SCSI vs. EDI Hard Drives

The only configuration I know that might serve you better is RAID, but within that you will have to look at the various RAID configurations for which will serve you best.

For speed, as well as safety (failures, data restores, etc) I would look at RAID 5.

But having said that....it still is usually best/easiest to bring it in using a SCSI interface. Or upgrade to Fibre/Fire wire.

If mine were a network server or a large web site server with a big population, I might see the need for hot swapping hard drives and associated backups but my needs are simple. The one thing I've loved about SCSI and which got me into that game was not having to deal with configuration details. With SCSI, I only move the drive jumpers to label each drive with a unique address, install it and the controller figures out the rest.

The big thing is the cost. IDE drives of the same speed and capacity as SCSI cost a lot less and do not need a seperate controller.

My concern is that I may be perpetuating an environment at a cost that may no longer be as easy to justify as it once was.

Thanks.

L.J.

SCSI has not been surpassed, you would not find IDE suitable. A cost effective method is bridge to SATA from the SCSI controller and take advantage of low cost fast SATA drives and maybe use RAID 1 or 5 too.

The bridge + two 1.5TB SATA II HD's cost less than one 500GB SCSI HD

http://www.scsisource.com/scsi_to_ide_adapters/

look at SAS which is serial attached SCSI.

or SATA RAID

1TB $87.99, 500GB $54.99 @ Newegg

The performance is similar to U320

you can use SCSI drives or SATA drives on the SAS controller

Enterprise level SATA drives, like WD Raptors are less expensive than SCSI drives

I use line scan cameras for bicycle race photofinish (2K resolution @ 3-6K lines/sec

for up to 1/2 hr for individual captures [up to 10GB per file])

I can get workstation performance from RAID 0 (4 150 Raptors/ Opteron 180)

for well under $2000 new

I'm currently looking at 4 Raptors in RAID 0 for capture, and an array of slower 1T drives for storage, as most cost effective.

Even used, U320's aren't cost effective (~$20/73GB on Ebay)

SCSI is faster than IDE and almost as fast as SATA.

I do not know if SCSI HDDs are still in production but would expect large amounts of second hand units available although capacities would not be as large as current units. Persnaly I only like large HDDs for storage backup and then switch them off I run my system off smaller capacity units and plug them in to HDD bays as required, this keeps my information spread out and hopefully not as vunerable to a major loss of info.

I would think your system is still perfectly viable unless you are worried by ageing components.

These guys seem to do a good job. I have 4TB external to my Mac Pro. They have interfaces for PC or Mac. The possibilities are enormous:http://www.macgurus.com/

To answer the question properly, we need to know exactly which SCSI interface you are using and how wide.

HVD, LVD or SE. Wide or narrow?

Also, does your data that you need mean addressing more than one drive at a time, or is the whole performance there for the drive in question....

Block size will also play a role in performance.....most probably fixed on a SCSI Disk drive.

SCSI RAID (or IDE to SCSI RAID) or SATA RAID, will improve performance.....

Tape Backup is probably a good idea, but before buying the fastest tape drives, see exactly what speed your server can supply and buy Tape drives that match that, or slightly less.

You want to keep tape drives streaming or you will kill your media....I have seem media destroyed in 6 months Guarantee (because of the type of usage) was null and void!!!

I've been thinking on using an eSATA external for backup. Why would think tape is better to that end?

Partly because I was a tape professional for many years, but also because I have had Disk RAIDs on my home PC and tape is so fast, I can backup at full Disk RAID speed....

Also, I can keep "Grandfather, Father & Son" backups, as one should do and if one gets a virus (never happened but it could) then I have not lost my all of my data.....

Technically, one should have 2 sets of the 3 backups, with one set in a different physical place (Fire, Flood or Terrorist)....Doing that with external disk drives means a lot of drives! Doing that with tape could mean just 6 tapes........not that the tapes are that cheap, but I suspect that they are still cheaper than the drives!!!

I can get up to 200 GB on one tape.....secondhand tapes are easy to source too.....and can be found for $10 each......well looked after, they can store data for 30 years safely.

One only needs 1 or maybe 2 tape drives (in case you get a drive problem) for all the work.....

I also have a "Tape Library" from StorageTek that I bought cheap on ebay, that means I can automate the whole process......It starts automatically, backs up automatically etc etc.....but that is maybe too complicated for many people, though actually its really simple......

If you want fast and economical, than use a 10K rpm SATA drive with the largest internal buffer you can get. To make that work well,l you need a good mother board, lots of ram and a high end CPU. RAID is a very good idea if you need lots of storage.

RAID is a very good idea if you want eliminate bottle necks in high bandwidth I/O.