**Vio1's SCSI Benchmarks and Observations**

[Xaotic]

Yes, you'd need a SCA adapter to convert the 80 pin SCA drive to 68 pin. For single to a couple of drives, they're not bad. Adding more than 3 adapters to a channel is usually bad news. Capacitative impedance can cause signalling issues.

I seem to remember hearing that that controller may support RAID, but it may require some research and modification. I never tried when I had one, due to having SCSI HW RAID controllers with BBUs and cache memory. If not, then you'd need a RAID controller. The LSI 21320-R retail kit is one of the less expensive cards, around 130 on newegg. It's PCI-X, but backwards compatbile to PCI 2.0. Unless you are getting a planar with at least PCI 64/66, I probably wouldn't recommend the expense. The PCI bandwidth is a wall that gets hit by 2 drives in RAID 0 very easily. You coud easily add another drive on the existing controller and install apps and other frequently accessed files there. That would allow more efficient use of the controller, since there is very little degradation in single drive access rates when accessing multiple drives on a channel.

 

[eduncan911]

I've used these "converters" in the past to go from 80 to 64 and from 64 to 80. I have yet to find one that let me use Ultra160 (they all registered the drive as 80 drives, not 160 as you see on start up). I evetually broke down and bought an 80pin card for the 80 pin drives.

There is no speed difference between 64 and 80, just stick to what you got. The advantage of 80pin is the built-in power on the same connector, allowing you to hot-swap the 80pin drive in a drive array.

Not needed for home.

But you asked if you could use an 80pin version for RAID0, the answer is yes... But just like any other RAID, you'll want exactly matched drive specs (seek, throughput, cache, etc). Else it could (and will) cause more damage then good in adding delays in accessing data.

 

[man_utd]

Small correction: 68 pin, not 64, though on all else, looks right.

 

[eduncan911]

Bleh. 68. lol 64bit... lol

 

[cooter]

Ok,

Vio i know that you requested this and for anyone else that is interested I have done all the tests above on a single SCSI drive. The results are in that original post. One thing to keep in mind is that I have 2 different SCSI drives in my raid array and I used the faster of the 2. they are virtually identical except one is U320 and one is U160. i may do a test with the other drive in single drive configureation as that will pry be better to compare against the rest of my raid results but I want to get my computer up and running again. I listed the model number of the 2 drives as well in the results.

cooter

 

[Vio1]

there doesnt seem to be any improvement with having raid-0.... does it feel slower at all with 1 drive versus 2?

 

[cooter]

One of the big differences is boot time. Raid makes the computer boot much faster. As far as the rest of the speed I dont think it makes alot of difference otehrwise. I am mainly using it now for the increased HD space, 1 - 36gb hard drive is not enough for me for my OS and apps and games. My results may have been different if i would have checked the slower drive but the difference in speed between the two is pry very minimal.

 

[Vio1]

how many bars does it take to load up windows with 1 scsi? with 2 scsi?

 

[cooter]

With one SCSI it was taking about 5 or 6 bars, with 2 SCSI in RAID0 it takes anywhere from 1.5 - 2 bars.