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#1
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Spare SCSI card, question about compatability
A friend of mine gave me a SCSI controller card a while ago, and I'm
finally starting to think about buying a really fast SCSI HDD so I can boot up, and load stuff as quickly as possible without RAID. I was thinking about buying a SCSI hardware RAID card, but it seems like PCI (32bit) would be a somewhat limiting factor. And I just bought a $400 nVidia 6800GT AGP video card, and I don't want to toss it, and I have yet to see a motherboard with both AGP and PCI-X That, and I am looking at buying an AMD64 motherboard and CPU eventually, so if any Intel motherboard have both AGP and PCI-X, that won't help me. OK, so back on topic. The card I have lying around is an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W. The specifications for it are he http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/sup...ey=AHA-2940U2W I am thinking about buying this nice 15,000RPM "SCSI Ultra 320 68 Pin" drive: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...116-140&depa=1 I don't know a whole lot about SCSI levels, as I have never used SCSI before. I do know the basics like IDs and terminators, but I don't the levels of compatability. So according to the spec's of my card, it supports SCSI 1, 2, 3, and UltraSCSI. Can anyone enlighten me as to weather UltraSCSI is equal to, or backwards compatable with "Ultra 320"? Will I see any performance hits...the spec's for my card also say that the maximum data transfer rate is 80MBps. Are the newer 15k RPM drives anywhere close to 80MBps?? I see on the specification page for my card that "Extended translation scheme supports up to eight (8) Gbytes per disk" ... hum that does not sound good. Does that mean the card cannot support bigger HDDs, like the 36.7GB one I linked to easlier? The latest BIOS update for my card is from June 8th 2000 ... doesn't sound very encouraging. If I need a new SCSI controller card, or if you reccomend that I should get a new one, can you give some tips on a good, fairly cheap PCI (32bit) SCSI card. Linux compatability is a must, but if you don't about its Linux compatability, thats OK, I can do the research Thanks, --Farrell F. |
#2
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"upgrdman" wrote in message
om... A friend of mine gave me a SCSI controller card a while ago, and I'm finally starting to think about buying a really fast SCSI HDD so I can boot up, and load stuff as quickly as possible without RAID OK, so back on topic. The card I have lying around is an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W. Small problem here if you want short boot time with the 2940 . I'm not familiar with newer SCSI controllers; but the 2940 I know well. The "boot overhead" time needed by the 2940 (and all SCSI cards of that design era AFAIK) adds 10-30 seconds before the OS begins loading from the HD. (Inviting someone familar with newer SCSI smarts to add comments ) |
#4
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upgrdman wrote:
A friend of mine gave me a SCSI controller card a while ago, and I'm finally starting to think about buying a really fast SCSI HDD so I can boot up, and load stuff as quickly as possible without RAID. I was thinking about buying a SCSI hardware RAID card, but it seems like PCI (32bit) would be a somewhat limiting factor. And I just bought a $400 nVidia 6800GT AGP video card, and I don't want to toss it, and I have yet to see a motherboard with both AGP and PCI-X That, and I am looking at buying an AMD64 motherboard and CPU eventually, so if any Intel motherboard have both AGP and PCI-X, that won't help me. OK, so back on topic. The card I have lying around is an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W. The specifications for it are he http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/sup...ey=AHA-2940U2W I am thinking about buying this nice 15,000RPM "SCSI Ultra 320 68 Pin" drive: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...116-140&depa=1 I don't know a whole lot about SCSI levels, as I have never used SCSI before. I do know the basics like IDs and terminators, but I don't the levels of compatability. So according to the spec's of my card, it supports SCSI 1, 2, 3, and UltraSCSI. Can anyone enlighten me as to weather UltraSCSI is equal to, or backwards compatable with "Ultra 320"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI Will I see any performance hits...the spec's for my card also say that the maximum data transfer rate is 80MBps. Are the