Cheap Fujitsu SCSI on Ebay? MAU3073NC?

[Vio1]

Hi, im looking to get scsi for my pc and noticed this guys selling a ton of fujitsu MAU3073NC 73gb 15k scsi drives for cheap. Is this a scam or do you think its legit?

Something wrong with this drive?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130162571507


if you look at his feedback, he does have quite a few negative feedbacks, but a lot more positive, and the drives are selling for around $30 + shipping. Is this too good to be true?

What kind of SCSI controller should i get with these drives?

 

[Hazaro]

This item has been factory reconditioned and is in like new condition.

There will be a white generic label on the drive and all the specifications and original part information is above.

Those are the only reasons I can think of.

My 10k 37GB drives are still unsold

 

[Sam__]

to run these drives at full potential dont you need a v.good controler, if you dnt have an on board one.

friggin awesome deal on the drive tho lol.

 

[Vio1]

what kind of controller would i need?

 

[Neuromancer]

Used scsi drives usually are not very expensive. Modern scsi controlelrs are however. Older scsi controllers you can find super cheap if not just trash pick them. I got my 60MB/S scsi card for free (and 5 8GB cheetahs) and ended up throwing it all away. (too loud for a home pc)

 

[Vio1]

what should i be looking for in a scsi controller? Is onboard ram needed? Any particular model?

 

[conway]

That drive was sca. SCA drives are designed for use with a backplane in nice hotswap raid setups. Unless you want to use an adapter which may slow you down, you'll want to look for a 68 pin drive.

 

[Vio1]

how would an adapter slow the performance down? By how much? What is backplane? waht is a hotswap raid setup?

 

[Murdochs_mad]

how would an adapter slow the performance down? By how much? What is backplane? waht is a hotswap raid setup?

SCA drives are designed to be used in a manufactured cage, where the drives slide in/out (hot swap) the SCA connector carries both data and power signals and is used because the socket on the drive 'should' mate properly with the plug (on the backplane) at the back of the cage just by sliding the drives in:-

wiki article

Because the connector carries both data and power you'll need an adapter to use the drive without a backplane also sca drives have no way of setting the scsi id or termination so the adapter should be able to do this as well (usually taken care of by the backplane)

All in the drives are probably more trouble than their worth, they may be uber fast but they'll also be uber LOUD

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

The reason those drives are so cheap is that they are white label refurbs, meaning, they were repaired by a third party, not by the factory. The quality control on such thigs is generally very poor. You'd be incredibly lucky if they last more than a few months before dying again.

If you really want cheap SCSI, then get a factory refurbed drive, but don't bother with the white label ones.

 

[Phoenix '971]

I've bought 3 hard drives from this supplier, and they're still working well.
2x MAM3367NC, 1x MAP3147NC.
Yes, you will need an 80 to 68 pin adapter. A site like scsi4me.com should have them. If you're looking at that site, do a search for "Int-U320-SCA2-Convertor" without the quotes. You connect the molex connector, and 68 pin SCSI cable to this adapter, and the other end to the drive itself. The SCSI ID is set on the adapter.
Termination is provided via a terminator on the end of the 68-pin SCSI cable, just as if the drives were 68 pin-models originally.
The use of an 80 to 68 pin adapter doesn't seem to slow you down as far as I can tell. I can still get a 112-120MB/sec burst rate on these drives, though I'm limited here by the PCI bus itself, which has a theoretical limit of 133 MB/sec.
I've been running one of the above MAM's and the MAP since May 2007 on my primary machine without any problems from the drives themselves.
As far as a controller is concerned, I could recommend an Adaptec 29160/39160/39320/19160, or something of the sort. Although you won't be able to do a hardware RAID most of these, you'll still find them cheaply on eBay, and most Windows OSes such as 2000, XP, and Vista, will recognize these natively without the need to hit F6 for additional drivers during the installation of the OS.

As far as noise is concerned, check to see if the drive has FDB technology; from the Fujitsu line, the MAW, MAX, MAU, MAT, and MAS series all have it, this in addition to the 147GB MAP models. If they don't the drive will be a lot noiser than a typical 7200 RPM drive, for example.

 

[Neuromancer]

SCSI is fun to lay with once... get yourself a pin setup like mentioned so you just need cables... a cheap controller card and run it for a few weeks. Trust me the noise and heat generated are going to turn you off REAL fast for home usage. But I do recommend everyone play with it at least once.

It is pretty cool to play with once or twice I think. There is no performance benefit though anymore unless you are going with 160 or 320 scsi, and those you just will not find for cheap (unless they are broken)

JMHO

 

[Vio1]

so i went and bought 2 of the fujitsu drives. I also bought this controller:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320168803754

which is this controller: http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/pro.../megaraid_scsi/megaraid_scsi_3202e/index.html

I also purchased 2 80 pin to 68 pin adapters.

***My question is, do i need 1 or 2 scsi cables? with or without terminators? I want to put them together in a raid-0 configuration***


also,

would i be able to the matrix slice thing? ( http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848 )?

 

[Hazaro]

Why did you buy a $150 card... You can get SCSI RAID cards for like $50.

Good luck anyway.

 

[Vio1]

i wanted one with ram and full 320 support

***My question is, do i need 1 or 2 scsi cables? with or without terminators? I want to put them together in a raid-0 configuration***


also,

would i be able to the matrix slice thing? ( http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848 )?

anyone know my answer?

 

[Hazaro]

I'm clueless!

All I got is 8 10k rpm Cheetahs, and some $10 card off eBay.

They really are noisy, but I'm considering sticking 3 in my case since I need some extra storage space.

 

[jason4207]

Not sure about the cables, but I'm sure you won't be able to do any Matrix RAIDing. You have to use the Intel ICHxR SouthBridge for that, and that requires Sata drives.

 

[Phoenix '971]

You will need one cable, with a terminator. For two drives, your cable will need at least four connectors, or 3 plus the terminator.
What are the model numbers of the drives you bought (if not MAU3073NC)? With any luck I can get you a HDTach benchmark of the drives.

 

[Vio1]

You will need one cable, with a terminator. For two drives, your cable will need at least four connectors, or 3 plus the terminator.
What are the model numbers of the drives you bought (if not MAU3073NC)? With any luck I can get you a HDTach benchmark of the drives.

they are MAU3073NC

 

[Phoenix '971]

They should look like that for one drive:

However your burst speed should be a lot faster since you're using a PCIe 8x card.