Is Ultra320 SCSI Gone??

GV2NIX · Sep 27, 2005

I have a Maxtor Atlas 15K IV Ultra320 SCSI drive as my primary. I'm using it with an old Ultra160 SCSI controller card that I bought a while ago. I was saving up to buy an Ultra320 SCSI controller card to find that the only Ultra320 SCSI controller cards are RAID controller cards! I don't need a RAID controller card, I just need a normal Ultra320 SCSI controller. The RAID cards are much more expensive! Adaptec used to sell them, at least a year ago they did, where did they go? Is plain Ultra320 SCSI dead?

elec999 · Sep 27, 2005

I have seen a few u320 controllers on newegg.
Thanks

GV2NIX · Sep 27, 2005

Yeah, most of them are PCI Express now though, I don't have PCIe. They use to have normal PCI U320 adapters, but I don't know what happened...

thegreek · Sep 27, 2005

GV2NIX said:
Yeah, most of them are PCI Express now though, I don't have PCIe. They use to have normal PCI U320 adapters, but I don't know what happened...

What are you talking about? There is only one SCSI PCI-E card available and it's $620 :shrug:

GV2NIX · Sep 27, 2005

Haha, you're right! I don't know what was wrong with me, I guess I was temporarily retarded? There are plenty of PCI Ultra320 controllers out there, I don't know what I was thinking. Man, I feel stupid...

chrisman · Sep 27, 2005

You don't need a 320 controller for a single drive anyway.

Jon · Sep 27, 2005

chrisman said:
You don't need a 320 controller for a single drive anyway.

I agree here. I'd go with an even cheaper U160 card. If you're not planning on several drives in RAID, there's no advantage to having an U320 card. Your drive isn't even going to saturate an U160 controller. Actually, by going with an ordinary PCI card, you're going to saturate the PCI bus long before maxing out an U160 or U320 card.

Mr.Guvernment · Sep 27, 2005

^^^ exactly your PCI bus is maxed @ 133mb anyways.

{PMS}fishy · Sep 27, 2005

GV2NIX said:
Yeah, most of them are PCI Express now though, I don't have PCIe. They use to have normal PCI U320 adapters, but I don't know what happened...

Most of them are PCI-x

GV2NIX · Sep 28, 2005

Yeah, I think that's where I got my facts mixed up. A lot of them are PCI-x

Hmmm, really? I can't even max out U160? I thought U160 was possible, just not U320. I didn't know PCI was causing that much of a bottleneck. Hmm, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Why even bother making U320 for PCI then? Is the only way to take advantage of U320 through PCI-x or PCIe?

{PMS}fishy · Sep 28, 2005

GV2NIX said:
Yeah, I think that's where I got my facts mixed up. A lot of them are PCI-x

Hmmm, really? I can't even max out U160? I thought U160 was possible, just not U320. I didn't know PCI was causing that much of a bottleneck. Hmm, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Why even bother making U320 for PCI then? Is the only way to take advantage of U320 through PCI-x or PCIe?

33mhz 32bit slots can transfer a maxium of 133mb/s. In theroy a U160 drive could saturate the PCI bus, but we all know that one drive won't do it alone.

A small U320 array would saturate the PCI bus very eaisly, so yes, PCI-x or some other 64bit slot is the only way to maxmize the through put of the drives.

Mr.Guvernment · Sep 28, 2005

i have 2 18g 15k RPM drives in raid 0 and i get pauses now and then when doing alot of stuff

using the PCI buss adaptec raid card.

attack · Sep 28, 2005

As for why U320....well you can put a 6 disk RAID 5 (or 0 if your crazy) array on a U320 chain and it might possibly come close to saturating the cable! that's why I believe all U320 cards are 66/64 PCI and not 33/32

GV2NIX · Sep 28, 2005

Yeah, I guess if I had a server farm and had 15 spindles on each channel of a controller then that would be good, but I would still be saturating the PCI slot.

Wait, which PCI can use 66/64? I thought 33/32 was the max no matter what. Only PCI-x and PCIe can go above 33/32 right? Didn't U320 come out before PCI-x even came out?

Xaotic · Sep 28, 2005

Early buses included 32/66, 64/33 and 64/66. PCI-X is generally used to denote 64/66 and higher(64/100 and 64/133). Most boards with the higher performance slots also have multiple peer PCI-X buses. I have one workstation with 2x64/100, 1x64/133 and 3x64/100 slots(grouped by bus), 1 PCI 32/33 and 1 AGP8x. It's a fairly monsterous IO box.

thegreek · Sep 28, 2005

ajrettke said:
As for why U320....well you can put a 6 disk RAID 5 (or 0 if your crazy) array on a U320 chain and it might possibly come close to saturating the cable! that's why I believe all U320 cards are 66/64 PCI and not 33/32

In that case you might as well buy a PCI-E SCSI controller and you'll never have to worry about saturating the bus as it's 2 Gb/sec

GV2NIX · Sep 28, 2005

thegreek said:
In that case you might as well buy a PCI-E SCSI controller and you'll never have to worry about saturating the bus as it's 2 Gb/sec

Haha, yeah, but I don't have PCIe...although I will if I upgrade (talking about that in another thread).

Hmmm, it's embarassing, but I don't know what kind of PCI bus I have, haha!

{PMS}fishy · Sep 28, 2005

thegreek said:
In that case you might as well buy a PCI-E SCSI controller and you'll never have to worry about saturating the bus as it's 2 Gb/sec

Servers don't use, and might not for some time, PCI-e.

They all primarly run PCI-x, and have for a long time.

thegreek · Sep 28, 2005

{PMS}fishy said:
Servers don't use, and might not for some time, PCI-e.

They all primarly run PCI-x, and have for a long time.

I wasn't talking about servers.

{PMS}fishy · Sep 28, 2005

thegreek said:
I wasn't talking about servers.

Well, we were talking about U320, which really only belongs in a server environment.

That or the basement of someone who just has too much $.

Is Ultra320 SCSI Gone??

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