newer 15k RPM drives anywhere close to 80MBps?? http://store.marinatechnology.com/fumaulsc6836.html Data Transfer Rate To / from media 93.1 to 118.2 MB/s To / from host 62.5 to 79.2 MB/s sustained, Ultra320, 320 MB/s (max.) I see on the specification page for my card that "Extended translation scheme supports up to eight (8) Gbytes per disk" ... hum that does not sound good. Does that mean the card cannot support bigger HDDs, like the 36.7GB one I linked to easlier? The latest BIOS update for my card is from June 8th 2000 ... doesn't sound very encouraging. The last Windows driver update is for Win2K Pro, only. Don't know if that driver would work on XP (often Win2K drivers do). As for the hard drive size, here is an interesting Linux RAID link http://www.nobell.org/~gjm/linux/ide...i-s18raid.html The RAID configuration uses an 18GB SCSI ST118273W/LW 7200RPM 7.9ms (16MB/s) and a 10.2GB EIDE Ultra-ATA/66 5400RPM 9.5ms (29MB/s) [boot drive]. Those are, obviously, larger than 8 GB. Dell page on a machine they make using that controller. http://support.dell.com/support/edoc.../U2W/setup.htm Advanced Configuration Options Extended BIOS Translation for DOS Drives 1 GByte-When set to Enable, provides an extended translation scheme for SCSI hard disks with capacities greater than 1 GByte. This setting is necessary only for MS-DOS 5.0 or above; it is not required for other operating systems, such as NetWare or UNIX.The extended translation scheme supports disk drives as large as 8 GBytes. And here's a storage review article where they compare SCSI drives up to 36.7 Gig using a 2940U2W in their test bed. http://www.storagereview.com/article...el=DNES-318350 If I need a new SCSI controller card, or if you reccomend that I should get a new one, can you give some tips on a good, fairly cheap PCI (32bit) SCSI card. Linux compatability is a must, but if you don't about its Linux compatability, thats OK, I can do the research Thanks, --Farrell F. |
#5
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"upgrdman" wrote...
I have yet to see a motherboard with both AGP and PCI-X Since PCI-X is supposed to replace AGP, I don't know how they will intermingle... OK, so back on topic. The card I have lying around is an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W. The specifications for it are he I am thinking about buying this nice 15,000RPM "SCSI Ultra 320 68 Pin" drive: Can anyone enlighten me as to weather UltraSCSI is equal to, or backwards compatable with "Ultra 320"? Will I see any performance hits...the spec's for my card also say that the maximum data transfer rate is 80MBps. Are the newer 15k RPM drives anywhere close to 80MBps?? The U2 (Ultra 2) SCSI standard was the first of the "LVD" (low voltage differential) standards. U160 and U320 are supersets of U2, and the drives and cards are compatible. I have a U160 10K Cheetah that I just took off my 2940U2 on an old machine and put on a 29160. The catch is whether you have 68- or 80-pin connectors on your card and HD. Since many U160 and U320 HDs come in either version, just make sure you match the HD to the card. The trailing "W" these days usually stands for "Wide" and often (but not always, especially early on) implies an 80-pin connector is used. For example, the 2940U2W has 2 68-pin internal connectors: one U2 LVD, and one "legacy" Wide SCSI; back then, "Wide" was 16 bits -- "Wide", but no 80-pin connector. Also note that OEM versions of the 2940U2 were NOT the same as the Adapted boxed retail version. I see on the specification page for my card that "Extended translation scheme supports up to eight (8) Gbytes per disk" ... hum that does not sound good. Does that mean the card cannot support bigger HDDs, like the 36.7GB one I linked to easlier? The latest BIOS update for my card is from June 8th 2000 ... doesn't sound very encouraging. The 2940U2 works fine with the 36 GB Cheetah. The BIOS is old because U160 and U320 followed shortly, and the 2940 was not updated any more. If I need a new SCSI controller card, or if you reccomend that I should get a new one, can you give some tips on a good, fairly cheap PCI (32bit) SCSI card. Linux compatability is a must, but if you don't about its Linux compatability, thats OK, I can do the research If you're using a single HD on a 32-bit PCI bus, the 2940 will work fine. A single 15K Cheetah has a theoretical sustained rate of 80 MBps only on a 64-bit bus. You will probably get in the 40-50 range sustained on the 32-bit controller; that's what I get with my 10K Cheetah on a 29160 and a 32-bit bus. |
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