SCSI questions

[rallynavvie]

I picked up some SCSI equipment from a local business for pretty cheap and figured I could put those 10-15k drives to good use doing video and maybe even run a game server ever so often. I picked up a good host adapter from them and surprisingly the place I got the equipment from had almost the exact same PC as I had running one of their servers so I'm assuming this helps me. My last experiences with SCSI were way back in the old Mac Performa days and 500MB SCSI HDDs, and never through a host adapter. I'm assuming with WinXP Pro it's as simple as installing the host adapter and attaching a HDD to the (terminated) SCSI cable? Should Windoze see the drive and allow me to format it then? And what of using the drive, anything I should pay attention to?

I've got 5 other 18GB drives which they said I could put in an enclosure. I looked at their enclosures but they were selling rack-mount RAID ones for more than I wanted to spend (they were new). I saw a couple simpler ones on eBay for $100 with power supplies and cables. The problem is the drives I have (other than the 15k one that's going in my PC) are 80-pin and all the enclosures/cables I see for Ultra160 are 68-pin. Do I need adapters for all of these? And once they're installed in an enclosure do I just use the external adapter on the SCSI card to connect to the SCSI enclosure to be able to access those drives? Will they be accessed as fast as the one I'm installing internally?

Thanks for the info!

[sterno]

I'm assuming with WinXP Pro it's as simple as installing the host adapter and attaching a HDD to the (terminated) SCSI cable? Should Windoze see the drive and allow me to format it then? And what of using the drive, anything I should pay attention to?

It should just be that simple, yes. You'll probably need to (re)partition before formatting, of course.

The problem is the drives I have (other than the 15k one that's going in my PC) are 80-pin and all the enclosures/cables I see for Ultra160 are 68-pin. Do I need adapters for all of these? And once they're installed in an enclosure do I just use the external adapter on the SCSI card to connect to the SCSI enclosure to be able to access those drives? Will they be accessed as fast as the one I'm installing internally?

80-pin would be SCA, and you can get adapters to hook those up to a 68-pin cable (they're not expensive). Most SCSI cards have the internal and external connectors at the same speed (sometimes they're the same bus, sometimes different), so external will be as fast as internal as long as you use good cables. You might have trouble finding SCA cables and so forth on Ebay because they're not used very much. They're mainly used in servers and disk arrays, not high-end PCs.

[BJ_M]

the SCA adaptors work well -- make sure you get good ones though as some are not autoterminating ..

you can get a JBOD case for those used for 100- 500 ...

i use a lot of this type of equipment along with fiber and firewire so if you have any questions - fire away ..

sca adaptors

http://www.scsi-cables.com/sca-adapt.htm

http://www.stores.ebay.com/mcpricebreakersscsistorenmore/plistings/list/all/dept1/

[BJ_M]

oh yea - couple things ... make sure you have a fan on those 15k drives and even the 10k drives ,, they get REAL HOT !!!


if they are IBM drives - make sure they are not the ones that self destruct .. if they are those models -- sell them quickly ..

[WeedVender]

BJ_M, what is the max speed for a fiber optic hook up? and how responsive are the drives

and whats their $$$/space ratio?

[BJ_M]

BJ_M, what is the max speed for a fiber optic hook up? and how responsive are the drives

and whats their $$$/space ratio?

fiber channel is used in some high end raid systems , usualy unix (SUN , SGI , HP and the like) , because of the system - it is not for one drive , but must be for a group of drives which are all FC (known as Arbitrated Loop) ..

FC speed is anywhere from 100-400MB/s and connectivity can be over several KM's

you can get FC drives on ebay now pretty cheap (cheaper than scsi on ebay - but were slightly more expensive when new) ..

Cheap IDE raid systems and the advent of firewire and 1ghz LAN (and 10ghz lan) , plus the huge amount of scsi raid systems dumped on the market (used) for 5% of thier new costs (remember the collapse of the dot coms? - they flooded the used server market - still are) rather killed the fiber systems - but they are still being made and used , as i said though , mostly real high end ..

[BJ_M]

btw -- fiber channel can be fiber optic or copper or both ..

[rallynavvie]

Two are Seagate Cheetah X15s and the other 3 are plain Cheetahs (10k rpm). The two X15s have 68-pin connectors, the others have 80. I have a Lian Li tower and the main hard drive cage is located right in front of the two big intake fans so the two X15s have plenty of ambient air over them at all times. I'm surprised at how little noise those X15s make! I would have though a 15k rpm drive would sound like the Death Star powering up. I haven't hooked up the 10k ones yet but I'm sure they probably sound the same.

