SCSI Hard-Drive Questions

[Roland Deschain]

Hi guys,

this forum has always been really helpful so here's another question. Right now I have a IDE hard drive in my computer. I want to buy myself a nice SCSI hard drive.

What should I look out for when I buy one?

How do I know if my computer can even use an SCSI drive (ie: does it have the right connection cables, does my motherboard support it, etc)

How do I install the SCSI drive (can my computer have one IDE drive and one SCSI) and what kind of setup will give me the best speed.

Any other tips which might make this experience less painfull.

Thanks for any help.

And here is the hard drive I was thinking off (note Price is in Canadian, so just give me feedback on specs): http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1800209

And I just figured that I most likely need a SCSI card, these are the ones that tigerdirect offers:http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicati...asp?keywords=SCSI+card&image1.x=11&image1.y=9 I am so confused

 

[Revisedsoul]

well first i can pretty much guarentee you will need a scsi card controler.

second. buy from ncix.com much better service that tigerdirect.

third its not worth it

 

[giant384]

i dont think its worth and i didnt realize they were that fast

 

[Roland Deschain]

lol, might I ask why you think its not worth it? My friend bought on recently (his computer is equivalent to mine) and I saw his load times. They were cut down siginficantly.

 

[Revisedsoul]

well the single fact your paying over $200 just for a refurbished hard drive.

your prolly better off going with sata2 and a 10,000 rpm drive.

yes scsi is fast, but not worth the price imo

i should also note if im correct, the card you need to run that drive are the ones running $500+, but i could be wrong

 

[_-_-SELAS-_-_]

Hmm rather buy a western digital rator 10000 rpm that way you dont need a special controller and cable + it will be easy to get stuff to in the future and they are just as potent speed wise. It is built on scsi technolegy and it might even be one like this your friend has. You can get them in 36, 74 and now recently 150 GB.

 

[Roland Deschain]

Hmm rather buy a western digital rator 10000 rpm that way you dont need a special controller and cable + it will be easy to get stuff to in the future and they are just as potent speed wise. It is built on scsi technolegy and it might even be one like this your friend has. You can get them in 36, 74 and now recently 150 GB.

Wait, these connect to the normal IDE hard drive cable???

Do I need to buy that WESTERN DIGITAL SECURECONNECT CABLE-TO-DRIVE CONNECTOR so it connects to my IDE cable?

PS: If you haven't noticed I am completly clueless

PSS: Does my motherboard support this kind of hard drive (ASUS p4s800)

 

[WhiteZero]

Nope, your mobo dosent have SATA compatability.
And a decent SCSI drive is way too expencive for anyone using it in a non-corporate enviroment.

If you really want the speed, just get a SATA card, and get one of the older (cheaper) Raports.

 

[Asus]

Yes, SCSI is a lot faster. Will you notice any difference? Maybe a bit on the loading times and such but not enough for the price premium. Servers/Workstations use it because they are either serving many many users loading completely random sets of data or loading many large files for workstation use. They need that performance.

Desktop usage is much much more toned down and is usually in a row and only for 1 user (the one using it). When you load a game all the files are in the same place on the disk for example. When you have 100 or even 10 users accessing different places on the disk from across the network on the same server...thats a different story.

High speed (10,000 RPM) Western Digital Raptors are considered entry level for Workstations and highend desktop drives. If you have Serial ATA on your motherboard then I would pick that. It's a lot cheaper and you will get a very similar improvement in loading games and file transfers.

Edit:
Here is a good review of the new Western Digital 150GB Raptor drive. Shows it against SCSI drives in one graph and then other SATA desktop drives. The second page of graphs shows ya office usage and then games on the third page.

 

[WhiteZero]

Well, the newer Rapor has some very nice performence, beating out alot of SCSI drives actually.