firewire HD might not be such a bad idea, 50MB/sec seems like the fastest of my three options.
I still don't see any clear upgrade paths though... I wish I didn't need all of my cards in my system, but I do...
=(
There is no such thing as a firewire to ethernet adapter RJ45, is there? If I could get my network card out I would get an extra slot for a 100/133 IDE controller card.

 

[Lars_Coleman]

There's full network support within Windows XP for 1394/FireWire so you don't even have to use a NIC. Going Firewire/1394 is pretty expensive. I wouldn't do it for the small increase it shows.

If you get Ultra 160 SCSI your burst speeds are 160MB/sec.

IDE is the cheapest route, but you would have to get a Controller card to get any performance increase.

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>