I've been looking at SCSI enclosures on eBay. I'd like to pick up a nice 4 slot (4 half height) enclosure. I'm assuming a 250W power supply is enough for the 4 drives?

They supplied me with one cable which is an OEM Seagate flat cable. It has 5 68-pin connectors and what I'm assuming is a terminator at one end. I plugged the opposite end into the host adapter and the first and second plug into the 2 drives. I'm getting an error message on boot-up saying insufficient termination for SE drives or something like that. Anything else I'm supposed to set like some jumpers or something? It recognizes the drives and I can read/write to them, so maybe it's nothing to worry about since the two are LVD?

[BJ_M]

dont worry about the error if it works (at least what i say) , it may be that you have a passive terminator instead of an active terminator .. OR if you look close on the drives - one or both may have a jumper for termination set to ON (for backwards compatability) , remove the on board termination ..

also in the scsi bios , it may be set incorrectly - set it to auto is ussually correct (for termination of the host adaptor) ..

those drives are nice .. not like some of the first 10k and 15k drives which sounds like a jet taking off when they spun up .. some got so hot they would burn you (really) ..

these are good bargins for you drives (i have no connection to this company , but i use several of these drive arrays and they were BIG bucks 2 years ago )

http://www.hitechcafe.com/eshop/product.asp?sku=RAID0002U&dept_id=14

also take a look at http://www.hitechcafe.com/eshop/product.asp?sku=RAID0003U&dept%5Fid=14 which is a fiber channel one (fiber channel drives are cheap)

-- the same model in scsi is here http://www.hitechcafe.com/eshop/product.asp?sku=RAID0001U&dept%5Fid=14 which is EXACTLY the same as the first item above except its not rack mount ..

these are good deal because they have the parts to make them NOT just a JBOD but a real scsi raid system (the host controller card that they come with is 2500$ new right now and still sold) ..

these are all new ..


also - on ebay there are other good deals but you have to be carefull on some because they require a host controller or other part to make them accually work .. but sometimes you can find a good one ..

you may just be looking for a external case for scsi -- those are fairly cheap and just hold drives -- 250watts is enough -- yes ..

LVD has a max cable lenth which is somewhat short (vs. HVD which is long (and rare)). so watch your TOTAL cable amount (you have to add every part of your scsi chain internal and external per buss and stay under the max) . well its certainly longer than IDE anyway - (though 100 and 133 IDE can be run 3 feet with proper cables contrary to popular belief - though the cables are expensive to do so )

[rallynavvie]

Yeah those are nice but way more than what I need. I looked at SCSI RAID (I have IDE RAID already) but for what I'm using the drives for (mostly DV capture/editing and maybe the occasional game server) I just need something to store them in. All I'd like to do is get a small case to fit and power those drives and keep them cool that I can connect to the external interface on the host adapter. The SCSI box will likely be no more than a few feet from my PC. Any suggestions for an eclosure like this? I'm assuming since it's Ultra160 SCSI if I turn on the SCSI enclosure while the PC is running it will just auto-detect the drives much like plugging in any other external drives? Wouldn't want to have all those drives spinning all the time if I'm not using them.

I'll look into those BIOS settings. I'm sure there are jumpers on the drive itself, but since it didn't come with instructions it's not too obvious. Any suggestions on where to get good rounded internal SCSI cables and a good external cable for connecting an enclosure for when I get one?

Thanks again for the all the advice!

[BJ_M]

rounded scsi cables are crap !! (and so are most ide ones if the truth be told) -- study up on capacitance in skin effect on wires and you would understand why.

use flat braded scsi cables ..

you will need to have the scsi external running before turning on your pc .. the scsi bios has to see the drives .. the scsi bios boots after your main bios, though you may not be aware of it .

here are some good inexpensive cases for external 160 u3 drives and support colling 15k drives . http://www.pc-pitstop.com/scsi_enclosures/

on that web site you can find the internal cable you will need from card to case , and the external case to case cable and the external ternimator and the internal cable for the external case - be aware anything marked scsi will cost double or more than ide components ... so dont be shocked ..


as for your drives -- these drives are built like tanks and work in servers and data procccessing application 24/7/365 for years on end , often months if not year between reboots .. they are engineered for this and last LONGER if not heat cycled (meaning turned off and on all the time) , turn them on , leave them on ..

[BJ_M]

before everyone starts yeling - yes there are some rounded cables which are better quality if they use proper internal spacing and full balanced transfer ... there are also extra long pc133 (i use 3 foot ones) IDE cables thet work perfect (and they are expensive) ..


you want some of the best in cables and cases -- go here , really really good products and great company ,,, http://www.granitedigital.com/

meritline - a sponser of this site also carries a selection of cables and parts at really good prices ..